Author: Don Yaeger

Imagine being in a crowd at a professional hockey game drinking a soft drink, sharing a sandwich with your wife when your cell phone goes off. It is a working opportunity to live your dream. Minutes later, you are in bowels of the arena, strapping on pads and skates and headed onto the ice. Within an hour, you’d become the stuff of legends. An NHL team would have a t-shirt on sale in their team store with your name...

It has been a couple of weeks since the Astros cheating scandal took over the news cycle in baseball. Because everyone with a microphone within earshot had an opinion, I have to admit I struggled with just “piling on” to the “how could they?” narrative. Then I saw this headline: “Little League teams from California to Pennsylvania ban ‘Astros’ nickname after cheating scandal”

Painter Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” His point was that the marginally talented attempt to do something exactly like someone else. The innovators—the true geniuses—borrow an element from someone else in order to create something else entirely. If that’s true, then Oliver Luck and the people behind the XFL must be geniuses. Not only has the upstart football league successfully...

If you follow college basketball, you know the near-mythical rivalry that is Duke-North Carolina. Over the last 100 games between these two teams coming into their matchup over the weekend, each school had won 50 and they scored the exact same number of points. Those freaky statistics make clear this isn’t a gimme type of series—each team brings its best whenever the game is played. That being said, I wasn’t expecting...

The past 48 hours have brought a lot of Patrick Mahomes news. As the second-year quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs delivered that city’s first Super Bowl victory in 50 years a thrilling 31-20 win over the San Francisco 49ers, he’s been on quite a roll. Named MVP of the Super Bowl, which meant delivering the now iconic, “I’m going to Disney World” line. Actually going to Disney World and taking a young Chiefs...

I was getting ready to go to Tampa yesterday when my phone started buzzing. I ignored it for a while in order to get my shirts packed the way I like them, but the thing just kept buzzing. And buzzing. And buzzing. Finally, I picked it up. Several different people had texted, all saying similar things. Kobe. Did you hear? Oh my God. Kobe.

Like nearly 26 million other people, I sat down on my couch Monday night to take in the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the LSU and Clemson. What I witnessed was quarterback Joe Burrow putting on one of the clearest displays of Greatness I’ve ever seen. And it happened after the game was over.

The most influential man at Clemson University is only 50 years old. His aw-shucks Southern charm makes him seem approachable and affable—and he is—but it masks something greater: a vision for Clemson that far exceeds what anyone else can see. It’s that vision that has allowed Dabo Swinney and his Tigers to line up across from the LSU Tigers tonight, playing for Clemson’s third national title in five years. Swinney...

After 20 seasons, six Super Bowl rings, scores of NFL quarterbacking records, and an ever-increasing grip on the title of GOAT (Greatest of All-Time), you’d think Tom Brady might enter his offseason with a bit of introspection. With all his accomplishments, now might be the time to consider what’s next, given how he’s conquered his profession in ways that few have. So after the Patriots first-round exit from the NFL...