Keith Strudler

One of the more common coach sayings in all of football ball that no one play cost us the game. That usually comes after it seems quite the opposite is true, where one play actually made the difference between winning and losing. In some cases, it’s fairly obvious, like a short, missed field goal that would have moved the score from a loss to a win. In others, it’s a bit more connective, like a missed coverage on a deep pass from the other team or penalty that changed the complexion of the end. It’s really up to your perspective on the question of cause and effect.

For a limited number of football fans, the season is just getting rolling. That’s for the four teams who will playing in the AFC and NFC Championship games, neither of which will be played in Atlanta – and that’s a nod to everyone who was listening last week. For everyone else, the offseason is long underway, which means beginning the perennial process of looking for new players that will transition your team from wherever they finished this year to playing in February, when the Super Bowl is contested.

One of the greatest advantages in all of sports is playing on your home field or court. It’s why they call it home field advantage. There’s a lot that goes into that. Fans would have you believe they’re the difference, harassing the opposing team while lifting the home favorites. But there’s much more than that. You’re playing in a familiar space, no travel, and you can sleep in your own bed the night before. It’s familiar food and driving yourself instead of team charters. It’s a long list, which is why the home team always has a slight edge over the same game on a neutral field.

There’s not much true analysis to give about Monday nights college football national championship game between Georgia and TCU. The game was, in a word, awful.

At this point, most of America has now heard of Damar Hamlin, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety who prior to Monday night was fairly anonymous outside of truly passionate NFL fans. That’s because during the first quarter of the Bills’ Monday night game against Cincinnati, Hamlin collapsed on the field after a tackle and was given CPR by medical professionals after going into cardiac arrest.

It would be difficult to put 2022 in sports in context, even though that can likely be said about any calendar year. It’s perhaps best assumed that this year marked some return to normal for the sports world, with full arenas and the end of protocols for fans and athletes.

Sports commentator Keith Strudler weighs in on Charlie Baker's looming job change.

Prime Time is in fact going prime time in college football. By that, we’re talking about current Jackson State head football coach and former NFL star Deion Sanders, who goes by the aforementioned nickname. After two highly successful years at Jackson State, an HBCU that plays in the second tier FCS football sub-division, Sanders has accepted the head coaching position at Colorado, a Power 5 school that once reigned near the peak of the national football rankings. But after years of losing and irrelevance, they are handing the reigns to Sanders, who prior to Jackson State had never coached college football. And if you tuned into Colorado’s press conference introducing their new savior, you know this won’t be more of the same.

Every several years in America, we hear a familiar narrative about soccer in the US. That its time has come and that soccer will finally become a, if not the dominant sport in America. Usually it comes around the World Cup, especially when the US performs well, which for the men means getting through the group stage. For the women, it’s winning. Sometimes it happens around a star player coming to the American pro league. And sometimes it’s when the world comes to the US, like it will in the 2026 World Cup. But you can largely set a clock by the storyline of soccer’s takeover stateside.

We all know about the best laid plans of mice and men. Nowhere is that more true than the cruel and unpredictable world of competitive soccer, where the correlation between performance and result is opaque at best.