Free Republic

A new round of stadium construction is underway for professional sports teams across the U.S., and taxpayers will be helping to pay the multibillion-dollar tab. The wave of construction has seen teams chasing both repairs and luxurious additions. Some teams have sought new public funding for the projects — with mixed support — even while debt from the last round of renovations a couple decades ago is still being paid off. This year alone, The Associated Press tallied about a dozen stadium projects that were unveiled or already underway for Major League Baseball and National Football League franchises. That doesn’t...

The Philadelphia Phillies are in the World Series. Hold on to your wallets. When Philadelphia baseball teams do well, in a pattern that has held for a century, financial markets tend to strike out. It started with the old Philadelphia Athletics (before they left town). Their 1929 championship preceded the stock crash and Great Depression. In 1980, the Phillies won their first World Series, and a recession raged right through 1983, when the team again got to the final round and lost. The Phils won the World Series a second time in 2008, and boom: a home-run financial crisis. Now,...

AUSTIN — Confederate flags were banned from NASCAR events in June 2020, and some fans have seemingly started to get behind a new pennant — one that is unabashedly mixing politics and sports. At this weekend's NASCAR race at the Circuit of the Americas outside Austin, a walk through the car and RV parking lots revealed how effective NASCAR's ban on Confederate flags has been. Among the vehicles for the estimated 70,000 fans, not a single Confederate battle flag or any other flag representing the South's fight during the Civil War was spotted. But one banner that was conspicuously popular...

Kirk Herbstreit Has A Message For Clemson, Georgia Fans Thursday night’s college football TV schedule: The season kicks off in earnest a man wearing a helmet: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images© Provided by The Big Lead Mitchell Leff/Getty Images Cam Newton was somewhat surprisingly released by the New England Patriots earlier this week as Bill Belichick has found a new chosen one in Mac Jones. Newton, a former MVP who the organization thought enough of to give a try replacing the legendary Tom Brady, is now a man without a team. Which isn't crazy right now but will get increasingly more crazy...

Empty seats, zero atmosphere, diminished team numbers, local protests and a world distracted by coronavirus all combined to deliver just 16.7 million viewers for NBC’s four-hour long broadcast of the Tokyo Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday. It was the smallest U.S. television audience for the event in the past 33 years.Keen Olympic watchers would have to go back to the opening ceremony for the 1988 Seoul Games, which attracted 22.7 million TV viewers, to see numbers like it.It was also lower than the 1992 Barcelona Games, when 21.6 million people tuned in, according to Nielsen data supplied to Reuters,...

When Tim Tebow retired from baseball in February after a run as a Mets minor-leaguer, it appeared to spell the end of his athletic career. But in a stunning twist, the former Jets and Broncos quarterback is attempting an NFL comeback as a tight end, according to multiple reports. The 33-year-old reached out to the Jacksonville Jaguars requesting an opportunity to try out as a tight end, ESPN reported. Tebow went through a workout with the team’s tight ends coach, according to NFL Network, and the Jaguars have had “at least some discussion” of signing him. Jaguars coach Urban Meyer...

Major League Baseball is scheduled to play its 2021 All-Star Game this summer at Truist Park, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Yet with less than a week to go until Opening Day, the MLB Players Association appears open to discussing whether or not the event should be relocated in response to recent legislative developments in the state. MLB Players Association director Tony Clark told the Boston Globe that the union body is "very much aware" of the bill signed by Georgia governor Brian Kemp on Thursday that overhauled the state's election laws. The bill includes "new restrictions on voting by mail...

Some big changes are coming to professional baseball this season. From Triple-A down, every level of the minor leagues will see a rule change implemented in 2021. These rules and changes have been talked about for a few years, and now they will be tested for the big leagues. We should all be paying attention to what is going on because if these rule changes go smoothly, we could see them in the major leagues as soon as next year.

It took longer than they had hoped, but the A’s officially clinched their first AL West title since 2013 when the Houston Astros lost to the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park on Monday night. I The A’s (33-20) will head to the playoffs with a different, yet familiar feel. The expanded playoff format should benefit the A's, who haven't been able to get past the single-elimination Wild Card game. This year, they will play in the best-of-three Wild Card round at the Oakland Coliseum. If the A's are able to advance out of the Wild Card round, they will enter...

Jason Whitlock says that when the Chiefs and the Texans lined up prior to the game in a show of “unity,” fans booed, and booing was the right thing to do. The nearly 17,000 fans in the stands at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City had no interest in seeing the two teams filled with privileged millionaires take the field to posture in support of Black Lives Matter. The booing was long and loud during the players’ “unity” demonstration. The “unity” lineup was accompanied by Black Lives Matter slogans scrolling across the scoreboard and the jumbotrons. Many in the sports media...