Photo credit: James D. Smith/Dallas Cowboys Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys continue to avoid signing major free agents, a trend that dates back nearly a decade. By Morgan Knight As another NFL season comes to an end, franchises are in the process of rebuilding their teams in hopes of a successful season. The NFL’s…
Fact-Checks, Sports
Fact Check: Have Refs Favored the Chiefs in Crucial Moments?
By Jeffrey Jones Since the Kansas City Chiefs began their dominant run under Patrick Mahomes, accusations of officiating bias have followed them. Fans of rival teams have pointed to controversial calls in key moments as evidence that the Chiefs receive preferential treatment from referees. But is there truth to this claim, or is it just…
Fact-Checks, News, Quick Hits, Sports
The Rise of Black Quarterbacks: Separating Fact from Fiction
By: Lauren Smith Image of football players. Photo Courtesy of Flickr The 2023-2024 season was one for the record books. For the first time in NFL history, 14 Black quarterbacks started in week one. The National Football League has begun to acknowledge the existence of the Black quarterback. The quarterback is highly regarded as the…
Basketball, HBCUs, News, Sports
The Howard Men’s Basketball Team Make Their Mark
By: Kendall Lanier, student writer The 2023 MEAC Champions have left an impact on Howard’s campus and beyond. The Men’s Basketball program led by Coach Kenny Blakeny has brought new hype around the team. The team was able to punch their ticket into the NCAA Basketball Tournament to play Kansas University, the 2022 NCAA National…
Health, Sports
ESSAY: Simone Biles Ends a Bad Year Better Off
By Aaliyah Seabrooks In the midst of her muddled path to and through the Olympic summer games in Tokyo, it would have been difficult to imagine that four months later, Simone Biles would be celebrated as Time magazine’s 2021 Athlete of the Year. Midway into the competition where she had been expected to easily win several gold…
Black Lives Matter, Health, Sports
ESSAY: Naomi Osaka’s Journey to Self
By Janáe Bradford Naomi Osaka seemed to sense that the optics were unsettling, and out of character. She was a top-ranked professional tennis player still a month before her 24th birthday, and she already had earned more money in one year than any woman athlete in history. Yet, there she’d been for all to see: banging…
Basketball, Black Lives Matter, Social Justice, Sports
Getting Even by Getting into Ownership
By Monét Bowen Layshia Clarendon remembered the way they were—the way she and other members of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team felt so connected to owner Kelly Loeffler, and seemed to bond with her on issues both personal and political. Clarendon “shared meals with Kelly, stepped foot in her home…,” she recalled, “introduced her to…
Sports
Racist, or Not? It’s in the Eyes of the Beholders
By Gregory Smith Jr. First came the injury. For the third year in a row, arch rival Oklahoma whipped Texas in the Red River Showdown, a football classic. In Dallas, no less. In Cotton Bowl Stadium. (Seating capacity: 92,000.) In quadruple overtime. 53-45. It was a close contest with, unfortunately for some, a predictable outcome….
Sports
When Being First Matters, But Only So Much
By Monét Bowen The Washington Football team ended its season boasting about its victories in matters of top-tier diversity, ways that it had jumped ahead of other teams in the NFL, where 70 percent of the players are Black, but a vast majority of the head coaches and front-office executives are not. The team announced…
Sports
Discovered: Black Gold in the NFL
By Gregory Smith, Jr. It was 33 years ago when Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to be a starter and Most Valuable Player in a Super Bowl. Williams led the Washington Redskins to victory over John Elway and the Denver Broncos, 42-10. So much for those who had argued that Black athletes could…