athletes

Instead of sitting for the national anthem, one high school football player is getting praise for standing for it.

Olympians may have an extraordinary athletic gift, but they're not above practicing odd rituals to help them out.

It usually doesn't take more than a sentence or two with a sports guy, talking about any subject, before you receive some sort of bizarre superstition in reply. After Thursday's NBA Finals game 1, I was talking with one of our sports geeks about the series. "Well, you know the team that loses the first game will win the series." What? What kind of science or hokum is THAT based on? Read

The NBC Olympics website has been featuring videos called "Bodies in Motion". They're basically just montages of the athletes in slow-motion -- female athletes -- but the music they chose almost makes them feel like porn. Did we mention all the athletes are women? We did, huh.

The Sun City is no stranger to exceptional athletes. From Andy and Syd Cohen to Nolan Richardson, our area cranks out some notable players. With this in mind, we’re launching our “Athlete of the Week” feature online and on air.

Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is considering taking a leave of absence from the ice, and even wrote in a Facebook message on Saturday that “hockey’s just not that important right now.”

Former New England Patriots running back-turned-commentator Craig James failed in his bid for the Texas Senate seat vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. In fact, James wasn’t even close in the race that left him a distant fourth place in the GOP primary.

For many professional athletes, it’s hard to stay away from the court or off the field. During their free time, they will occasionally surprise fans by showing up for a game of hoops or to throw the pigskin.

Receiver Mohamed Sanu was the victim of a practical joke on Thursday night when someone called him pretending to be from the Cincinnati Bengals intending to draft him with the 27th pick. The Bengals wound up taking the Rutgers product in the third round and there were no hard feelings toward the kid who had pranked Sanu. But Sanu isn’t the first athlete to be the target of a hoax.

In a game on Tuesday night, Rockies’  pitcher Jamie Moyer, 49, became the oldest major league pitcher to earn a win. ”It’s a great night for the Rockies, as far as winning a baseball game. But it’s an historic night for one tremendous human being,” Rockies manager Jim Tracy said after the game.