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Heady times for the NFL’s bottom feeders

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — These are giddy times in Atlanta and Houston. The Falcons and the Texans have yet to lose a game and can talk boldly about defying the NFL skeptics, a group comprised of pretty much everyone outside their locker rooms. Atlanta coach Arthur Smith got downright testy when asked Friday if he goes about his job any differently when his team is facing such low expectations. “Who cares?” he said of the grim prognostications (which, full disclosure, I am in total agreement with). “Just go do a Google search, go look and see what they thought of the iPhone ...

The chase for 61 still special

Baseball is a game of numbers, and one of the most iconic of them, 61, is now in play. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge remains on pace to match or eclipse the single season home-run mark set by Roger Maris in 1961. Technically, a trio of sluggers obliterated the Maris record in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But their gaudy totals are a testament to performance-enhancing drugs and baseball’s willingness to look the other way rather than genuine achievement. The legitimate record is still held by Maris, an irony since the standing of his own feat was called into ...

Vesnesky ‘bled red and white’

When he was informed a few months ago, in his home, by radio colleague Bernie Jubeck that he’d be enshrined in the Saint Francis Athletics Hall of Fame, Joe Vesnesky’s reaction was immediate. “I started bawling,” he said. Vesnesky was under the impression Saint Francis wanted to tape ...

LIV Tour already planning for future

The new LIV Golf Tour will be hosting its third tournament this weekend at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and while the world of golf seems to swoon at the mention of each new golfer who defects to the new league, the future format of this Saudi-backed tour is just now beginning to emerge. As some early reports indicated, next year’s 14-event schedule will feature team competition among the 48 golfers who sign up. Each four-man team will have a team captain, and all 12 teams (which will have specific names, like Phil Mickelson’s “Hy Flyers”) will ...

ACC, SEC reaping transfer benefits

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The plan wasn’t for Georgia Tech to lose top running back Jahmyr Gibbs as a transfer to Alabama in the Southeastern Conference. Yet the Atlantic Coast Conference school has found its share of help from the SEC, too, in the form of seven transfers. It’s a common theme for schools in those leagues amid freer movement through the transfer portal: players shifting from one power conference to the other, often to stay close to home and within an overlapping Southern footprint. “I think it is kind of a natural move,” said Virginia receiver Keytaon Thompson, who ...

LOS ANGELES — The All-Star Game showcased what baseball has become — home runs, strikeouts and offense-killing shifts. The National League didn’t have a hit between the first and eighth innings of Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss, its ninth in a row. In a sport where R&D has become as important as BP, four of the five runs scored on long balls. There were 22 strikeouts, including the final three batters on 10 pitches by Cleveland’s Emmanuel Clase in a game that lasted 3 hours, 11 minutes despite just 13 hits, five walks, two hit batters and one runner reaching on a ...