He probably didn’t plan it, but Matt Williams picked a great time to leave Arizona. Williams was part of the Arizona Diamondbacks — as either a player, partial owner, or coach — for every year of the franchise’s existence up until last October when he took the job as manager…
It’s a minor miracle that Arizona still has a professional soccer team. The Phoenix FC Wolves’ 2013 was nothing short of disastrous. The club ended its season with10 players on roster, 500 fans in the seats, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. It almost killed professional soccer in…
One of the key benefits of Major League Baseball’s impossibly long season is that it’s virtually impossible for a team to be out of the hunt early in the season. A team can be an absolute dumpster-fire in April and still have 120-odd games to prove that month an aberration…
Here’s how the Arena Football League works. It’s pretty much a passing league. There are only a handful of top-flight quarterbacks. So there are only a handful of contenders. The Arizona Rattlers have been entrenched as the team to beat largely because they have the best QB in the league…
The best and worst of fringe sporting events are the gimmicks they pick up to attract an audience. On the one hand, you’ll at least have a story to tell if the game is boring. On the other hand, there’s probably a German word for the special type of guilt…
There may not be an Arizona sports team with a more successful history than ASU’s baseball team. The Sun Devils have been a perennial contender for the better part of the last half-century, they’ve won five national championships, and they’ve produced some of the best major league players of all…
The Arizona Rattlers have dominated the Arena League for the better part of the decade. The good news for the Rattlers is that their good standing doesn’t seem likely to change this season. The Rattlers are returning nearly every key piece from last season’s Arena Bowl-winning squad. The bad news…
Opportunities to see high-level cricket in Phoenix are rare. Opportunities to see the plot of an underdog sports movie play out in real life are even rarer, which is what makes this weekend’s North American Cricket Championship intriguing.The three-match series at Nichols Park Basin, 700 North Higley Road in Gilbert,…
NASCAR has never been known for subtlety when it comes to corporate sponsors. Even by their standards, the name for this weekend’s race at Phoenix International Raceway — The Profit on CNBC 500 — has to be one of the most ridiculous in the history of the sport.While the race…
The Minnesota Timberwolves are wasting the prime years of Kevin Love’s career. Love is, arguably, the best power forward in the NBA, and yet the Timberwolves have failed to make the playoffs in his first six seasons. This is why you’re hearing trade rumors linking Love to the Phoenix Suns…
It’s rare that ASU’s men’s basketball team has a true star, but it’s fair to say that the Sun Devils have one this year in point guard Jahii Carson. In the last two decades, only three Sun Devils (James Harden, Ike Diogu, and Eddie House) have been selected in the…
It’s hard to imagine that home-field advantage could possibly be a thing in golf, but Phil Mickelson’s performances at the Waste Management Phoenix Open certainly make the case for its existence. The former ASU Sun Devil has won the tournament three times — including a dominant wire-to-wire win in last…
Monster truck rallies are wholly predictable; which is exactly what we love about them. You don’t know what you’ll get out of a baseball game or a movie, but you know a Monster truck rally is going to deliver basically the same product: a bunch of massive trucks launching themselves…
No matter how jaded you get, there’s something exciting about seeing something worth a ton of money. It’s why the Federal Reserve gives tours, it’s why cash booths are a thing, and it’s why they have previews for events like Friday’s Automobiles of Arizona Auction at the Arizona Biltmore, 2400…
Supercross hasn’t been a household word since Jeremy McGrath rode off into semi-retirement, but Ryan Villopoto is on the brink of reaching that level. Villopoto is the dominant rider on the circuit (he’s won the last three world championships) but a fourth straight title would match anything McGrath did on…
The Phoenix Coyotes haven’t given their fans much to celebrate in the last two seasons, but they’ve at least been exciting. The ‘yotes have seemingly been sitting somewhere between seventh and 10th place for the last season and a half. This has given championship implications to virtually every game the…
This season the Phoenix Suns seem to play to the level of their competition. One night the Suns will be competitive with top teams, the next they’re playing like garbage against bottom-feeders like the Utah Jazz. This inconsistency isn’t terribly surprising — the Suns are a very young team –…
The term “must-win” gets thrown around too much in sports, but Sunday’s is truly a “must win” game for the Arizona Cardinals. The Cards are in the thick of the playoff race despite not having won a divisional game since “Gangnam Style” was popular. This is something of an issue,…
Markieff Morris might be for real. The 13th player taken in the 2011 draft, Morris was wholly underwhelming in his first two seasons (he averaged nearly as many fouls per game as he did points) and figured to be little more than a role player on a bad team this…
Being lazy is almost an obligation these days. There is so much entertainment out there that you’re expected to consume that people get angry when you don’t consume it. If you don’t know what we mean, try telling somebody you never watched Breaking Bad next time you go to a…
If there’s any wide receiver whose immense talents have been wasted more than Larry Fitzgerald, it’s Andre Johnson. The two best wideouts of their generation, Fitzgerald and Johnson both spent the majority of their careers being on otherwise sorrowful teams. Now both players are starting to slowly decline the way…
Darrell Wallace Jr. made history last month; this month he’ll settle for winning more races. The racer became the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR national series in 50 years when he won October’s Kroger 200. In the process, Wallace climbed into eighth place in the NASCAR Camping World…
