Thanksgiving is the one of the few days of the year where images pop into our minds. There’s terrible football, potatoes, both sweet and mashed, leaves crunching underneath your feet (or in the case of the Upper Midwest, mounds of snow), turkey, cranberries that flow beautifully out of the ...

Sometimes when one writes a football picks piece for the newspaper, it’s easy to forget that, well, people will be reading it. And while feedback on the column isn’t all that common, it’s often negative, as in “why don’t you pick my team?” or “why DO you pick my team?” (Yes, I ...

Mike McCarthy did it again. The Green Bay Packers head coach once again snatched a victory from the hands of defeat Thursday night and in a way, only he knows how. I was on vacation earlier this week, enjoying the sunny weather and the soft sandy beaches of Florida before returning to the ...

There are two smart guys on the Detroit Lions roster and both are named Matt. One was drafted, one was hired, but during games, they wear hats. At times this year, they’ve looked sharp and made you say ‘look at that.’ But last week in Minnesota, the Matts in the hats fell flat. This ...

Maryland finally did the right thing. It grew a conscience. On Wednesday, the Terrapins fired head football coach and raging lunatic D.J. Durkin, just after announcing that he was returning to the sidelines. It just took football players walking out of a team meeting and protesting on social ...

It has been a long, long time since one of these Armchair Quarterback columns has been written by yours truly. But with my friend and colleague Steve Brownlee on the bench for a bit, I was happy to step up to fill in. Steve had bypass surgery earlier this week and will be recuperating for at ...

There’s something special about prep sports. When reporters head to journalism school, they usually have ideas in mind on where they want to end up and what sports they want to cover. Most want to cover the professional teams and that’s understandable. NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB reporters ...

There’s something special about prep sports. When reporters head to journalism school, they usually have ideas in mind on where they want to end up and what sports they want to cover. Most want to cover the professional teams and that’s understandable. NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB reporters ...

At the beginning of this month, I commented in this space about coaches going for two-point conversions to win games when they could settle for a single extra point and keep games going. There was an example on Sunday morning in London that’s too irresistible to talk about. But I promise ...

The National Hockey League has been marketing the idea that “Hockey is for Everyone” for awhile now and it’s a good message to send. No matter what race, gender, religion, age or sexual orientation you are, there’s always a place for you at the rink and on the ice. Unfortunately, ...

The National Hockey League has been marketing the idea that “Hockey is for Everyone” for awhile now and it’s a good message to send. No matter what race, gender, religion, age or sexual orientation you are, there’s always a place for you at the rink and on the ice. Unfortunately, that ...

The NFC North right now would be a dream come true for the late Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The Green Bay Packers’ and Detroit Lions’ division is a model for whatever everyone said he espoused — parity. Reading online from one of his contemporaries, he was said to not like that term, ...

We’ve all seen some truly awful athletic performances over the years. Whether it’s on the field, the court or the ice, there are some teams that are just mind-boggling to watch on television because of their sheer incompetence. Some teams may be cursed more than others with this issue, ...

I understand when the NFL develops rules that have unintended consequences. But what I fail to get is why it takes them five years to fix them. The rules defining what a catch were debated, argued and criticized for multiple seasons until the league finally addressed it this past ...

Egos can be difficult to deal with. Most of us have healthy ones, while others have enormous ones that are blatantly obvious. When you think of Kanye West, Terrell Owens, Kobe Bryant or Jerry Jones, some might see greatness, but more will see them as what they truly are — people who may ...

Who’s afraid of a liddle-biddy tie? Apparently, a number of football coaches are. What is it with this rash of going for two-point conversions late in games or in overtime and going for it on risky fourth downs lately? High school football coaches at Escanaba and Kingsford have done it ...

A common phrase we’ve heard as sports fans is that patience is a virtue, that waiting for something without getting upset or angry is something that we all should aspire to do. Well, for Detroit Red Wings fans, that could be a difficult task this season as all signs are pointing to be a long ...

I heard what sounded like a “throwaway” line by a former NFL player — didn’t catch at the time who it was — on Sunday making comments on one of that day’s upsets: “It’s just about impossible to get ‘up’ for every game,” he said. A simple line, but got me thinking ...

That you can’t go home again is a conclusion that we all eventually come to in our lives. Yes, you can physically go back to your home city or your old house, but it’s not going to be like you remembered. In all likelihood, your friends will have moved away, your favorite hangouts ...

Here’s today’s quick quiz: Name the most impressive overtime victory after two weeks of the NFL regular season. Scratchin’ your head? Are you stumped yet? OK, I’ll tell you. You’re making it up if you have an answer, because this is a trick question — no team has won an OT game ...