For five years in the 1990s, Hall of Famers Deion Sanders and Emmitt Smith were teammates on the Cowboys. They embodied the spirit of America’s most popular sports franchise, marrying flashy aesthetics to unparalleled dominance.
Now, the two Dallas greats have given way to the next generation. Sanders is Colorado’s highly successful first-year coach, with two of his sons starring for the Buffaloes. Smith’s son, E.J. Smith, is a running back at Stanford.
Friday night, the two Cowboys greats’ sons came together on the field.
Author: Michael
Very rarely are high school football games deemed big enough to receive national television audiences (which might not be a bad thing).
Friday’s game between Mill Creek and Buford High Schools in Georgia, however, was no ordinary contest. Both are national powers, and both entered the game 6-0. Buford boasts future Georgia quarterback Dylan Raiola; the action on ESPN2 drew eyeballs across the Peach State and beyond.
With under a minute left, Mill Creek clung to a 31-24 lead with Buford driving toward a potential tie.
For much of this season, Colorado coach Deion Sanders has made Buffaloes football feel like a party—complete with celebrities, paparazzi-like documentation and off-the-wall television ratings.
It seems unlikely, though, that Sanders meant the party to be this literal.
At the start of the second quarter of Colorado’s home game against Stanford on Friday night, the Pac-12 officiating crew threatened the Buffaloes with a penalty for playing music during play.
Despite our love of narrative—remember Marco “Blockbuster” Scutaro?—stars generally come up the biggest in the LCS. Over the past six years, LCS MVPs have included Bryce Harper, Yordan Alvarez, Corey Seager, José Altuve and Justin Verlander, all of whom get another shot this year. But don’t discount the subtle influences that can turn a series.
In the NLCS last year, for instance, Phillies manager Rob Thomson called on Ranger Suárez as a starter and two days later as his closer in the clincher.
Like Suárez, most x-factors in postseason series emerge without warning.
The Big Ten is enjoying the fruits of a seven-year, $7 billion media deal signed in August 2022—one that will put the audience in front of national audiences on Fox, CBS and NBC for years to come.
However, it has come at a cost to the common fan. The conference has relegated a few football games (along with a glut of basketball games) to Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Michigan, Penn State and Michigan State all have taken turns playing streaming-only contests in 2023; No. 3 Ohio State is up Saturday afternoon against Purdue.
Before December 2022, Colorado athletic director Rick George was just another college sports administrator.
Sure, the Buffaloes had some positive moments under the former Texas Rangers executive—a football division title in 2016 and appearances in both NCAA basketball tournaments—but there was little to distinguish George from any other athletic director around the country.
Now, George is the man who lured coach Deion Sanders to Boulder.
It’s a line that has been repeated ad nauseam: Colorado was one of the worst teams in the country in 2022.
The Buffaloes limped to a 1-11 record, tying the 2012 team for the lowest winning percentage in program history. Coach Karl Dorrell was sacked midseason. Colorado gave up 40 points or more on 10 different occasions.
That’s part of what has made Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders’s turnaround so impressive, and one statistic tweeted by ESPN’s David Hale on Friday night showed precisely how far the Buffaloes have come.
The TD was Hunter’s first as a Colorado player. He missed three games after he was sidelined by a late hit in Week 3.
The Texas Rangers are in the American League Championship Series and hoping to have star pitcher Max Scherzer back in the starting rotation.
Scherzer had what was described as a “triceps spasm,” with the team announcing in September that he’d miss the rest of the regular season.
READ: RANGERS LOSE ANOTHER ACE WITH MAX SCHERZER OUT FOR REGULAR SEASON AFTER TRICEPS SPASM
But the Rangers back-to-back sweeps of the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles gave Scherzer an extra few weeks to recover, and as a result, the 39-year-old is hoping to join the Rangers roster on Sunday.
Flag football would be a 5-on-5 event played on a 50-yard field with no offensive or defensive linemen.