ATLANTA — Alabama linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton is likely to miss the playoffs with a knee injury.
Hamilton hurt his right knee at the end of the first half of No. 1 Alabama’s 54-16 win over No. 15 Florida in Saturday’s SEC championship game. He was on crutches after the game, and coach Nick Saban said Hamilton is “probably out for the year.”
NASSAU, Bahamas — At precisely 1:15 p.m. ET on Saturday, you could sense it was happening again.
Not just from the modest gallery here at the Hero World Challenge, which roared with approval as Tiger Woods holed a greenside bunker shot for his fourth birdie in five holes. No, it was bigger than that. The energy, the electricity. It was emanating from all directions.
For the third time in three days, Woods was whipping the masses into a frenzy, evoking memories of the old Tigermania days, when the mere sight of his name on a leaderboard would captivate that ever-expanding audience. He pummeled drives deep down the fairways. He rolled in birdie putts with the greatest of ease.
For the second time in those three days, though, the frenzy dissipated just as quickly as it had blossomed.
Woods parlayed a 4-under front nine into just a 2-under 70 that concluded with a double-bogey after he found the water hazard with his second shot on the final hole. It mirrored his opening round of two days earlier — his first competitive round in 466 days — when he turned a 3-under front nine into a 1-over 73 by making doubles on two of the last three holes.
The immediate reaction might be to criticize Woods for these struggles down the stretch. After all, he has spent so much of the past three days looking eerily similar to the player who has won 14 major championships that it’s easy to forget just how rusty he’s supposed to be.
Of course, any critical analysis of Woods’ performance this week…
And when the dust settled, the favorites took care of business on Championship Weekend and left us with a much clearer playoff picture than we had a few days ago.
No. 1 Alabama certainly locked up its spot, routing Florida 54-16 to complete a 13-0 regular season and win another SEC title for Nick Saban.
No. 3 Clemson likely sewed up its berth, as well, though with a much less convincing 42-35 win over Virginia Tech in the ACC championship game.
No. 4 Washington blasted No. 8 Colorado 41-10 on Friday in the Pac-12 championship game, making just about the strongest case it could’ve hoped to make to stay in the top four.
Those three wins surely doused the hopes of Michigan, sitting at No. 5 behind all those teams and No. 2 Ohio State, who was idle and beat the Wolverines in their head-to-head showdown.
The only remaining intrigue lies with No. 7 Penn State, which added a quality win over No. 6 Wisconsin in Saturday’s Big Ten championship game. The Nittany Lions are now 11-2 conference champs and boast…
OAKLAND, Calif. — Draymond Green completely let loose on the NBA, criticizing the league office for its interpretation of an “unnatural act” two days after his latest flagrant foul.
Green repeatedly has been penalized for his frequent high kicks that tend to strike opposing players in the face or the groin. The Golden State Warriors star forward said Saturday that he believes he’s being unfairly targeted.
“I just laugh at it because it’s funny how you can tell me how I get hit and how my body is supposed to react,” Green said after the Warriors’ shootaround. “I didn’t know the people in the league office were that smart when it came to your body movement. I’m not sure if they took kinesiology and all this stuff for their positions to kind of tell you how your body is going to react when you get hit at certain positions.
“Or you go up and you got guys that jump to the ceiling, and I’m sure a lot of these people that make these…
When Demetrious Johnson enters the Octagon on Saturday night to defend his flyweight title against “Ultimate Fighter” winner Tim Elliott he’ll be one step closer to making history.
The main event bout against Elliott will be Johnson’s ninth consecutive title defense, which puts him just one win away from tying Anderson Silva’s all time UFC record as middleweight champion with 10 consecutive defenses.
Breaking that record and making history are both important to Johnson, but he doesn’t expect the red carpet to be rolled out for him or that he’s suddenly going to be come the most marketable fighter on the UFC roster.
In fact, Johnson has remained the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport while quietly going about his business and rarely making headlines for anything other than his jaw dropping performances inside the Octagon.
As much as Johnson would enjoy the financial windfall that comes from being one of the most boisterous and talked about fighters on the roster like Conor McGregor, he’s happy with his current status as the best in the world whether he’s a household name or not.
“I look at myself as the dark horse champion,” Johnson told FOX Sports. “I’m not out there in front of the media, doing all this stuff. I only do that before my fights. I keep it real. After my fights, I’m never attached the outcome of my fights.
“I go back and I chill and I relax and when they want me to come do (expletive) I do it. Otherwise, I step back into the shadows, into the lab and keep on working on my craft and let everybody else have the spotlight.”
Johnson is certainly driven by accomplishment but more than anything he’s in this sport to make as much money as possible to provide for his wife and children.
At the same time, Johnson enjoys the anonymity versus the lifestyle someone like McGregor must lead where he can’t even leave his house without paparazzi snapping photos or digging into every facet of his life no matter how private it might be.
“Do I want to be there money…
Somewhat lost in the Golden State Warriors’ run to a league-record 73 wins last season was the fact that Coach Steve Kerr missed the first 39 of them. Kerr sat out roughly five months recovering from multiple back surgeries after the Warriors won the NBA championship in 2015. On Friday, while discussing his recovery, Kerr became the latest high-profile sports figure to advocate for the use of marijuana as a way to deal with chronic pain.
“I guess maybe I can even get in some trouble for this, but I’ve actually tried it twice during the last year and a half, when I’ve been going through this chronic pain that I’ve been dealing with,” Kerr told The Warriors Insider Podcast on Friday. “[After] a lot of research, a lot of advice from people and I have no idea if maybe I would have failed a drug test. I don’t even know if I’m subject to a drug test or any laws from the NBA.”
Kerr’s stance comes after trying several different types of painkillers to manage not lingering pain in his back and frequent headaches. He believes that Vicodin, a common painkiller that “athletes everywhere are prescribed . . . like it’s vitamin C, like it’s no big deal,” is not an answer.
“I know enough, especially over the last…
(Ted S. Warren | AP))
| WASH | 1st Qtr | 11:53 | Lavon Coleman 1 yd run (Cameron Van Winkle kick) |
| COLO | 1st Qtr | 0:49 | Phillip Lindsay 3 yd run (Davis Price kick) |
| WASH | 2nd Qtr | 6:38 | Darrell Daniels 15 yd pass from Jake Browning (Cameron Van Winkle kick) |
| WASH | 3rd Qtr | 14:44 | Taylor Rapp 35 yd interception return (Cameron Van Winkle kick) |
| WASH | 3rd Qtr | 11:27 | Cameron Van Winkle 24 yd FG |
| WASH | 3rd Qtr | 5:21 | John Ross 19 yd pass from Jake Browning (Cameron Van Winkle kick) |
| COLO | 3rd Qtr | 3:43 | Chris Graham 24 yd FG |
| WASH | 4th Qtr | 14:07 | Cameron Van Winkle 20 yd FG |
| WASH | 4th Qtr | 4:23 | Chico McClatcher 8 yd run (Cameron Van Winkle kick) |
Twelve weeks into the 2015 season, both Colorado and Washington owned losing records.
Thirteen months later, No. 9 Colorado and No. 4 Washington are a combined 21-3 and about to meet at 9 p.m. EST tonight in the Pac-12 Championship Game in Santa Clara, Calif.
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The turnaround began late last season for Washington, which won its final three games to finish 7-6 with a New Mexico Bowl title and emerge as one of the popular breakthrough picks during the preseason.
The turnaround started this season for Colorado, which has authored a reversal from a 4-9 record that few experts saw coming.
As Championship Weekend arrives, here are bowl projections for all 40 games—including how the College Football Playoff will look. Which team will Alabama take on? Does Michigan have a chance to sneak in? Can Washington hold down a spot? How much chaos will Penn State cause? Can Clemson avoid falling out?
…
The Dallas Cowboys are the NFL’s best team so far this season in large part because they were both wise and fortunate in this year’s NFL draft, using the fourth overall selection on tailback Ezekiel Elliott and landing star quarterback-to-be Dak Prescott in the fourth round.
But in looking at how the Cowboys have become what they are now, it is perhaps even more illustrative to recall what they did in the opening round of the 2014 NFL draft, when owner Jerry Jones had to fight his impulse to make the big-splash move of taking Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel with the 16th overall pick and the team instead went with an offensive lineman from Notre Dame, Zack Martin.
That is among the series of maneuvers made by the Cowboys to bolster their offensive line that is paying huge dividends now, with them on an 11-game winning streak that has improved their NFL-best record to 11-1 after Thursday night’s triumph at Minnesota.
It is a lesson that is clear when studying some of the league’s best and most surprising teams this season: Devoting resources to the offensive line can pay off handsomely. It has worked to make the Cowboys and Oakland Raiders two of the NFL’s elite teams in 2016, and to make the Tennessee Titans and Miami Dolphins relevant once more as playoff contenders.
“I think every team knows that philosophically you build from the inside out, from front to back,” said former NFL player, scout and front office executive Louis Riddick. “Every scout, GM, coach, team president knows that. But some people really commit resources to it and really believe in it, which Dallas has done, which Miami has done, which Tennessee has done.”
No one has done it better than the Cowboys. They used a first-round pick on left tackle Tyron Smith in 2011. They used a first-rounder on center Travis Frederick in 2013. They went with Martin over Manziel in 2014, with Jones’s son and Cowboys executive Stephen Jones intervening to help keep his father from taking Manziel, and made Martin a starter at guard.
Smith, Martin and Frederick have been selected to a combined seven Pro Bowls, a number that is certain to grow this season, and the Cowboys have an offensive line that could be remembered as one of the sport’s all-time greats. It paved the way for DeMarco Murray…
It sounds like the perfect weekend, everyone gathered around the television to watch football.
But, in this case, the 12 men and women of the College Football Playoff selection committee have convened in Grapevine, Texas, for some potentially headache-inducing work.
With conference title games continuing across the nation through Saturday night, they will take one more look at the top teams and maybe debate into the early hours before voting on who gets to vie for the national championship.
“You know, there are number of legitimate contenders who could stake a claim to being in those top four spots,” committee Chairman Kirby Hocutt said. “The committee takes its work very seriously.”
At least one piece of the puzzle is in place.
No. 4 Washington took care of No. 8 Colorado for the Pac-12 title Friday night, the Huskies making their argument for a slot in the semifinals. But the overall picture remains fuzzy, particularly in the Big Ten.
No. 2 Ohio State and No. 5 Michigan, despite their lofty rankings, did not even qualify for the conference championship game. Instead, sixth-ranked Wisconsin will face No. 7 Penn State in Indianapolis. Ohio State is 11-1; Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan are 10-2.
If the Badgers win, you could make an argument for keeping them out of the playoff in favor of Ohio State, which prevailed in Madison during the regular season.
If Penn State wins, the whole thing becomes a lot messier because the Buckeyes’ only loss was to the…
The College Football Playoff is the only thing that really matters this weekend.
Championship weekend is all about putting the playoff puzzle together. What if this team loses? What if this team wins? Two Big Ten teams? Three? Who is in?
The selection committee makes its big reveal Sunday.
Assuming Alabama and Ohio State are safely in the field, five scenarios to know going into the final weekend of college football’s regular season:
WHAT IF WASHINGTON AND CLEMSON WIN?
The selection committee uncorks a few bottles of wine and gets to sleep an extra hour Sunday.
Clemson was No. 3 in the last committee rankings and Washington was No. 4. The committee said Michigan was a really close fifth, but the Wolverines do not play while the Huskies can add a victory against Colorado and a Pac-12 title. The Huskies should be just fine.
The only intrigue on Sunday would be if the lack of a conference title drops Ohio State from No. 2 to three or four.
WHAT IF WASHINGTON LOSES?
Colorado, which is eighth going into the…