SPORTS

When people talk about how college athletes can now get paid from their name, image and likeness – more commonly referred to as “NIL” – the focus is often on players at schools with big-time sports programs. This makes sense given the sheer size of some of the NIL deals that have been scored as of late by players who attend the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I schools, which tend to have larger student bodies and big budgets to support their athletic programs. For instance, Paige Bueckers, star guard on the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team, stands to earn more than US$1 million through deals with Gatorade and other companies. University of Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is reportedly worth $3.2 million thanks to deals with Nissan, Dr. Pepper and th...

Injuries are an unfortunate part of any sport – none more so than in the NFL, where players can be felled in front of a TV audience in the tens of millions. Typically, when a player suffers an injury, the media cuts to commercial and returns with replays of the injury – sometimes running it over and over, using every available camera angle, while analyzing what might have happened and the ramifications for the player and team. But in the case of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who collapsed to the ground after a tackle during the “Monday Night Football” game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals, it quickly became apparent that this was no broken arm or torn ACL. This was a matter of life and death. Paramedics worked to keep him alive on the field before he was transported to a...

For most college football coaches, the move from a mid-major conference to a Power Five conference would be met with widespread praise. Not so for Deion Sanders. When the Pro Football Hall of Famer announced he would be leaving Jackson State University, where he has coached the football team since 2020, to become head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, many ardent fans and supporters reacted with dismay and disbelief – particularly his fans and supporters from the Black community. Jackson State is one of 107 historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. Some HBCU alumni and supporters saw Sanders as betraying the cause of rejuvenating HBCU sports and returning them to a time when football greats such as Jerry Rice, Walter Payton and Steve McNair attended HBCUs as a s...