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UConn has a Jim Calhoun problem -- and if that phrase doesn't click, try it from another angle. UConn has a Bobby Bowden problem. UConn has a Joe Paterno problem. UConn has a...(full article)

It’s 15 minutes into Bobby Valentine’s first official workout as the Boston Red Sox’s manager, and I’m already exhausted. Red Sox general manager Ben Cherin...(full article)

It’s tempting to say that the next three and a half weeks are the most important stretch of Danny Ainge’s tenure as the man making the basketball decisions for the Celtics. I...(full article)

Bobby Valentine's influence is already felt here at brand spanking new Jet Blue Stadium, where they served only wraps yesterday, perhaps as an ode to their new manage...(full article)

Listen up, Red Sox [team stats] fans: Josh Beckett [stats] wants you to know he had perfect attendance at gym class last season. That was essentially Big Boy’s message yester...(full article)

More Recent Articles

Wakefield Truly One of a Kind

Usually the phrase “once in a lifetime” describes an athlete of breathtaking ability, whether it’s Larry Bird, Bobby Orr or Ted Williams. But it applies to othe...

Wakefield Bows Out Gracefully

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Tim Wakefield [stats] stood in left field at the Red Sox [team stats]’ new spring training ballpark and said retirement was “the hardest thing I&r...

4 Teams in Trouble Amid Short Season

The Pacers have lost six of eight to drop to 18-12, ceding that “feel-good threat to Miami and Chicago” status to Philadelphia and falling to a point where New York, ...

Can Red Sox Rotation Go the Distance?

On the field, at least, the principal issue now is as it was then: the durability of the starting rotation. Minus Jon Lester, there is relatively little assurance that any of the...

Bulls Make Statement vs. Celtics

With the NBA's best record, the Bulls know they can beat anybody. Still, there are moments in any season where statements must be made. And, having dropped five of their last six ...

Rangers Still Beast of the East

Ruslan Fedotenko caught it Tuesday night, sitting in the TD Garden press box in his suit, rising to cheer as his otherworldly Rangers teammate, Henrik Lundqvist, preserved a 3-0 sh...

Expect 2-Tight End Trend to Take Off

One of the first thoughts that go into the heads of all 30 teams that don't make the Super Bowl is this: "How do we copy what the two teams did to get us there next season?" When...

Calhoun Era at UConn Seems Near an End

As visitors drive to Storrs exiting I-84, a large blue sign reminds them the University of Connecticut won the 2011 NCAA men's basketball tournament. The postscript isn't appealing...

Avoiding Arbitration With Ortiz Right Move

This has been an offseason where the Red Sox have become almost unrecognizable. Change has come to Yawkey Way not in droplets, but in torrents, washing away the identity of the O...

Bruins Mired in Mediocrity

It’s probably a good thing the Bruins [team stats] flew away late last night for their longest trip of the season, six games. Maybe the road will be good for the B’s; ...

Patriots' Dynasty Falls Short of Greatness

Every NFL dynasty must end. The cruelties of age, finances of free agency and emergence of other superpowers eventually finish them. This is the reality the New England Patriots....

Motivated Rondo Tosses Up Triple-Double

It’s hard to say what was motivating Rajon Rondo [stats] yesterday — and he wasn’t offering any insights. The Celtics [team stats] point god chose to remain mum f...

UConn's Late Mea Culpa Rings Hollow

Like countless doomed criminals down to their last meal, the University of Connecticut Huskies say they have gotten religion. They want the NCAA to spare them the near-death exper...

Random Champs Devalue Excellence

Every season ends with music blaring, confetti falling, a trophy awarded. It’s “One Shining Moment,” a pinnacle attained, a champion crowned. But more and more, we’re see...

'Awful' Celtics Have Rivers 'Really Frustrated'

The coaching staff cooled down with an extended postgame meeting out in the hallway — clearly preferable to where they watched the actual calamity last night. The breakdown...

Lakers Beat Celtics at Old Game

There are a number of ways beyond looking at a calendar that you can tell this is not the 1980s. You can drive by a gas pump or have a word with Madonna’s plastic surgeon. Or y...

Proposed Penalties Too Soft on Calhoun

Susan Herbst said she wasn't groveling nor was she trying to strong-arm anybody. In proposing self-imposed penalties for failure to meet academic standards, UConn, according to Her...

UConn's Bid to Overturn Tourney Ban Is a Joke

If there ever were a time I’d love to hear Jim Calhoun speak publicly, it’s today. That won’t happen, of course. The coach is dealing with a spinal issue that has forced him ...

Lakers-Celtics: Battle of Teams Past Primes

In a stark indication that both franchises are in slow decline, the Celtics and Lakers enter tonight’s shortened-season showdown in nearly identical positions, making them pe...

Aging Celtics and Lakers Set for Battle

You can call it Celtics-Lakers if you want, but when these teams meet at TD Garden this evening, it may seem more like two aging boxers with championship belts in their wake. Th...

Patriots' Focus Turns to Defense

2011 in a Nutshell: From field level, as well as the catwalk at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday night, I saw Tom Brady feel the pressure in Super Bowl XLVI. The pressure to do a bit to...

Pierce Passes Bird on Celtics' Scoring List

Pierce passed Bird with the third quarter’s first shot — a 3-pointer, naturally — and the Celtics briefly flirted with a 20-point lead without quite getting the...

Pats in Good Shape to Return to Super Bowl

The tendency is to focus on the negative. A Super Bowl was lost in devastating fashion to the New York Giants, so it’s hard not to think about anything aside from who to b...

Looking Only at Bottom Line Misses the Point

New Year’s Eve has long been described as “amateur night.” That’s because, on December 31, too many people who don’t go out for an evening of aggressive drinking very o...

Pierce Stuck It Out to Reach Milestone

The moment was finally here, and the folks who run the Garden in-game operations rose to the occasion. There was a video, of course, honoring Paul Pierce as he passed Larry Bird ...

Patriots' Duo Seems a Bit Less Dynamic

Back in February 2005, when Bill Belichick and Tom Brady hoisted the Super Bowl trophy for the third time in four seasons, they seemed like a safe bet for greatest coach-quarterba...

Supermodel's Super Bowl Hex

Since the beginning of time, ladies have been mucking things up for their men. Eve was the first reported offender, causing the fall of man and spoiling the innocent fun of no-pan...

Belichick Won't Second-Guess Winning TD

The New England Patriots decided not to contest the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Giants almost did not accept the gift. One day after one of the strangest to...

Indy's Lesson: Convenience Vital

I hate to say I told you so, but… Indianapolis knocked it out of the park as host city for Super Bowl XLVI by most accounts…be it NFL executives, fans, corporate typ...

Without Calhoun, UConn Falling Apart

After the beatdown had been delivered and Louisville had set what felt like a record for dunks and Rick Pitino had emptied his bench to the delight of the student sec...

Belichick Stands by Bradshaw Tactic

The New England Patriots decided not to contest the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Giants almost did not accept the gift. One day after one of the strangest to...

MMQB: Never Underestimate Eli Again

I still can't get over that throw from Eli Manning to Mario Manningham. As much as I respect the catch (it will be the greatest of Manningham's career, no matter how long he play...

A Case of Super Bowl Butterfingers

In a bizarre twist to finish another exciting Super Bowl, Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw scored a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute against his will – and then the leag...

Supporting Cast, Not QB, Wins for Giants

The football sailed in an arc, a very high one, for almost 60 yards. The entire NFL season was along for the ride. Sunday's final play of the Super Bowl was a desperation pass in...

M.I.A. Flips Bird at Halftime

For all the pomp and excess of Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show, it is likely to be a single extended middle finger by guest singer M.I.A. that is most remembered. The gesture,...

Gronkowski Not Much of a Factor

No one could blame Tom Brady for his one, foolish heave. All he saw was Rob Gronkowski open and deep. Gronk, the best tight end in football, the 6-foot-6 freak with hands bigger a...

Manning Builds Case for Hall

It's a pretty select club Eli Manning joined here Sunday night. You could almost call it an "elite'' membership to belong to. Quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl wins have a cac...

Welker: 'I Let the Team Down'

Wes Welker was targeted eight times by Tom Brady in Super Bowl XLVI. He caught seven passes. But it's the one he didn't catch that will stay with him for a long time. "It's one of ...

Giants' Coughlin Plans to Return

Tom Coughlin isn’t going anywhere. Let’s finally come to grips with that, okay? Fifty days ago, when the Giants suffered a second embarrassing loss to the Washington Re...

Manning the Master of 4th Quarter

Some quarterbacks can be found in the record books. They spend season after season stacking up numbers until it becomes their legacy. Some quarterbacks you can find in the gossip...

Legacies of Brady, Belichick Undermined

Tom Brady looked nervous. Wait. That's not right. Tom Brady looked ... scared. As the Super Bowl pressed on and the Giants pass rush intensified, Brady's dropback became slop...

Manning a Head-Scratching National Hero

For the second time in four years, Eli Manning led a last-minute drive to beat the favored Patriots in the Super Bowl. Somehow, this one was weirder than the time the Giants won...

Manningham Has His Tyree Moment

Consider it the 2012 version of the David Tyree helmet grab. With 3:39 left to play in Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday, Mario Manningham somehow came down with a 38-yard pass with his f...

Dominance Lies With NFC

If we didn’t believe it in 2008, we certainly do now. The NFL is no longer under a Patriot reign. It’s now under complete and convincing NFC rule. It’s the dominant confere...

Sterling Catches on Display

Two weeks of polishing the NFL legends of Eli Manning and Tom Brady into modern gunslinger monuments might have seemed prudent for an unprecedented collision of Super Bowl MVPs, ...

Super Effort: Giants Do It Again

Eli Manning and the New York Giants saved their very best for the fourth quarter to emerge with an epic 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI Sunday in I...

Defense Dies on Bradshaw's TD

Ahmad Bradshaw darted through a hole in the defensive line so immense, so inviting he could have strutted those half-dozen yards untouched into the end zone. And it should have...

Most Significant Super Bowl Since Namath

For most of us, Sunday’s Super Bowl is the most significant we’ve ever witnessed. We either weren’t around or weren’t old enough to see Joe Willie Namath back up his guar...

Eli Delivers Elite Performance

So: Does Tom Brady deserve to be considered in Eli Manning's elite class of quarterbacks? Forget the numbers. Forget history. Look just at the performances. Eli took the Giant...

A Complicated, Bizarre But Great Game

Call it The Reluctant Touchdown. Ahmad Bradshaw's awkward and unwilling flop into the end zone is part of Super Bowl lore now -- there with Rice-to-Montana, there with David Tyre...

Brady's Postgame Daze of Disappointment

Tom Brady sat facing his locker, his head down and draped in a white towel, staring at the space between his cleats. He was in full uniform. He was in full thought. There were the...

Another Classic from Pats and Giants

In the end, the grand graven images of football, those towering or cracked monuments we call legacies, are the result of fine carving, of inches, of a moment here and gone. In Su...

For 2nd Time, Coughlin Ends Up at Pinnacle

Before the insanity, before the grandchildren arrived and the stress of the moment reached a crescendo, Judy and Tom Coughlin snuck away for a rare dinner, just the two of them. ...

2-Time MVP Makes Case for Canton

It's a pretty select club Eli Manning joined here Sunday night. You could almost call it an "elite'' membership to belong to. Quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl wins have a cac...

Tenacity Helps Giants Neuter Brady

The New England Patriots had scored touchdowns on their last two possessions, and more to the point, they had made it look easy. The Patriots’ small, nimble receivers were runnin...

Madonna Puts on Retro Show

Before there was Lady Gaga, pop music's reigning diva (not you, Cher) was Madonna. Sunday at Super Bowl XLVI, the Material Girl of the MTV '80s tried to recapture her supremacy i...

Madonna Stars at Halftime

Well, that was interesting. In a halftime set that included Roman gladiators, Gregorian monks, 70,000 flashlights, a marching band and one very bad bird, Madonna delivered the good...

Free Agency Could Hit Patriots Hard

The Giants have a lot of celebrating ahead of them, and the Patriots have a lot of second-guessing and what-iffing to contemplate in the coming days and weeks. But the season is ...

Nothing Makes Sense About XLVI

The hype can blind you at the Super Bowl, of course. For instance, this year I would say that most people I run across think that the New York Giants will beat New England on Sun...

Comparing Giants, Pats - Then, Now

Are the 2011 New England Patriots better than the 2007 team that was minutes away from perfection, only to have history taken from them in Super Bowl XLII? How about t...

Super Bowl Pits Brady vs. Manning(s)

Eli Manning will be playing for something much more important than a single championship on Sunday in Super Bowl XLVI. He’ll be playing for the Manning name itself. The hard and ...

Brady Eager to Seize Moment

On a few random occasions this week, as the intensity of the Super Bowl media crush swarmed around her younger brother during his preparations for the biggest game in American sp...

Pats Try to Simulate Giants' Defense

The Patriots [team stats] do have a pass-rusher or two who can affect a quarterback like Giants menaces Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Tuck. Mark Anderson, for example, had 10 regula...

Grantland Preview

Super Bowl XLVI is only a rematch of Super Bowl XLII in the vaguest sense of the word. While both the head coaches and starting quarterbacks will return, they're part of a small ...

UConn's Calhoun on Medical Leave

University of Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun will take an indefinite medical leave of absence, effective immediately, to deal with worsening spinal stenosi...

Nightmare Matchup for Jets' Ryan

For those who believe that Jets coach Rex Ryan’s worst nightmare is a Super Bowl featuring the Patriots against the Giants . . . well, you happen to be right about that. &ldq...

Football Outsiders Preview

Well, here we are again, stuck with a predicament that has become all too common. This is the ninth year that Football Outsiders has covered the NFL, and the fourth time in those n...

Rookies Making Big Impact for Giants

For almost two weeks now, Tyler Sash has tried to stay out of David Diehl's way. Because every time Diehl, the veteran offensive lineman, catches sight of Sash, the rookie safety...

Giants TEs Could Be X-Factors

The New England Patriots’ tight ends are getting plenty of attention at Super Bowl XLVI. The New York Giants’ tight ends want you to know something. They are in Indiana...

Nicks May Be Handful for Patriots

Hakeem Nicks gave up trying to squeeze his hands into receiving gloves when he was in college at North Carolina. It was pointless. He couldn’t fit into normal winter glov...

Foot Injury Can't Stop Bradshaw

Giants running backs coach Jerald Ingram was trying to describe the kind of pain Ahmad Bradshaw endures from his injured feet. “For the average person who stubbed their toe...

Don't Try to Beat Vegas

Of the scores of sports books around Nevada, not to mention the thousands of illegal bookmakers nationwide, only a handful actually make the betting lines. Kornegay leads, and th...

Mayors Make Friendly Wager

If the Giants win, a New York family will win a Super Tour of Boston. They will receive: -- Four tickets on JetBlue -- A two-night stay at the Ritz Carlton -- Dinner for four at Le...

All Eyes on Gronkowski's Ankle

Musings, observations and the occasional insight from the exercise in pack journalism that was Tuesday's Super Bowl media day at the beehive known as Lucas Oil Stadium, which ser...

Ochocinco OK Out of the Spotlight

Aaron Hernandez, half of what’s turning into the greatest tight-end tandem the NFL has ever seen and a key to the Patriots’ fate in Sunday’s Super Bowl, sat at ...

LB Mayo Patriots' 'Old Soul'

"Old soul." Linebacker Jerod Mayo was given that uncommon nickname almost as soon as he joined the New England Patriots as a first-round draft choice in 2008. It has been a perfect...

Focused Giants to Observe Curfew

Tom Coughlin's credo is consistency and routine, so the Giants' plan for this Super Bowl week—from their Monday arrival to their game-planning schedule—is almost iden...

Grading All 45 Super Bowls

ike an underachieving student who needs time to register academic success, the Super Bowl took a few decades before establishing itself as a sporting event that was as much about...

Rolle: Giants 'Expect to Win'

The New York Giants got onto their charter flight on Monday at Newark International Airport, many of them recording every giddy moment with their video cameras and cell phones. O...

Giants WRs Testament to Evaluation

The NFL’s top trio of wide receivers came together because of conviction. They’re the result of a sound football plan. The success of the New York Giants’ Vict...

Brady Already Planning Victory Party

Patriots fans packed the lower level of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on Sunday to give the AFC champions a raucous Super sendoff. But it was nothing compared to the party Tom Br...

Pats in Indy; Brady Makes Pledge

The Patriots’ journey started at Gillette Stadium Sunday, where about 25,000 fans filled the lower bowl of the structure to send the team off to Super Bowl XLVI. And that&r...

Gronkowski Might Face Tough Choice

Rob Gronkowski was the elephant in the room to begin with, a 6-foot-6-inch, 265-pound behemoth with cast iron legs, a granite torso and hands made of cashmere. Outside of Tom Bra...

Giants' Defensive Line Targets Brady

It is not too simple, Justin Tuck says, to boil Super Bowl XLVI down to this: If the Giants get to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, they win. If they don’t, they lose. &ldqu...

Boatright Issue Frustrates UConn

The Ryan Boatright watch goes on ... and on. UConn's compliance staff has been putting in late hours to try to resolve Boatright's issues with the NCAA, but hope of having him clea...

Preparing for Pats' Changing Defense

Expect the unexpected. The Giants do. That mad scientist in New England is turning wide receivers into defensive backs and moving a 325-pound tackle all over the defensive line a...

Giants Not Forgetting Brady's Slight

For more than a decade, for three different head coaches, Tom Brady has been a not-so-magnificent obsession for the Giants’ little brothers who wear green. But for the fran...

Coughlin Not Thinking About Retiring

It is near 7 o’clock now, the last coaching meeting of the day over, at least for now, and all that really means to Tom Coughlin is that he is one work day closer to Indiana...

Latest Chapter in Boston-NY Rivalry

The rivalry that has produced the Curse of the Bambino, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, David Tyree's catch and disagreeing forms of clam chowder — exposing the nastiness of arro...

Things to Watch For This Weekend

1. Tim Thomas Voted in by the fans as the starting goaltender, well, one wonders if that would have actually occurred had fans known of his White House-snub intentions. Luckily ...

Humbled Ochocinco Enjoying the Ride

The Patriots receiver is returning to the NFL's title game, changed but not chastened since his time as a spotlight-seeking superstar who crashed the big party two years running ...

Giants Could Be Among NYC's Greatest

New York is a tough town that demands tough teams. Teams that get knocked down, get back up, and stand tall as a tower again. But we’re romantics, too. We can fall head ove...

For Giants, Brady Not Unbeatable

Every step Tom Brady takes now brings a new accolade. The New England Patriots quarterback is making a case as the best ever to play the game. When he faces the New York Giants on ...

Boston Sports News

Daisuke Matsuzaka loosens up

FORT MYERS - Red Sox fans might not be counting on anything out of Daisuke Matsuzaka this season, bu...

Ortiz makes his grand entrance

FORT MYERS - David Ortiz knows how to make an entrance. Big Papi arrived in camp today, offering hu...

Bear Blog: Shawn Thornton fights th

With the Bruins midway through a long road trip, Shawn Thornton checks in before tonight's game at S...

Don't sell Jose Iglesias short

FORT MYERS - A member of the Red Sox public relations staff passing through the clubhouse yesterday ...

No sign of Jason Varitek at Red Sox

FORT MYERS, Fla. - The invitation remains open for Jason Varitek to come to spring training with th...