Tag: Sports

LSU’s Orgeron ‘beaming’ after finally proving doubters wrong

What I’m Hearing: USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken was in New Orleans for the national championship and describes the emotions coming from LSU head coach Ed Oregon after his teams emphatic victory.

What I’m Hearing: USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken was in New Orleans for the national championship and describes the emotions coming from LSU head coach Ed Oregon after his teams emphatic victory.

Watch: My Three Favorite Alohi Gilman Moments at Notre Dame

What’s hard to account for is who takes over that leadership roll?

When things hit the fan and the wheels appear to be coming off, who steps up and demands the respect of the room and begins to stop the bleeding?

Gilman was fantastic at exactly that and No. 11 will be missed next season.

As you may or may not have heard, Notre Dame safety Alohi Gilman is taking a pass on his final year of eligibility and will enter the 2020 NFL Draft.

Gilman played the last two years at Notre Dame after spending his freshman season at the Naval Academy in 2016 and sitting out due to the transfer in 2017.

With Gilman gone the skill-level isn’t going to take a massive hit as Houston Griffith and Isaiah Pryor among others are waiting for their time to shine in blue and gold, but Notre Dame will move forward without one of their great leaders.

When I think of Alohi Gilman I think of a player who reeked of leadership whenever you heard him speak, watched his demeanor on the field or sideline and had a knack for making the absolutely huge play when it was needed the most.

With that in mind, here are my three favorite:

-Forced Fumble Creates Cure Craziness Against Vanderbilt

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What do sports betting lines mean?

A guide to translating the numbers and types of bets.

“Wait, why does this NFL team have a -235 next to its name? What’s with New England Patriots (-15) vs. Miami Dolphins (+15)? Help! HEEEELPPPP!”

If that sounds like you, we’re here to assist you. If you’ve stared at a board at a sportsbook or just seen spreads and moneylines on the Internet and been utterly confused, don’t worry. It’s not just you. Those numbers can be confounding.

But hopefully, once you’re done reading this, you’ll completely understand how they work. As you prepare to dive into the world of sports betting, here’s a breakdown of how the lines work, starting with …

Spreads

It would be really easy to bet on a game if you could put money on a heavy favorite to win.

That’s where point spreads come in. Let’s look at an example:

Philadelphia Eagles (-4.5)

New York Giants (+4.5)

In this case, you can bet on either two outcomes: you can put money on the Eagles to win the game by 4.5 points OR MORE, which makes them the favorites. Or you can bet that the Giants will either win or lose by LESS THAN 4.5 points. They’re the underdogs.

Now, sometimes the spread “moves” during the days leading up to the game. Perhaps the Eagles’ spread ends up being -3.5 (in which they must win by 3.5 points or more to give you a victory in your bet). Your bet all depends on whichever spread you bet on, whether it was when the Eagles were favored by 4.5 or 3.5 points.

If you ever see “PK” or “pick” next to a team, it means there’s no spread and you can bet on who will win, no matter what the score is.

Moneylines

Let’s take that same example above but use moneylines:

Philadelphia Eagles (-200)

New York Giants (+150)

The team with a minus symbol is the favorite, and the number is how much money you would need to bet to win $100. In this case, you would have to bet $200 on the Eagles in order to win an additional $100.

The Giants are the underdogs. If they’re +150, that means you could bet $100 to win $150.

Note that you can bet any amount you want, but those numbers are always calculated and posted the same way, either in how much money you would need to wager to win $100 or how much money you could win by wagering $100.

Odds

If you’re betting on something like the team who will win the Super Bowl in the future, you might see it look like this:

New England Patriots — 3/1

Baltimore Ravens — 5/1

Kansas City Chiefs — 8/1

If you were betting on the Patriots and their 3/1 odds, you would win $3 for every $1 you spend. So if you bet $50 on the Pats and they ended up winning the Super Bowl, you’d win $150 (plus your original wager) back.

Good luck!

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NFL power rankings: Cowboys and Eagles go in different directions

SportsPulse: The Eagles toppled the Cowboys in a pivotal NFC East showdown and Lorenzo Reyes tells us how this is reflected in the Week 16 power rankings.

SportsPulse: The Eagles toppled the Cowboys in a pivotal NFC East showdown and Lorenzo Reyes tells us how this is reflected in the Week 16 power rankings.

Jerry Jones says ‘radar is on’ for new coach

What I’m Hearing: USA TODAY Sports’ Jarrett Bell spoke exclusively with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones about the future of coach Jason Garrett.

What I’m Hearing: USA TODAY Sports’ Jarrett Bell spoke exclusively with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones about the future of coach Jason Garrett.

Kevin Durant is the sports social media MVP of the decade

What a decade it’s been for KD on Twitter and Instagram.

The 2010s, for better or for worse, became the decade social media went completely mainstream.

For sports fans, that meant so much more access to the athletes they love, which again, was for better or for worse.

There were gleeful trolls like Joel Embiid. There was LeBron James, king of the subtweet and Taco Tuesdays, who knew the power of social media to both deliver messages and delight the masses. We delighted when athletes did trending challenges like the rest of us and were in awe when they used their clout to raise money for causes and stood up for social justice.

But not many of them are Kevin Durant. And KD deserves our Best of the Decade hardware.

Let’s start with the fact that we’ve written about the Brooklyn Nets’ star’s Twitter and Instagram exploits countless times, and I think it’s because he acts like any other person does on the social media platform. He’s more than happy to log in late at night and respond to trolls, haters, television talking heads and die-hard fans. No egg avatar is too small, no blue check mark is too big to cast aside with a brutal response or the perfect comeback. Some critics might wonder why he wastes his time, but I think he gets a kick out of it. And he should!

It doesn’t make him petty. It makes him human.

That’s exactly why he created burner accounts, a “controversy” in scare quotes only simply because it made headlines and led to a lot of roasting from fans and fellow NBA stars (including Embiid!). But when ESPN’s Jay Williams asked him in March of this year about the saga, he had this to say:

“I wasn’t used to that amount of attention, you know, from playing basketball. I wanted a place where I can talk to my friends without anybody just butting in my conversations or mixing my words or taking everything out of context because I enjoyed that place.

“… I had an Instagram account that I just use for my friends and family. Like, it’s a cool place for me just to be me instead of worrying about Bleacher Report or Barstool mixing up anything I want to say.”

At the time, he called himself “a total (expletive) idiot” and was so mad at himself for going too deep with his use of burners to pose as someone else that he lost sleep over it. Again: doesn’t that seem human to you, especially for a person so famous who longed to be normal for a few hours on social media? Here, he owned the mistake and moved on. You have to respect that.

So as we enter 2020, remember: troll or insult him and other athletes at your own peril. They’re watching, just like you are.

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Should the NBA be panicking over low ratings?

SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports’ Mark Medina points out that load management, injuries and schedule have all played a part in low ratings for the NBA this year.

SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports’ Mark Medina points out that load management, injuries and schedule have all played a part in low ratings for the NBA this year.