Free Republic

By 2050, the National Football League (NFL) will be like the Barnum and Bailey Circus of today. Bankrupt, closed, irrelevant, morally passe. In the early 20th century, the circus was all the rage. After a century of the product’s consumption by a culture increasingly sensitive to the abuse of the weak and helpless—in this case, circus animals—the “Greatest Show on Earth” has been relegated to an empty sideshow. It is simply too brutish for sophisticated moderns who wince at the crack of a whip on an elephant’s rump. Football will soon follow. Its massive billion dollar stadiums and marketing machines...

This is the year of the DAWG

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. ― Asked about the national anthem protests taking place in the NFL, Alabama coach Nick Saban said Monday he’s “just a football coach” who hasn’t been following what’s going on. That doesn’t mean the former NFL coach doesn’t have an opinion. “To me, some of the things that we do in our country ― when I grew up ― they were unifying events, and it’s a little painful to see that those things are not so right now,” Saban said. “But I also respect everyone’s rights not to be censored in terms of the way they express their...

<p>It's a stroke of good luck for the college athletics industrial complex that there’s no need to worry about a national anthem controversy blossoming out of its showcase college football weekend beginning Thursday.</p> <p>Even as the NFL sees more and more players following the lead of Colin Kaepernick to protest racial inequality and police violence, even as NBA stars become bolder and louder advocates for social justice, there’s no point in asking what would happen if players from Alabama and Florida State wanted to kneel during the Star-Spangled Banner on Saturday at a stadium erected just a couple miles from where Martin Luther King Jr. was born. Unlike the NFL, college football teams are in their locker rooms during the anthem, saving the likes of Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney from a backlash in the deep red states where college football means the most and any form of player protest isn’t likely to be well received.</p>

A previously unreleased police report written 10 years after the most infamous incident in the Jerry Sandusky child-rape scandal at Penn State revealed more evidence that Joe Paterno knew about his assistant coach’s horrific behavior before 2001. The report, which CNN obtained and released Saturday, says when assistant coach Mike McQueary told Paterno he had seen Sandusky with a young boy in the showers at Penn State’s football facility, that the head coach told him it was “the second complaint of this nature he had received.” After the news broke of Sandusky’s behavior and his arrest, Paterno, his family and...

Twitter had a field day after news broke Tuesday that ESPN removed an announcer named Robert Lee from broadcasting an upcoming Virginia Cavalier football game because of the similarity of his name to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The story was broken by Outkick The Coverage's Clay Travis, who has coined the term "MSESPN" to suggest ESPN has a liberal slant, combining the news network and MSNBC. ESPN ultimately confirmed the seemingly unbelievable story, saying it collectively made the decision along with Lee as the tragedy in Charlottesville, Va. unfolded,

FAYETTEVILLE — Frank Broyles, who coached Arkansas to its only football national championship and later served as the Razorbacks’ athletics director for years, has died. He was 92. Broyles died Monday at a family home in Fayetteville. He had suffered from Alzheimer's, the neurological disease about which he spent countless hours raising awareness and from which his first wife, Barbara, died in 2004. Broyles devoted most of his adult life to the Razorbacks. After coaching one season as head coach at Missouri, he was hired by then-athletics director John Barnhill to lead Arkansas in December 1957 and spent the next...

Ara Parseghian, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame who coached Notre Dame and Northwestern, has died. He was 94. Parseghian, who was born May 21, 1923, in Akron, Ohio, recently spent time in a nursing care facility because of a hip infection. He returned to his Indiana home last week to receive 24-hour care. Parseghian led the Irish to two national championships (1966, 1973) in 11 seasons in South Bend, Ind. Both of those teams were unbeaten. He had a 95-17-4 record at Notre Dame, where he also coached in what some called the "Game of the...

The Ole Miss Rebels announced Thursday that head football coach Hugh Freeze "resigned effective immediately" before elaborating on the details in a press conference. Dan Wolken of USA Today reported Thursday Freeze made a one-minute call from a school-issued phone "to a number associated with a female escort service." The call came to light as part of a federal lawsuit former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt filed against the school alleging it violated his severance agreement. Athletics director Ross Bjork said during the presser, "We proactively looked into the rest of (Hugh Freeze's) phone records & found a concerning pattern,"...

The 2017 College Football Season kicks off on Saturday, Aug. 26, with six games. But the season may not truly feel like it's underway until the following week when the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Florida State Seminoles meet at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic. While the Associated Press preseason rankings have yet to be released, there is a strong possibility that Alabama and Florida State will both be ranked somewhere within the top three. Most experts have listed the Crimson Tide as the top team in the nation, but the Seminoles could be as high...

Human shield. We love Tim Tebow here - even if he does play in the Mets organization - and we’re always happy to hear that something positive has happened in his career and in his life. So when ESPN re-upped with Tebow on his deal to be part of its college football studio offerings, we were nothing if not pleased. If Tebow wants to do TV while pursuing his baseball dreams, we’re all over it. But we couldn’t help but wonder: Does ESPN usually make such a big deal out of an existing talent re-signing? Because if one were inclined...

A hallmark of the federal bureaucracy under Obama was that it pushed the boundaries of government power at every step, especially when doing so helped groups allied to the Democratic Party. Labor unions are one of those groups. Even though many individual workers don’t favor the Democrats, the union hierarchy has hitched its fortunes to them. They’re always looking for any advantage that politicians or bureaucrats can give them. Back in 2014, Big Labor got excited over the possibility of unionizing college football players when the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Chicago ruled that members of Northwestern University’s...

Clemson beat Alabama in the national championship game on Monday night, 35-31, a thrilling end to a very good college football season. The Tigers won the game with a play run with just a few seconds remaining, when quarterback Deshaun Watson rolled to his right and found 5-foot-10 receiver Hunter Renfrow wide open in the corner of the end zone. He looked almost a little too wide open. And thus began the scrutiny.

January 10, 2017 FoxNews.com Jan. 10, 2017: Clemson's Deshaun Watson celebrates a last second touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow (13) to win the NCAA college football playoff championship game against Alabama in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/John Bazemore) Last year’s College Football Playoff championship game was a classic. This year’s was even better. And in the end, Clemson got its revenge over Alabama. Deshaun Watson hit Hunter Renfrow for a two-yard touchdown pass with one second to play as the Tigers edged the Crimson Tide, 35-31, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Monday night. The win gave Clemson its second national...

___ 12:25 a.m. Deshaun Watson's 2-yard touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow with 1 second remaining gave Clemson a wild 35-31 win over Alabama in the College Football Playoff national championship game. Watson completed 36 of 56 passes for 420 yards and three scores in his last college game, as the Tigers (14-1) got their first national title since 1981.

CBS News January 1, 2017 Get ready for a blockbuster sequel. It’s Alabama vs. Clemson, The Rematch. The top-ranked Crimson Tide will take on the No. 3 Tigers in a do-over of last season’s national championship game, a 45-40 thriller won by Alabama. If the Jan. 9 matchup in Tampa comes anywhere close to that classic in the desert, it will more than make up for two semifinal duds on Saturday. Alabama (14-0) wore down No. 4 Washington for a 24-7 victory in the Peach Bowl, while Clemson dominated No. 2 Ohio State 31-0 in the Fiesta Bowl, handing Urban...

Clemson wins! Hold that tiger!

Dec 23, 2016Ted Miller Washington and Alabama first played in the 1926 Rose Bowl. AP Photo The rise of Southeastern football in general and Alabama football specifically and all the endless gloating that goes along with it? It's Washington's fault. That isn't just jealous prattle from fans of Oregon or Washington State, likely the two fan bases most annoyed by the Huskies' sudden rise to the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl opposite the vaunted Crimson Tide. No, it's a perfectly reasonable extrapolation from the words of multiple historians and sportswriters. On the surface, No. 4 Washington...

Each player on both teams gets a $450 gift card at Belk that must be spent in 90 minutes. Sprinkle reportedly took items worth more than the pre-set amount.

In perhaps the most ironic ending to a sporting event ever, Grambling State beat North Carolina Central in the Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl in part because of a … penalty for excessive celebration. After NC Central’s Quentin Atkinson pulled down a 39-yard TD pass from Malcolm Bell to cut the deficit to 10-9 with just over two minutes remaining, Atkinson was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct when he removed his helmet while galloping around the end zone.