Unbalanced
The Unbalanced explores the world of sports and the culture surrounding it; from basketball to baseball, football, hockey, wrestling, and more.
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Stories in Unbalanced that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
Lovin’ the PWHL
The inaugural season for professional women’s hockey is well underway and I, like many North American sports enthusiasts, have cottoned on to the excitement of the games and the fanfare. Most of the women playing are relatively well-known through previous media exposure during Olympic games, World Championships and Rivalry matches between Canada and the United States. Yesterday, March 8, being International Women’s Day, I decided that I would pay tribute to the women of the world in my own little sports-minded way, and watch a PWHL game between the teams from Toronto and Montreal. Casually observing the new teams since the start of the season, I had suspected that the Women’s league was somehow different from the NHL and other men’s hockey leagues around the world. Sometimes these differences don’t show up during the Olympic games or World Championships because of the media focus on winning gold medals and the like. However, during a regular season hockey game, be it a men’s game or a women’s game, one gets a chance to really notice what the respective games are all about. I would therefore like to weigh in on what have formerly been suspicions but now are being seen as true differences between men’s and women’s professional hockey.
John Oliver SmithPublished 3 months ago in UnbalancedA Spirit That Fears Nothing
There are many sound reasons to repudiate professional sport in general and NHL hockey in particular. After all, the game has been as utterly defiled by cynical, avaricious late-stage capitalism as every other aspect of contemporary existence. The ordinary fan is incessantly encouraged by marketers and advertisers to gamble, guzzle alcoholic beverages and devour kilograms of fast food, which is a bald oxymoron if you contemplate it for a moment. Salaries are stratospherically inflated, as are ticket prices, and what passes for discourse generated by the participants in, and commentators upon, the game is so full of cliches and verbal false limbs that Orwell’s ghost will never stop screaming.
D. J. ReddallPublished 5 months ago in UnbalancedThe History of the Adams Division
I've followed the NHL in some form for 30 years, but I'm still learning about the league I enjoy watching. A long time ago, I did learn about the old divisions: Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe. These divisions predated the geographical ones that we've known for the last 30 years, and the rivalries were immensely intense during that period. This will be the first of four stories focusing on those classic divisions, and I'll start geographically, even though the names had nothing to do with location. First off, the Adams Division.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 5 months ago in UnbalancedA Look Ahead to Week 18 of the 2023 NFL Season
Week 17 kicks off tonight, but I want to take a look ahead to Week 18, the final week of the regular season. We all love the final week, don't we? We've really loved it since they changed the final week's schedule back in 2010. The final week always completes the league's playoff puzzle, it's do or die for a lot of teams looking to get in and even clinch divisions. However, a lot of games lacked a lot of drama, and even saw teams not give their all when they know that they can't move up in the standings. So in 2010, the NFL decided to make all of the final week's games divisional, because regardless of where a team is in the standings, that team wants to give their all to defeat a division rival.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 5 months ago in Unbalanced63 Strikes, You're Out!
They did it, folks. They finally did it. The Los Angeles Chargers actually fired Brandon Staley as their head coach, with the firing coming after the Chargers suffered a very embarrassing loss on national television. The Chargers were on the road against the Las Vegas Raiders, and it was a game that saw the Raiders absolutely pour it on. 63 points. Nine touchdowns--seven of them by the offense. The 63 points fell just 10 short of the long-standing record set by the Chicago Bears, who scored 73 points in the 1940 NFL Championship Game over Washington. However, the Raiders' 63 points are the most in team history, and marked the second time this season that a team scored 60+ points--the Miami Dolphins scored 70 points in Week 3.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 6 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 9 Recap: Nine Months
January 2, 2023. We all remember that Monday evening. The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals faced each other in what was the final Monday night game of the season. Regarding the game and the storyline, it was two teams jockeying for position in the AFC, as they were both in position to possibly take the AFC's #1 seed. This was an important game for both teams, but before the 1st quarter ended, there was suddenly something much, much more important than the game of football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 7 months ago in UnbalancedFantasy Football is BACK!
Despite being English, I have found myself becoming more and more enamoured with the sport that the Americans call “football”. Watching American Football in the UK used to be a most difficult proposition, aside from the Superbowl the only way to watch any action was a highlights show at 1am on a Wednesday morning. During the nineties and early 2000’s I was school aged, but after that coverage started to improve. In recent years Sky Sports have added the Thursday and Monday night games, as well as three Sunday matches. Even then, the absolutely baffling decision to host games only on nights when most people have work confuse me no end. But as my interest has grown, I’ve put additional effort into trying to keep up with the games when I can. My wife has since joined me in this interest, but unlike me she is a reasonable person, who goes to bed at a sensible time rather than staying up into the night watching foreign sports and typing up nonsense for strangers to read (4th wall break! Hi, thanks for reading).
Luke FosterPublished 9 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 1 Recap: A New York Minute
The NFL is back, and this fan was ever so eager for the season to start. My reasons were simple. One, I had a good feeling about Fantasy Football this year, and two, I'm a Yankees fan who wants to forget about this disaster of a season. With every new NFL season comes new storylines and new questions, and one of the biggest new storylines of the debuting 2023 NFL season had to be Aaron Rodgers making his New York Jets debut on Monday Night Football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 9 months ago in Unbalanced
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Cam Newton's Legacy with the Carolina Panthers
In 2011, with the first pick of the National Football League Draft, the Carolina Panthers drafted Cameron Newton, a Quarterback from Auburn University. For a franchise desperately in need of a quarterback, this seemed like the right pick, and it was. During his first few years in the league, Newton turned a relatively "bottom-feeder" team into a playoff-caliber team. The Panthers went to the playoffs three times in his first five years. Newton won the league's Most Valuable Player award in 2015 after taking the Panthers to a Super Bowl, where they would, unfortunately, lose to the Denver Broncos. In addition, he set the record for most combined yards(4, 784)and most combined touchdowns(35)for a first-year player.
Justin MenellPublished about 2 hours ago in UnbalancedWhat Went Wrong: Tommy Had a Candle--What's YOUR Excuse?!
Boy, did you guys blow it! Let's face facts, the New York Rangers had the easiest chance to reach the Stanley Cup Final. Their road to the Eastern Conference Final was easy, but could have been easier. They started 7-0 in this year's playoffs, similar to 1994 (we know what happened back then). Yet they lost Games Four and Five against the Carolina Hurricanes, and were actually on the verge of losing Game Six and causing "reverse sweep" talks to start. Thankfully, Chris Kreider decided to become superhuman in that third period.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished about 12 hours ago in UnbalancedSomers Moves into Second Round with 32-0 Victory over Panas
The Somers Flag Football season began with injuries and a string of losses. So the team figured an attitude adjustment couldn’t hurt. Dinners and off field get togethers, said Julia Schmidberger, “It built our chemistry as a team.” And the results revealed with a berth in the sectionals on May 9 at home versus Panas. But the Tuskers did more than show up.
Rich MonettiPublished about 13 hours ago in UnbalancedKulichenko Rules the East
Last weekend Winners Only covered its third straight NCAA east regional meet. Formerly known as the East Preliminary Round, now known as the East First Round, the top 48 athletes in each event took the track to finish in the top 12 and advance to the NCAA Championships. The action took place on May 23 and 25 in Lexington, Kentucky. Let's take a look at one of the top performers of the meet.
Winners OnlyPublished about 21 hours ago in UnbalancedKulichekno Rules the East
Last weekend Winners Only covered its third straight NCAA east regional meet. Formerly known as the East Preliminary Round, now known as the East First Round, the top 48 athletes in each event took the track to finish in the top 12 and advance to the NCAA Championships. The action took place on May 23 and 25 in Lexington, Kentucky. Let's take a look at one of the top performers of the meet.
Winners OnlyPublished about 21 hours ago in UnbalancedBrianna Smith Jumps to NCAAs
Last weekend Winners Only covered its third straight NCAA east regional meet. Formerly known as the East Preliminary Round, now known as the East First Round, the top 48 athletes in each event took the track to finish in the top 12 and advance to the NCAA Championships. The action took place on May 23 and 25 in Lexington, Kentucky. Let's take a look at some of the most memorable moments and people of this year's East First Round.
Winners OnlyPublished a day ago in UnbalancedRangers confirm migration: Five departures mark the end of an era at Ibrox
Rangers Football Club today confirmed significant restructuring at the club after the contracts of six key players expired: Borna Barisic, Ryan Jack, John Lundstram, John McLaughlin and Kemar Roof. This mass exodus marks the end of an era at Ibrox, as these players have played key roles in the club’s recent resurgence.
Sweileh 888Published a day ago in UnbalancedThe Kansas City Chiefs: It's Always Something
Remember when I said that this team was a likable version of the New England Patriots dynasty? Yeah...about that. So to say that the Kansas City Chiefs have had an...interesting offseason would be an understatement. They say, "Heavy is the head that wears the crown," but come on. This is no excuse for the way some of their players have been acting. Though, this isn't the first time there's been drama with the Chiefs; we all remember Tyreek Hill's legal problems, which (I believe) led them to move on from him, and they've won back-to-back Super Bowls since then. However, in the time that's passed since the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII, the drama is doing the same thing that Joe Burrow's done: own the Chiefs.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 2 days ago in Unbalanced
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