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NFL’s best touchdown celebrations of 2023: A favorite from all 32 teams

28Dec

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Sports

NFL’s best touchdown celebrations of 2023: A favorite from all 32 teams

Scoring touchdowns during each offensive possession is the unspoken goal for every NFL team. For decades, celebrations have been the norm in accompanying touchdowns. It goes back all the way to the 1960s with Homer Jones and his touchdown spike.Touchdown celebrations have become a choreographed production for some teams. Think back to the 1980s when Washington’s “Fun Bunch” made enemies after its group of players participated in a jumping high-five after a score. And think recently when the Seattle Seahawks did their best New Edition and *NSYNC impersonations, or when the Minnesota Vikings decided to play a game of Duck, Duck, Goose in the end zone.GO DEEPERThe NFL's most memorable TD celebrations: Deion Sanders' high-step, the Ickey Shuffle, moreThe 2023 NFL season has had its share of m...

A starting XI of soccer documentaries to watch (other than ‘Welcome to Wrexham’)

27Dec

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Sports

A starting XI of soccer documentaries to watch (other than ‘Welcome to Wrexham’)

Among 2023’s most surprising storylines was that of Wrexham, the lower-tier Welsh club whose fortunes under celebrity American ownership have been chronicled in the series “Welcome to Wrexham.” Though the show was initially released in 2022, its popularity grew exponentially in this subsequent year. The result? An heretofore unseen number of real-life marketing and tour opportunities for the lower-division club that might never have existed before.One can read the rise of Wrexham as one of the more extreme examples of the impact of a football documentary. Executed well, these works don’t just offer behind-the-scenes looks at teams and players or reveal stories we hadn’t seen before – they give you an entirely new avenue of connection to the game we all know and love.So with that in mind, ...

First World War Christmas truce: How much football was actually played?

27Dec

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Sports

First World War Christmas truce: How much football was actually played?

It’s one of the best-known stories about the First World War: the Christmas truce of 1914, when soldiers from both sides spontaneously laid down their guns and, for a few hours at least, acted as if they weren’t trying to wipe each other out in a cruelly pointless war.Part of the story was the football match that broke out in No Man’s land. The image of the two sides uniting, in a manner of speaking, over the common language of sport became incredibly evocative, a slice of normality amidst the horror.It’s gone down in English mythology, encouraged by appearances in various elements of culture, from art to history books to things such as the TV comedy Blackadder. “Remember it? I was never offside, I could not believe that decision…” the titular character says when asked if he recalled the ...

America Feels Like a Codependent Household

25Dec

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World

America Feels Like a Codependent Household

America feels like an alcoholic household—crazy with grievance, accusation, irrational rage, screaming in the middle of the night. The children lie in the dark, wide-eyed, listening. In the morning, the family comes downstairs trying to pretend that everything is normal. There’s a lot of pretending: The southern border isn’t wide open; unpunished crime is social justice; the president of Harvard deserves her job. Things aren’t normal. Everyone knows it. The country doesn’t quite recognize itself. America has gone astray in a strange new landscape. It’s a different America all right. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Dunking hurts: Why players hate — and love — the NBA’s greatest feat

23Dec

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Sports

Dunking hurts: Why players hate — and love — the NBA’s greatest feat

The dunk is basketball’s most lionized play. The most iconic ones are canonized, referenced fondly and often, debated for their merits and significance. The sport’s language has created so many names for it: jam, yam, slam, poster, stuff, hammer. It’s a unique club that only few on this world can join. It’s marvelous.And it hurts like hell.“Can you think of any other concept where your hand swings at something metal?” 11-year NBA veteran Austin Rivers asks. “It’ll probably hurt, yeah?”When asked, players catalog the pain dunking has caused: broken nails; bent fingers; recent bruises; lasting scars; midair collisions; twisted necks; dangerous landings. Injuries that cost them games or even seasons.Derrick Jones Jr., a former NBA All-Star Weekend dunk contest winner now with the Dallas Mave...

Golf with a purpose: How The Park dared to be different

23Dec

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Sports

Golf with a purpose: How The Park dared to be different

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It’s lunchtime on a mid-November Saturday afternoon and the word of the day is eclectic. I’ve just finished my morning round at The Park with a three-putt for par on the forgiving 18th hole, and I saddle up at the cabana, the bar/small bites stand strategically located at the front of the property.A foursome that was a few holes ahead of me is heading off to their vehicles — while allowing for their anonymity, let’s just say they can be members anywhere they want to be in the golf-rich West Palm Beach/Jupiter area. Making the turn to the back nine are the bros wanting to chase down their transfusions with High Noons. Though they represent very different ends of the Saturday golfer spectrum, you recognize both groups as what a golfer “looks” like.But the cabana occu...

Another national-anthem flub has us asking: Why do we play them before sporting events?

17Dec

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Sports

Another national-anthem flub has us asking: Why do we play them before sporting events?

If we are ranking the worst renditions of “O Canada” ever performed in the United States, what John deCausmeaker did on Thursday night in St. Paul doesn’t top the list.That honour would comfortably fall to lounge singer Dennis Casey Park, who managed to warp Canada’s national anthem into a version of “O Christmas Tree” prior to a CFL game in Las Vegas in 1994.In deCausmeaker’s case, he simply got the lyrics wrong and repeated the phrase “from far and wide” twice in the span of 10 seconds ahead of the Wild-Flames game at Xcel Energy Center. We have an anthem fail in Minnesota tonight 😂 pic.twitter.com/PZ8BFzMiBV — Robert Munnich (@RingOfFireCGY) December 15, 2023The remarkable thing is that deCausmeaker’s rendition wasn’t even the worst performance of the Canadian anthem at an NHL game thi...

Alcoholism, ayahuasca and the enlightenment of an NFL player

16Dec

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Sports

Alcoholism, ayahuasca and the enlightenment of an NFL player

LAUDERDALE-BY-THE-SEA, Fla. — The Buffalo Bills have a new safety this season.He sometimes plays close to the line of scrimmage, even lining up in the gaps and banging helmets with interior linemen. They use him as a hybrid linebacker in a three-safety dime package. He has played free safety, strong safety, outside cornerback, inside cornerback, left linebacker and right linebacker. And more.Physically and mentally, he is being challenged, but he’s grateful, content and all in.The Bills’ new safety is Jordan Poyer. It’s the same Jordan Poyer who played for the team the previous six seasons, the only player in the NFL to have 500 or more tackles, 20 or more interceptions and 10 or more sacks in that time frame, a Bills captain for the fourth time, an Ed Block Courage Award winner in 2017, ...

16Dec

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Health

Weekend podcast: actor Toby Jones, John Crace on Sunak at the Covid inquiry, and how Taylor Swift gets in shape for her shows | Life and style

Actor Toby Jones on class, character and the cost of fame (1m26s); John Crace on Rishi Sunak’s break from a feral Tory party with a spa day at the Covid inquiry (23m00s); and the weird world of celebrity training – how Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Madonna get in shape for their shows (30ms58) How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

40 years later, inside the highest-scoring game in NBA history

15Dec

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Sports

40 years later, inside the highest-scoring game in NBA history

Forty years, and a lifetime later, Kiki VanDeWeghe is still pissed.“Oh, yeah. Very much so,” VanDeWeghe said, calmly but firmly. “It still bugs me today. People say, ‘Well you scored a lot of points.’ OK … but, so?“We lost the game.”VanDeWeghe was a classic small forward in the 1980s, a quick midrange shooter able to score with either hand. He did so in abundance the night of Dec. 13, 1983 — as did nearly everyone who played that night. It was a night when his Denver Nuggets and the visiting Detroit Pistons shredded the NBA’s record book, combining for 370 points during a 186-184 Pistons victory in triple overtime — and it’s still the highest-scoring game in the league’s 78 seasons.Considering the NBA’s history of prolific individual scorers and high-octane teams, the fact that this game ...