Keith Strudler

There is literally no bigger story in sports right now than, well, Taylor Swift. After selling out scores of NFL stadiums across the country at Super Bowl ticket rates for her recent world tour, she’s now taking center stage in the games themselves. At least Kansas City Chiefs games, and from a luxury box, not the field.

It may have been after 2 a.m. Eastern Time in what turned into early Sunday morning last weekend, but it was very much still Prime Time. That’s especially true for ESPN, which had over nine million people tuned in for a late-night college football game, the most in the history of that time slot. That game was Colorado/Colorado State, a game that in previous years would have barely registered with fans and would have been found in the nether channels of streaming purgatory. But not this year, now that new Colorado head coach Deon Sanders has taken over and brought his brand of showtime to the Rockies. Sanders came to Boulder after three years at Jackson State, where he lifted an otherwise downtrodden I-AA program to a 12-1 record in his final season. Sanders also brought a whole bunch of new players to Boulder as well, including two of his sons, one who is now the team’s star quarterback.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been in a stadium or arena, or really any place like MetLife Stadium between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Monday night. It was louder than an airplane and had enough pyrotechnics to warrant sunglasses. It felt more like the Monsters of Rock stadium tour from the late 80’s than a football game. And then, like that, it ended, in perhaps the biggest mood swing since Hilary Clinton’s election night party in the Javits Center in 2016. Aaron Rodgers, the NFL’s most prominent quarterback and the assumed messiah for the New York Jets and their Super Bowl aspirations, fell to the turf at the end of his fourth play of scrimmage in the first regular season game of the season. More importantly, he didn’t get up, and eventually got the sideline before being carted off the field into the locker room.

So if you watched the end of the Alexander Zverev vs. Jannik Sinner round of 16 tennis match at the US Open Monday night, you’re either on the West Coast or likely still very tired. That’s because the epic five-set match, which lasted over 4 ½ hours, didn’t end until nearly two in the morning. And I’m assuming you were watching from home on your couch. If you were at Armstrong Stadium in Flushing Meadows, you had to add on however long it took to drive to wherever you live. At least there’s not much traffic.

It’s rarely easy for an NFL coach to cut a player from their pre-season roster. Getting from the 90 that start preseason to a 53-man opening day roster is tough for a long list of reasons, but no more so than you have to tell 37 people that they won’t get to play for the team. Which in many cases means you’re telling them their dream of playing in the NFL is over.

There are a few individual sporting titles that require an almost unfathomable sense of bravado and swagger, a willful rejection of humility and full embrace of manifest destiny.

It was a bit of a political footnote, especially in the otherwise political swamp that is the state of Florida, but of the long list of donors that contributed to the political super PAC Never Back Down, which supports presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, one in particular stood out. That one was the Orlando Magic, one of two NBA franchises in the sunshine state and the only one along the bellwether I-4 corridor, although perhaps not so much anymore. The donation was for $50,000, far more than you could give directly to a candidate themselves. But the amount wasn’t the story. It’s the donor – an NBA franchise, a privately owned organization that otherwise operates very much in the public domain. And one whose employees may hold a vastly different view of presidential politics than its owner.

I probably care more about 13-year-old boys club soccer than most folks. That’s because I have a 13-year-old boy who plays club soccer, and I watch a lot of games. So I can tell you way too much about which clubs in New Jersey have a strong center fullback or striker or who likes to advance the ball from the back and which teams have a Dunkin Donuts near their home pitch.

Pressure is nothing new to the US Women’s Soccer Team, in all its different formations and line-ups. Generally speaking, that pressure has been about winning a World Cup Final, which it’s done four times including the past two tournaments in 2015 and 2019. More broadly, they’ve carried the burden of lifting the women’s game both in the US and across the globe, which includes growing the challenging business of women’s pro soccer in North America. And more recently, they’ve been at the center of the debate of pay equity in international soccer, a construct that extends far beyond the pitch.

For most people, $10 million is historic wealth, more money than they’ll earn in a lifetime. For the very fortunate few, it’s retirement savings. To Saquon Barkley, $10 million is an insult. Or at least it’s not enough to come to work as a running back for the New York Giants, the amount offered to him for the upcoming season under what’s known as the franchise tag, where the team offers the average of the top five players in the League at that position. Which means that for the time being, Barkley, one of the team’s star players, is poised to sit out training camp if not longer.