I'd never been on a stage like that, never been in front of people, never been on national television without a helmet or shoulder pads on... Me having those glasses on was a bit of nervousness, a bit of shyness. I can remember my mom asking me as we got off the elevator, 'Randy, are you going to take those glasses off?' I told her, 'No, mom. I'm scared.' She actually grabbed my hand and shook it and gave me a hug. | | | | Shakhtar Donetsk manager Paulo Fonseca dresses up as Zorro after a win over Manchester City.
(Stanislas Vedmid/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I'd never been on a stage like that, never been in front of people, never been on national television without a helmet or shoulder pads on... Me having those glasses on was a bit of nervousness, a bit of shyness. I can remember my mom asking me as we got off the elevator, 'Randy, are you going to take those glasses off?' I told her, 'No, mom. I'm scared.' She actually grabbed my hand and shook it and gave me a hug.”
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| | rantnrave:// The go-to buzz phrase in sports right now is "trust the process." Hear it everywhere. It's become a euphemism for epic losing and selling hope. It's perilous to start the process and to trust it. In PHILADELPHIA it's the lifeblood of a city. The only way to tolerate the 76ERS bottoming out. SAM HINKIE got fired and became a martyr for leading that rebuild. Ownership thought he failed. The fans are raising banners for him. The BROWNS have gone 1-27 over the last two years. They had a process and it got GM SASHI BROWN fired. (Getting fired as Browns GM isn't hard, though. Owner JIMMY HASLAM fires GMs like OPRAH gives out free stuff.) Conventional wisdom used to be that fans wouldn't tolerate long-term rebuilding. Maybe it's actually the owners. Losing purposefully assumes a lot of risk for execs. The NFL is different than the NBA. Easier to turn around woebegone franchises. There's more volatility. Selling hope might be a fool's errand. It worked for the ASTROS in baseball. Working in Philly. But the NFL is unrelenting. There's a coaching churn -- about seven fired per season. Competent coaches are hard to find. Did Brown do a bad job? He didn't get a QB -- passing on CARSON WENTZ and DESHAUN WATSON could be considered managerial negligence. But you can argue he followed the plan. He left enough talent that it's a desirable job. There were going to be short-term pains. Everyone agreed, then Haslam reneged. A familiar pattern. Why should fans trust the process if the team doesn't?... The sports world lost a lot this year. ROY HALLADAY, Y.A. TITTLE, AARON HERNANDEZ, FRANK DEFORD, YORDANO VENTURA, ARA PARSEGHIAN. Essays, remembrances, anecdotes and videos about the great (and some not so great) women and men who died in 2017, and the work they left behind. Roll over BEETHOVEN and pour one out for those no longer here. MediaSET: "Fell on Black Days: In Memoriam 2017"... Will HEISMAN TROPHY voters apply a morals clause to BAKER MAYFIELD? That's probably the only way he doesn't win. The NCAA is good at fecklessly stripping winners after the fact. Lets not overlook LAMAR JACKSON. It's too hard to win it back-to-back (unless you're ARCHIE GRIFFIN) but he had another fabulous year... TENNESSEE finally has a football coach. Good luck, JEREMY PRUITT... The real SEC commissioner... It's not baseball season but I came across this gif and remembered how fascinating the knuckleball is. TIM WAKEFIELD was one of my favorite pitchers because of it. The RED SOX went to great lengths to accommodate him. The documentary KNUCKLEBALL is a fun watch if you're curious... Not in my house... Whatever it takes to get kids reading. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | REDEF |
| Essays, remembrances, anecdotes and videos about the great (and some not so great) women and men we lost in 2017, and the work they left behind. Roll over Beethoven and pour one out for... | | |
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 | Bleacher Report |
| Blood is pumping out of the brachial artery in my arm, pooling at my feet and soaking through my shredded North Face coat, jeans and Nike Air Zoom Tallac Lite boots. My entire left arm is numb, but oddly enough I can still feel the warmth of my blood steadily flowing down my leg. | | |
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 | Nautilus |
| Most poker players didn't go to graduate school for cognitive linguistics. Then again, most poker players aren't Annie Duke. After pursuing a psychology Ph.D. on childhood language acquisition, Duke turned her skills to the poker table, where she has taken home over $4 million in lifetime earnings. | | |
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 | Outside Online |
| Early in his political career, the interior secretary irked fellow Republicans with his willingness to stand up for conservation. Things have changed, and whether you love or hate his ideas, know this: he’s one of the few Trump-era cabinet secretaries with the juice to make things happen, and he’s got the boss’s back. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The sports broadcaster has been buffeted by layoffs, declining revenue and a stormy political climate. Will it adapt to a changed media landscape? | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| For four decades Mike Francesa has been the dominant sports talk voice in the nation’s biggest market--New York City--including one half of arguably the most famous sports-talk show in history, "Mike and the Mad Dog Show." Francesa will leave his afternoon show on WFAN on Dec. 15. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| It’s a lot easier and a lot cheaper than owning an NFL team. | | |
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 | Men in Blazers |
| Rog talks with MLS Commissioner Don Garber about this weekend's MLS Cup Final, the USMNT's World Cup Qualifying failure, the challenge in Columbus, the triumph in Atlanta and the one thing he would've done differently with Jurgen Klinsmann. | | |
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 | FanGraphs |
| To make it clear right off the bat, this has nothing to do with Shohei Ohtani or Giancarlo Stanton. This has nothing to do with the current offseason market, and, frankly, this has nothing to do with baseball from any of the past few decades. | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| Calleigh Little set out to become the first woman to skateboard across America. She found a lesson in humanity. | | |
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 | Burn It All Down |
| TThis week on Burn It All Down, we open the show with Lindsay Gibbs interviewing Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly come forward with allegations against Larry Nassar, and award-winning investigative reporter for the Indianapolis Star who has covered the Nassar case, Marisa Kwiatkowski. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Hot wax is poured into the molds - one a sturdy, plastic mother mold and the second, inside that, a silicone mold that is sensitive enough to pick up the contours of the figure's nose, the parallel lines on his helmet and the pebbly base. The mold is hardened to make a cast. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The I.O.C.’s decision reinforces Putin’s view of his country as a fortress under siege. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Pam Askew wanted her daughter to have an example of healthy, strong male leadership at an early age. The single mother turned to military academy football. Simone Askew spent fall Saturdays in the car with her mother driving an hour from Northern Virginia to Annapolis to watch the Midshipmen play. | | |
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 | The CUSP Show |
| Jay Kapoor is a VC Investor at MSG Ventures, Madison Square Garden’s corporate venture group, where he focuses on sourcing and investing in innovative companies and visionary founders driving the future of live entertainment. | | |
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 | The Boston Globe |
| Some see the term “Crusaders” as offensive to non-Christians, but others embrace its positive connotations. | | |
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 | ESPN |
| Kevin Arnovitz has breakfast with Houston GM Daryl Morey at Nate'n Al Delicatessen to discuss how Mike D'Antoni was hired (5:45), player evaluation (19:45) and the Rockets defense (27:30). | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| Back in October, when Draymond Green of the Warriors was asked to assess the Rockets' offseason efforts to narrow the gap between Houston and Golden State, Green didn't mince words. "They want [a matchup with us] to be a shootout, which is fine," he said. "But we're gonna play some defense. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Digital images of perhaps the world's most famous rapper flash across giant screens. The screens rise toward the ceiling of Little Caesars Arena, the most recent of three new sports venues to emerge in downtown Detroit. It's where the Pistons play. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| Building good relationships underpins the agency's success. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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