Military Displays at Dallas Sporting Events Were Paid Ads

Attend any pro sports event in Dallas, and you’ll be overwhelmed by patriotism. There’s red, white and blue everywhere, the national anthem gets sung with gusto and, if you’re at a Rangers game on the weekends, they’ll wheel out “God Bless America” for the seventh-inning stretch. There are color guards…

What’s Next? A Way Too Early Preview of the 2016 Rangers.

Let’s not talk about the end of the 2015 Rangers season. We’ve dissected it too much already. The Rangers should not have made the playoffs. They had the American League’s seventh best run differential. They were lucky, outperforming their Baseball Prospectus third-order record expectation by almost eight wins. The Blue…

Rangers Dream Season Ends in Seventh Inning Nightmare

The Texas Rangers have never been through anything like the seventh inning of Wednesday afternoon’s ALDS Game 5 with the Toronto Blue Jays. Neither have their fans, not in the 43 years the team has been in Arlington. It was, from the first pitch thrown to Rangers second baseman Rougned…

The Rangers T-Shirt Arlington Deserves

On Sunday afternoon, with a 9-2 drubbing of division rival Los Angeles Angels, the Texas Rangers clinched the American League West title. Given the Rangers’ performance since their second consecutive World Series appearance in 2011, this should have been cause for unbridled celebration. But as slugger Adrian Beltre was shrieking girlishly under…

SMU Returns to NCAA Probation Glory Days

Correlation does not equal causation. We know that. But it’s certainly beginning to appear that whenever an SMU athletics program is on the verge of a national breakthrough, it’s also likely on the verge of NCAA sanctions. In the 1980s, the football team that achieved prominence built on the backs…

The Cowboys Are Going to Be Fine

Ignore it. Ignore (almost) everything that happened in the Cowboys 39-28 loss to the Falcons. Joseph Randle, the team’s newly minted starting running back, is not as good as he looked Sunday. He’s not going to score three touchdowns a game — he may not score six more this season…

10 Most Devastating Sports Injuries in Dallas History

Putting a list together of Dallas most psychically painful sports injuries was no easy task. For injuries to matter to fans — let’s stipulate that every injury matters to the player to whom it happens, especially in the NFL, where contracts aren’t guaranteed — the team being affected needs to…

SMU Stalks Teenagers on Social Media

College football players get scrutinized on social media. That’s one of the anti-perks of taking the world’s highest-profile unpaid internship. Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones, perhaps the 2015 Heisman Trophy front-runner, is probably most famous for his brutally honest 2012 tweet about not being at Ohio State to “play school.”…

Holy Crap. The 2015 Miracle Rangers Look Playoff Bound.

When last we checked in on the Rangers on August 7, they were taking in their first full breaths since the end of the 2013 season. Buoyed by the acquisition of erstwhile Philadelphia Phillies ace Cole Hamels, they’d put together eight wins in nine games, hauling themselves from 47-52 to…

Lone Star Park Racing Shut Down as Texas Gambling Fight Continues

The fight, the one that’s at least temporarily shut down all horse betting in the state of Texas, is over the ability of Texas horse track bettors to wager on the outcome of races that have already happened. Tracks want so-called historical racing terminals because they’re almost identical, at least…

The Six Most Misunderstood Figures In Dallas Sports History

Dez Bryant, as vividly illustrated in last week’s Rolling Stone cover story, is a man who emerged, barely, from a trauma and pain-filled childhood to become one of the best receivers in the NFL. Growing up in Lufkin, Bryant dealt with a crack-addicted grandmother, a mom who sold crack and…

Dallas’ Jordan Spieth Wins U.S. Open, Is Halfway to Grand Slam

Jordan Spieth is halfway to doing something no golfer has ever done before. With a one shot victory at Chambers Bay Golf Course near Tacoma, Washington, the Dallas-bred Jesuit grad won the U.S. Open Sunday, following up his record-setting win at the Masters in April. The 21-year-old became the first…

For Posterity, Here’s Joey Gallo’s First Major League Home Run

Rangers prospect Joey Gallo played in his first major league game last night. It went very, very well. Facing the expectations that come with being perhaps the Rangers’ most highly touted minor league hitter ever, the third baseman somehow didn’t disappoint. He knocked in two runs with a single in…

Rangers Set To Trade For Josh Hamilton, Which Is Just Weird

Calling the transaction that was ironed out over the weekend between the Los Angeles Angels and the Rangers a trade is misleading. The Angels are just giving Josh Hamilton to the Rangers, in addition to paying the vast majority of the $80 million left on Hamilton’s contract. No players are…