STOCKTON SAYS COLUMN - Dick Stockton

Surprised Or Not Surprised

12 Nov 2025

Hear it here! Surprised? Or not surprised. Like you, I’ve been following the story of the 2025 NFL campaign. Knowing full well what lies ahead could very well tell a totally different tale at the finish. Let’s see where we are at this point. What has surprised me the most is the successful performance of three teams. The Indianapolis Colts, the Seattle Seahawks, and the New England Patriots have already exceeded expectations. No one ever anticipated any of those three to play as consistently as they have and lead their respective divisions. We all know that it takes the coordination of offense, defense, and other aspects that make up a winning team, but I always like to focus on the quarterback because without a good one you have no chance. The QB’s who lead their Colts and Seahawks are veterans who have gotten second and third chances and have...

The 2025 World Series

04 Nov 2025

Hear it here! Rating sports events has never been my thing, but after this latest World Series, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that had more. Now, I’ve been watching baseball for 74 years so, to borrow a phrase, I think I might know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two. It ended with a one-run victory by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 11th inning of the 7th and deciding game. For the Dodgers it capped back-to-back titles, the first team to accomplish that since the Yankees won three in a row back in 1998-2000. But if there were ever a groundswell of sentiment, and heartbreak for the losing team it was for the Toronto Blue Jays who didn’t spend anything like the mighty Dodgers, and took the world of baseball by storm playing the game like it used to be played, armed...

Greed, Indeed

30 Oct 2025

Hear it here! Can we trust sports anymore? That has to be the big question after an FBI gambling scandal revealed some disheartening truths about sports betting. We have seen scandals before in sports throughout history. We have always regarded them as the rare exception to the non-negotiable honesty and integrity that must be sacred to the believability that competition on all levels in all leagues, college and pro, is all about individuals and teams trying to do their very best to win. Now we are rocked by the latest, frightening scandal involving top and legendary names in the NBA who have allegedly done dishonest things. Terry Rozier, a current star is accused of illegally manipulating what is known as prop bets, where bettors can put money down on individual statistics, and situations that come up in games. Chauncey Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, and currently head coach...

50 Years Ago Today

21 Oct 2025

Hear it here! It was six years ago that I wrote about the moment that stands at the top of a sportscasting career that spanned over five decades. It was the legendary home run hit by Carlton Fisk of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston that sent the 1975 World Series to a seventh and deciding game against the eventual champions, the Cincinnati Reds. It was more than simply a dramatic shot that extended baseball’s Fall Classic. There have been a few of those, but it served as milestone for baseball which had fallen off in popularity, leading to concern for its standing as America’s national pastime. I was blessed to play a role in the drama as the announcer who called the home run for NBC in prime time. To be clear, I was in the right time at the right place and isn’t...

Sports Potpourri, October 2025

16 Oct 2025

Hear it here! Where do I begin? Actually, these are the columns I relish writing. The ones where so many thoughts cross my mind after a weekend of sports activity. I’m not sure how important any of them are, but they provoked an opinion, so here goes. Again, where do I begin? Let’s start with the craziness of college football. First of all, let’s do away with the preseason rankings which look so foolish today. Texas was ranked #1, followed by Ohio State, Penn State, and Clemson. Ohio State is 6-0, but the other three are a combined 10-8. Why were the Longhorns ranked first in the first place? We all know why, they were a good team yes, but their quarterback was named Manning, Arch Manning, and he was going to be magic. But Arch Manning had never been a starter, and his resume was thin, to be...

It’s The Way Of The World

07 Oct 2025

Hear it here! One of the toughest aspects of my profession as an on-air sportscaster is when you decide to step away. It’s not an easy thing since the work is so enjoyable and why not do it for as long as you can? But there are issues we all have faced that make it a dilemma that’s not easy to solve. Of course, no one wants to be told he’s through by his superiors. We all want to go out on our own terms. I have never forgotten the lyrics from a song in a Broadway show titled, “Promises, Promises. It was highly successful, by one of the renowned playwrights, Neil Simon and was based on the award-winning film, The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. The music was written by the legendary duo of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. One of the songs was titled, “Knowing...

The Ryder Cup: Not So Fast, Sailor!

02 Oct 2025

Hear it here! What makes the Ryder Cup the most unique competition in sports is that it’s a team event in a sport that is really not about team. Golf is an individual game. You go solo. You play for yourself. Yes, you’re competing against opponents, but it’s basically you against the golf course. That is, except for those few instances when nations are matched up against each other. The most notable by far is the Ryder Cup, the US against Europe, played every two years alternating courses across the pond. This year it was played on the famed and difficult Bethpage Black course in Farmingdale Long Island. In other words, it was virtually a New York City venue. For the record, the European team defeated the Americans. The final tally was 15-13. Those are the basics, but there is far more to the story of what transpired...

“It’s Tom Brady, and that’s all you need to know.”

24 Sep 2025

Hear it here! It’s been a couple of years since Tom Brady retired from his fabulous playing career, establishing himself as the best quarterback ever to play to this point. But he remains front and center in the sporting public’s attention ranging from what his personal life looks like to what he’s doing in the world of football. We’ll deal with the football side of things. Sorry to some of you. We know he’s in his second season as the lead expert-analyst on Fox Sports NFL coverage having already worked a Super Bowl, something he knew well from his days as a player when he won seven of them. We also know he is a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. As a broadcaster in his first year, he was a marked man from the start. After beating every team so many times and winning as much as...

Hopefully A Real Turning Point

17 Sep 2025

Hear it here! This week we pause from the subjects we usually deal with to reflect on the unthinkable, tragic, and mind-numbing assassination of Charlie Kirk. The news hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s been several days since he was murdered but it still resonates as much as it did on the day it happened and likely won’t fade as time moves on. Charlie Kirk left us at 31, the leader of Turning Point USA, which was about discourse, debate, and decency centered around the youth of America. He was rich in his faith, reasonable in dealing with those who didn’t agree, and extremely likable as someone who came across as just a regular guy. By now you know he was shot and killed at a rally with multitudes on hand at a university in Utah. He promoted debate of the issues, an art that has been...

The US Open 2025

10 Sep 2025

Hear it here! Who would have ever guessed that a spectacular and memorable era in the world of tennis would be immediately followed by another. But that’s the case with the fading out of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic and the arrival of the remarkable rivalry of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The kids have replaced the vets and it’s a beautiful thing to watch. The fourth and final Grand Slam of the season, the US Open, concluded last weekend with another chapter written in what should be a phenomenal back-and-forth between the 22-year-old Alcaraz and Sinner, who turned 24 last month. They now have played each other 15 times, with Alcaraz on top 10-5. This time, the younger Spaniard prevailed over the Italian capping his second Grand Slam triumph in 2025, the other two won by the lanky redhead from Italy. Alcaraz regained his status as...

The Best Time Of The Sporting Year

04 Sep 2025

Hear it here! A huge trade by the Dallas Cowboys gave the start of the new NFL season a major boost it didn’t really need. Anytime a new year gets underway there is more than enough of a groundswell of excitement and anticipation, but this particular deal really spiced things up. The Cowboys, who haven’t been America’s Team as they’ve been labeled forever, sent one of league’s finest players and best pass rusher to the Green Bay Packers. In exchange, the Cowboys received Green Bay’s #1 drafts pick the next two years and Kenny Clark, a superior defensive lineman superb as a run stopper. Micah Parsons, only 26, now takes his immense talents at getting to the enemy quarterback to the Packers after a tense and lengthy contract dispute. Jerry Jones, the owner and caller of all the shots in Big D pulled the trigger on the deal after...

Tommy Fleetwood

28 Aug 2025

Hear it here! Just when you think the 2025 golf campaign had it all with the drama of the four major championships in the books, underscored by the clear dominance of Scottie Scheffler, the heart-warming human story of the year stormed to the forefront at the final tournament of the season. In sports, it’s never over till….well, you know the rest. Tommy Fleetwood, a full-haired, 34-year old Englishman had become a fan favorite not for his victories, but for his defeats, most of them after coming oh-so-close too many times and somehow finding a way to never sealing the deal. He’d be up there on the leader board as consistently as any golfer and you figured he was ready to pounce on first prize. But it never happened. Time after time, Tommy Fleetwood would be right there. But never was he THERE at the finish. Up to this past...

Pre-Season Football: Here’s The Reality

20 Aug 2025

Hear it here! There are two ways to look at the NFL with two weeks to go before it all gets underway for real. One is the impatient, quick-to-judge style on everything good and not so good. Understandable considering fans have been salivating since the end of the last season for action on the field. The other is to realize it’s all a process that actually won’t be sorted out for several weeks, maybe half the year. Many if not most of the fans and especially the media don’t want to hear about the second choice. They want to draw definitive conclusions right now. That’s laughable. The truth is pre-season indicates very little. I know because I was part of it for years during my broadcasting career. Over the course of time, I was in the booth for the Steelers, Patriots, Colts, Redskins, Ravens, Rams, Bears for one game,...

Basketball In The Summer?

13 Aug 2025

Hear it here! You’ve got to be kidding. But I’m not. That’s not to say hoops aren’t played this time of year. They are. The WNBA is playing. Kids play ball all year long. There have been great summer league games for as long as you can remember. Back in the day, the famed Rucker League in New York’s Harlem was a legendary proving ground for those who were hopeful college and professional players. Listing some of the greats who played there would be endless. Okay, here are a few: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Kobe Bryant, Julius Erving, Kevin Durant, Earl ‘the Pearl’ Monroe… I never thought of writing about basketball until I got a call from someone I met during my years at Syracuse. I haven’t had any contact with him since then, but when he told me his name I immediately knew who he was. His name is...

What Goes Around Comes Around

06 Aug 2025

Hear it here! If you watch sports long enough you see how the basic way of playing the fundamental game seems to always return. The basics may appear to disappear, but sooner or later the way games were meant to be played come back. There have been new ideas galore on how to win, most of them frankly have added a sense of excitement and added show biz to try to draw bigger audiences, but we’ve witnessed a turn back of the clock. The latest involves baseball, which has turned me off in recent years. It’s the sport I grew up with. The national pastime and all that. It used to be #1, with the others merely fillers until spring training returned. That all changed. Baseball has had to climb back to compete with the other sports and while they’re not there yet, by a long shot, there is...

Navigating Network Sports

30 Jul 2025

Hear it here! When you work for one company for 27 years and another for 23, you learn how your business works. The good and the not so good. What makes one special and the other one, perhaps, to put it delicately, ‘corporate’. I wound up my wonderful career after 27 years with Fox Sports. Believe me, if I hadn’t decided it was time, I would have gone on. That’s how I felt about them. Fortunately, that’s how they felt about me. When I called CEO and Executive Producer Eric Shanks in 2021 to tell him I decided to retire, he tried to talk me out of it. But I knew I was ready. Fifty-plus years is a long time to do anything, even the joyous job of being an on-air broadcaster. Especially spending practically all of it in sports, which only meant everything to me. When I left...

“What’s the point?”

24 Jul 2025

Hear it here! Viewing the final major golf championship of the year brought back memories of our visit to Royal Portrush in Ireland six years ago, the last time until last week the Open was played on that course. We attended the third round of the tournament as part of a golfing week in both Scotland and Ireland. The big story at the Open in 2019 was both the sudden and quick collapse country favorite Rory McIlroy, along with the eventual champion, like Rory, a native of Ireland. McIlroy’s first tee shot on the first day flew out of bounds en route to a horrific 79, eight over par. McIlroy didn’t make the cut and was gone after two rounds. But Shane Lowry made the fans forget McIlroy’s rapid demise and won his first major. On a rainy final round Sunday, we had played another Irish course, Portmarnock, and...

Wimbledon 2025

16 Jul 2025

Hear it here! If there was any question concerning the state of tennis and its future outlook, they were answered emphatically in the just completed Wimbledon championships. There is no need to wonder where the men’s competition is heading as the decades-old dominance of the Big 3 fades to a close. What kind of letdown would there be with the terrific triumvirate of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic becoming a thing of the past? The answer is none. Of course, the injury factor and overall health of the stars always comes into play when looking into a crystal ball, but all things being equal, the upcoming years offer tremendous excitement and memorable clashes. You can thank Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz for that. While the 38-year old Djokovic continues to amaze and challenge deep into the major tournaments, the two younger prodigies have stolen the show. Time...

This Very Column

09 Jul 2025

Hear it here! How long has it been since I started writing Stockton Says for the Thousand Islands Sun? I had to ask the owner, who accepted my offer to write a column each week a long time ago. It was October 12, 2016 to be precise. It all started when Jamie suggested I ask Craig Snow if I could submit something for his weekly newspaper. He said yes and off we went. It’s hard to believe it’ll be 9 years this October. I knew I would find it enjoyable, but never to the extent it’s become. It has been well chronicled that I first set out to become a sportswriter long before I evolved into a broadcaster. I wrote a monthly column for my high school paper, and attended Syracuse University to study journalism. The famed Newhouse School of Communications wasn’t even built until after I moved on...

Cooper Flagg / Caitlin Clark

02 Jul 2025

Hear it here! The drafting of Duke’s Cooper Flagg last week brought together the craziness of what sports has become, the arrival of the next true NBA superstar, the true reason why teams win championships in any sport, and the ongoing puzzle of why the darling of women’s basketball remains a target of her own league. Remember the name Cooper Flagg, if you don’t already know who he is, because he is the genuine article of what could be a legendary career. We have to couch the hoopla for this young man because the ability of him to stay injury-free is always the asterisk when looking ahead. Flagg played one year for Duke, did not win a national championship as anticipated, and will begin his professional career next fall playing for a team no one expected him to join. Before we get to all of that, what would you...

June Roundup

25 Jun 2025

Hear it here! It may be summertime, but the two major winter sports, NHL and NBA just completed their playoff seasons in the past week or so. The two champions come from Ft.Lauderdale and Oklahoma City. That makes sense. Don’t you think of those cities when you think of the hotbed towns of hockey and pro basketball? Not really. But there you have it. The Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup for the second straight season, beating the Edmonton Oilers both times. The Panthers were wonderful to watch. They played textbook defense, had a sensational goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky, and were known for their toughness. Critics called them ‘dirtbags’, and maybe that’s a compliment. But it’s also a cheap shot when you think of it. They were an aggressive, hard checking team that didn’t meet a penalty they didn’t like. They were the best at killing off the million...

The 125th U.S. Open

18 Jun 2025

Hear it here! After the first round of the 125th U.S. Open Golf championship last week, the leader was a 34-year old Los Angeles native, J.J. Spaun, who had only one PGA Tour win and had lost his Tour status after dropping outside the top 500 in the world back in 2021. Nothing unusual. In any tournament, even the majors, there is an early leader who plays well enough to jump ahead of everyone, before the cream rises to the top. But it became apparent early on, that the fabled Oakmont Country Club just outside Pittsburgh, hosting the Open for a record 10th time, was going to be a monster to handle, even for the stars on the Tour. Who wouldn’t have picked Scottie Scheffler to win it all? A knee-jerk selection if there ever was one and rightly so, having won three of his last four tournaments including...

French Open 2025: A Duel For The Ages

11 Jun 2025

Hear it here! It has been called everything from an epic tennis match, to a championship duel for the ages, to the best Grand Slam ever played, to one of the greatest championship matches in the history of the sport. All of these descriptions and more may just be right on the mark. The war staged on the red clay at Roland Garros in Paris for the French Open crown actually defies words of what it all meant. It was that remarkable. I’ve always shied away from the current practice of always rating players, games, whatever, as to where everything stacks up in history. The Greatest Of All Time only stands till the next thing comes along. And it always does. But you had to have the unmistakable feeling that what you saw in the five and a half hour exhausting, mano-a-mano struggle between the top two men’s tennis...

Three Distinct Moments In Sports

04 Jun 2025

Hear it here! It’s funny how events that occur in the daily comings and goings in sports evokes memories of the treasure chest of stories and experiences that came my way throughout my rich and blessed life as a broadcaster. I’ve told people for years that for the most part, the games and happenings on the field always took a back seat to the often brief stories of the people involved, both the ones I covered and the ones I worked with. This past week there were three of those events, each one having nothing to do with the other, that brought back those thoughts. The first involved versatile and consistent play-by-play man Kenny Albert who moved past his celebrated father Marv, into second place on the all-time list of games broadcast of the four major sports, baseball, football, basketball and hockey. I met Kenny for the second time...

Aaron Rodgers / The Most Unattractive Play In The Sport

28 May 2025

Hear it here! Are we still talking about Aaron Rodgers? And what’s my opinion about the ‘tush push’? Boy, do I dislike that term. Let’s start with Rodgers the Ridiculous. The guy still hasn’t made up his mind whether he wants to hang ‘em up and retire or still play football. Methinks he still wants to toss the ball and if it’s for anyone, it’ll be with the Pittsburgh Steelers which rubs me the wrong way. I know he’s said that there are serious health issues with some of those close to him and we all have to commiserate on that score, but how long does it really take to make a DECISION. Of course, it may be that he knows and the Steelers know he’s headed their way. Maybe both sides have known this for quite some time. Maybe it’ll all be revealed very soon, like before these...

A Time For Reflection

14 May 2025

Hear it here! In the never ending cauldron of sports activity ranging from the playing of games to the off-field stories that grab our attention, there is always time for reflection. This is one of those times. It’s been four years since my retirement and after over 50 years of being in the center of things, I’m going to pull back and tell the story of how I got my very first on-air job. Everyone has to start somewhere and it wasn’t a slam dunk when it happened for me. The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, or Group W as it was known, owned various radio and TV stations throughout the country. The television outlets were affiliated with one of the three networks at the time: CBS, NBC and ABC. In many of the cities, Group W owned both radio and TV stations. For example, they ran a radio outlet in...

Who Expected This?

06 May 2025

Hear it here! Raise your hand if you think Bill Belichick’s image has changed? Okay, you can put them down now. Wow! Every hand went up! Once upon a time, not that long ago, the former Patriots head football coaching great, winner of six Super Bowls, was a no nonsense, stern, serious leader whose mantra was, ‘do your job’, nothing more nothing less. Of course away from the eyes and ears of the media he had no use for, he was much looser, even with a sense of humor most never knew he possessed. But since his departure from the Patriots he has gone the full 180, perhaps minus the sense of humor. He’s a different guy in so many respects, even alarmingly, that folks are outright shocked at the new Bill Belichick. It started with his going from a media hater to a media darling, working on as...

Shedeur Sanders

30 Apr 2025

Hear it here! No one really had an idea. No one had an answer. No one could figure out why. Everyone had opinions. Some of them could have made sense. One was so absurd it made you shake your head. I reached out to some professionals who might know, but no one could put their finger on it. Why was Shedeur Sanders, one of the very top quarterback prospects ignored until the fifth round of the NFL draft when he easily could have been one of the first three players chosen in the very first round? What Sanders went through, waiting painfully so long before he was finally picked, created a bizarre story that dominated the annual draft of college players. Added to the mix were a couple of prank phone calls including one coming from the son of another team’s assistant coach. Sanders had been the quarterback at...

Quarterback Musical Chairs

23 Apr 2025

Hear it here! Have you ever played musical chairs? That’s when there are a bunch of chairs and one more person than the number of chairs. The music starts to play and everyone keeps moving until the music stops. Then the people stop and have to find a chair quickly and sit down. But for one person there is no chair. That person is out of luck. The NFL draft of collegians is this week, but the game of musical chairs involving quarterbacks, the most critical position on any football team, has been going on for a couple of months. I have a feeling the one left standing is named Aaron Rodgers, but I’ll get back to that. There already have been a ton of blockbuster moves and plenty of cash being thrown around to players of all positions during this free agent season. But in football, it’s all...

Mastering The Masters

14 Apr 2025

Hear it here! I’ve never seen more raw emotion than when Rory McIlroy, 11 years chasing a dream and falling short, finally won the Masters golf championship. It had built up for over a decade. Year after year something would happen so that it wouldn’t happen. And then it did. It did on a final round with more twists and turns than a tornado. When it was over, after a birdie on the first playoff hole against Britain’s Justin Rose, the 35-year old from Northern Ireland became only the sixth golfer in history to win golf’s grand slam: The Open (British), the PGA, the US Open, and now the Masters. The others are named Nicklaus, Woods, Player, Hogan, and Sarazen. First it looked like it wasn’t in the cards once again for McIlroy, then it appeared he would break through, possibly in a runaway. Then things tightened up again,...

March Madness: April Edition

09 Apr 2025

Hear it here! March Madness was strictly ho-hum for the first two weeks. The usual array of upsets and dramatic game-winning baskets at the buzzer were nowhere to be seen. When the Final Four arrived, the four top-seeded teams representing each region were left standing. So, what kind of surprises could emerge? That’s what makes March Madness so special. There’s always something lurking that no one expected and that proved to be the case when the top rated schools got together in San Antonio to fight it out for the national championship. Of the quartet that remained, Duke was the odds-on favorite to win another title. They had an amazing group of young stars, led by their big guy Cooper Flagg, an air-tight defense, and a swagger that reminded observers of the best of the Blue Devils championship teams of the past. But it didn’t happen for them. Instead,...

A View Of College Basketball Above And Below The Surface

02 Apr 2025

Hear it here! When we see it looking up we see a Final Four that features all the top-seeded teams. Bettors call it “chalk”. The favorites have ruled the roost in this year’s edition of March Madness. To be honest, this year’s tournament has lacked the excitement of unheralded upsets, and thrilling buzzer-beaters, meaning last second shots that decide games. What we’ve seen are the best teams playing the best. Every year is different, and this year is no exception. When was the last time we’ve seen this? It was in 2008, when Kansas, UCLA, North Carolina and Memphis, all #1 seeds, reached the final four with Kansas prevailing. That’s 17 years between this particular phenomenon. That year, the Final Four was played in San Antonio. This year it is also in San Antonio, so there’s the coincidence. Duke, Houston, Auburn and Florida will compete for the national championship...

What Goes Around Comes Around

29 Mar 2025

Hear it here! When I was a kid I got to see the Giants play baseball because a family member had season tickets. Now that’s I’m older, I can still see the Giants play baseball because an another family member has season tickets. Let me explain. Growing up, my father, Joe, had tickets for the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. So, I got to go. Now, my wife Jamie has tickets to the San Francisco Giants for their spring Cactus League games at Scottsdale Stadium. And I get to go. How’s that for completing the circle? There’s a kind of throwback to a more innocent and joyful time when you attend an exhibition baseball game in the spring. It not only signals the end of what could have been a harsh winter to welcoming the start of a warmer, brighter, happier time, with the summer sport of...

March Madness Is Upon Us

20 Mar 2025

Hear it here! It all started with the traditional Selection Sunday when the 68-team field was revealed. Who made it. Who didn’t. Who are the #1 seeded teams. Who plays whom and where do they play? It begins with a pair of play-in games Tuesday and Wednesday before the action involving 64 schools begins Thursday, capped with the Final Four in the first week of April. The Sunday show featured analysis, over-analysis, intense questions over why some teams like North Carolina got in, and some, such as West Virginia did not. It’s the same every year, but it’s different because they’re always talking about different schools. This year, the number one seeds are Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida. No one has a problem with that. It’s all pretty exciting, and it’s a wonderful time of the year in sports. Many of those who watch have their own group of...

Behind The Scenes Of Televised Sports

11 Mar 2025

Hear it here! For all those out there who watch televised sports of any kind, I wonder if they realize how those pictures appear on screen and who decides what they see? We take for granted that the action shown will give us the best possible view, including the reaction shots that follow. I spent my entire TV career either upstairs in a broadcast booth, or in the case of basketball, at a table court side. But the real action takes place inside a production truck located outside the stadium or arena. That’s where the folks who actually put the broadcast on the air do their thing. There is a producer, director, technical director, audio man, and countless others in charge of video taping possible replays that follow the live action that is initially shown. We’re going to only deal with the director here because he is the one...

Idioms and Hubie Brown

06 Mar 2025

Hear it here! Time for a little fun. There are sayings and phrases that you hear every day that everyone knows what you’re talking about. But when you really examine what they are, and look at them in a purely literal way, well, you may wonder what they REALLY mean. Let’s examine a bunch of them. IT IS WHAT IT IS. But, what IS it, anyway? TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT. Most of the time that means it’s a story that goes on a lot longer. THAT’S ON MY BUCKET LIST. We all know it comes from the 2007 film The Bucket List. It’s about a list of things to do before you “kick the bucket”. I don’t think there’s a line from a movie that’s used more than that? WE’LL TAKE A RAIN CHECK. We know it’s a baseball term but what if the weather has nothing...

Multi-Sport Potpourri

25 Feb 2025

Hear it here! Kudos to the National Hockey League for reviving the dying tradition of the All-Star Game. It was once a mid-season gem that saw memorable moments performed by memorable stars who were proud to be selected and proud to actually play. That all went away. It began with baseball. At one time, players wearing their team uniforms on the field together were out to try to win for their league. The Home Run Derby, invented by ESPN and held the day before the game became more popular than the contest itself and as it turned out, also changed the way baseball has largely been played. It’s all about the home run……or as we now witness, all about strikeouts and pathetically low batting averages. But this season, the NHL launched a tournament named 4 Nations Face-Off. It proved to be a fiercely competitive and riveting round-robin. The...

Tom Brady – Year One

18 Feb 2025

Hear it here! I’ve never seen someone more scrutinized than Tom Brady has been in his first year in the broadcast booth. No surprise considering who he is and what he accomplished as a player. From day one, practically everyone from social media critics, to ex-players in similar roles, to the average viewer, took his temperature on a week-to-week basis, analyzing and often over-analyzing how Tom did on yesterday’s Fox broadcast. More often than not, those who voiced their opinions, particularly those who were negative, many times extremely so, carried with them an agenda. I know this to be true. This column is not about a defense of Brady’s first season in a new role. He doesn’t need that. As a matter of fact, I believe he doesn’t warrant anyone to defend him. Tom Brady, in my view, had a remarkably successful debut in his a totally new career...

Super Bowl VIX

12 Feb 2025

Hear it here! Super Bowl heroes are usually star players, mostly quarterbacks, who perform great things on the biggest stage. But once in a blue moon it’s about someone who the fans never see, who has toiled for decades in countless places, a football lifer, so to speak, who is nowhere close to being a household name. A guy who has been a success but has never gabbed the brass ring. Now, a man named Vic Fangio is finally a champion. Who is Vic Fangio? He’s the man who designed the defense that throttled the great Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the chief reason, in my view, why the Philadelphia Eagles are the NFL world champions. The best defense in the league crushed the hopes of the Kansas City Chiefs to become the first in history to capture three straight Super Bowls. A three-peat that never happened. It was...

Super Bowl Sunday – 2025

05 Feb 2025

Hear it here! This should be a glorious week for the NFL. The Super Bowl is Sunday in New Orleans and the Kansas City Chiefs are shooting for an unprecedented third consecutive championship. It’s never been done before. That’s right. Even with the incredible domination of the New England Patriots, and the other dynasties that sport has seen: the Steelers, 49ers, and the Cowboys, no one has ever won three in a row. The Chiefs can do just that, by beating the Philadelphia Eagles, the team Andy Reid coached for a decade before moving on to Kansas City, and the team the Chiefs beat in a tight battle only two years ago. Yes, this should be a glorious week for the NFL. But it’s not. It’s not because there is a serious problem with the officiating in the league, an issue that has been front and center in these playoffs...

And then there were two…

27 Jan 2025

After a grueling 18-week regular season and three weeks of playoffs, the two teams left standing to battle it out in the Super Bowl are the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs, and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs certainly are no surprise since they will have been there five of out of the last six times when they face the Eagles in New Orleans a week from Sunday. But there were questions about KC because they escaped with close-call victories practically every week and never looked liked a dominant force. Yet the way they won, including the AFC championship game against the Buffalo Bills, is precisely what champions need to be. As for the Eagles, they turned around a woeful beginning and steamrolled the rest of the way with a recipe that has never failed football teams of any level in the sport. Running the ball and playing brilliant defense....

Three Intense Days

21 Jan 2025

Three days of high-level football marked the sports calendar the past week and when the dust cleared we were left with the final four in the NFL and a new champion in college football. Let’s start with the new king of the college game which no longer is a contrast to the professionals. College football is a junior version of the pros. Millions of dollars are thrown around to players who now can transfer almost at whim and more than once as well. The rules of changing teams is a common and dizzying routine. It used to be you needed a scorecard to determine the athletes by their numbers. Now, even a scorecard won’t help you decipher where a player came from. Nonetheless, the Ohio State Buckeyes are the champions of the sport. They defeated Notre Dame, 34-23 in a battle that started out brilliantly for the Irish with an...

Wild-Card Weekend

14 Jan 2025

Is there anything I’ve never seen in an NFL game? I’m asked that question frequently. On the field I believe I’ve seen it all. But last weekend I witnessed something I’m sure no one has ever seen. AJ Brown, the wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles was sitting on the bench actually READING A BOOK! I don’t know whether he had to read it during as game to make sure he had enough time to make sure he returned it in time to the library. Whatever, Brown was reading “Inner Excellence”, a self-help book that dealt with things you can’t control, but being fully engaged can make you enjoy the challenges in your path. The pages had hi-lites with a yellow marker, and phrases underlined with a blue pen. When I saw those shots, alertly caught by Fox Sports director Rich Russo, I jumped to the conclusion that the scene...

College Football Playoffs/Greg Gumbel/”Tanking”

07 Jan 2025

No one’s complaining now. After considerable angst over who made it and who didn’t and who got to avoid a first round game and who didn’t, the College Football Playoff is looking pretty good right now. Two huge semifinal battles being played as we speak will determine the National Championship matchup. After enlarging the tournament from 4 to 12 teams this year, the expected howls from those on the outside looking in were still making themselves heard loud and clear. The decision to place Boise State and Arizona State among the four automatically advancing to the quarterfinals was one many observers frowned on, including this reporter. But what the Sun Devils did was give us a game for the ages before going down to Texas in a contest they firmly held in their grasp. That game to date has been the best by far and it featured a controversial non-call...

On to 2025

02 Jan 2025

It doesn’t take long for sports to make an impact in any new year, and January and February are the months for the college and NFL post-season, and championships. The Super Bowl winner will be crowned early February, so now the fun is just beginning. There’s plenty of weeks left for the pros, but the “collegians”, who make a ton of money and can pick up and leave for greener pastures at their whim, are in the midst of the expanded 12-team tournament. There’s already been grumbling about how the whole thing was put together and the predictable cries of who never should gotten in and who never should have been left out. Alright, grumbling is putting it mildly. The football community is incensed. I say they’re on the money about one aspect of the playoffs, but off the mark on another complaint. The first round featured four games that...

Visions Of Quarterbacks Danced In Their Heads

23 Dec 2024

The Holidays are here. So, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. It’s a special time to say the least. Gatherings of friends and family. Good cheer. Familiar and wonderful music and decorations. It also means receiving presents. What will you find under the tree? Or what did you find if you’re reading this past the 25th? If you’re an NFL team the best present you could receive would be a franchise quarterback. Some already have one, so they hope for something else. But those who need one they long to acquire one either through the draft or by an acquisition. For those teams, their Christmas gift may be delayed a bit. There’s no rush. Christmas came early for the Minnesota Vikings, for instance, when their backup, Sam Darnold, came through with a sensational regular season. Unexpected perhaps, considering he was merely a journeyman who had fallen flat with his two previous...

Bill Belichick

17 Dec 2024

Isn’t it amusing that the reaction of practically everyone who learned that Bill Belichick was going to coach football at North Carolina next year was one of total surprise, even shock, when those same folks have no idea what he thinks and what makes him tick. Everyone is so certain they know what he wants to do with his life they express amazement with whatever he does. How many really know anything about the man? Hey, even Tom Brady was taken by aback by the move. “It blew me away”, said the quarterback who led Belichick’s Patriots to six Super Bowl titles. But I bet Brady was also amazed when BB jumped in with both feet with countless media outlets this year. Bill Belichick? The man who hates the media every which way going full blast everywhere you looked? How about his new girlfriend? The 24-year old lady now with...

College Football Marches Onward

10 Dec 2024

A week ago we frowned on unsportsmanlike conduct as seen at many of the college football rivalry week games. This week we celebrate college football for its display of exciting battles in the conference championship matchups, all to settle on the makeup of the first 12-team championship playoffs. Without breaking down the multitude of scenarios that existed or the rationale that went into the final determinations, we’ll just touch on the highlights. It’s far too dizzying and pedantic to be sure to go into chapter and verse of the committee’s deliberations. It is better to anticipate how delectable the upcoming tournament will be. Look, there will always be a call for more teams to compete for the national title, but the 12-team format appears to be right. At some point it might grow to 16, who knows. I remember when the NCAA basketball tournament once consisted of 24 schools. Now,...

The State Of Sportsmanship

03 Dec 2024

What happened to class? What happened to sportsmanship? What happened to taking the high road? Why is everything “in your face” in the sports world? The fact that people were talking about post-game fights, skirmishes and arrests and not the games itself is a sad commentary on not only college football but other sports as well. Last weekend, known as rivalry weekend, 8 upsets by visiting teams turned into ugly scenes following those games. It’s not enough to show elation on the sidelines before going out to congratulate and commiserate the team you’ve beaten, it is fashionable now to storm the field and add insult to injury by attempting to do things like planting a flag on the vanquished team’s field. It’s not enough to score a monumental upset such as Michigan’s shocker of Ohio State in Columbus, celebrate on the sidelines and again in the locker room. No, it’s...

Thanksgiving week

24 Nov 2024

We all enjoy the trimmings and being surrounded by family and friends, but let’s all of us take a moment to actually give thanks. We live in a great country that allows us to truly be free. Go to some others and you’ll see the difference. All of us have experienced adversity and negative times in our lives. No one has escaped that. But if we dwell on the good things that have happened to us we will all be uplifted. We can pinpoint the highlights. They are different for everyone. But they come to mind without much prodding. Think about them. If you have photos of the good times, get them out and sit down and remember. If your family is around have everyone sit down, look at them and talk about them. If you’re alone talk about them out loud. Personally, I have a ton of things for...

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