Tai Tuivasa and coach Shaun Sullivan go back a long way. Growing up playing rugby league in western Sydney — Sullivan played with one of Tuivasa’s older brothers — their sporting endeavors have long been intertwined. Now, more than a decade on from when a 15-year-old Tuivasa was the second heaviest player at Penrith Panthers
7:57 AM ET Top-ranked Alabama kicks off its campaign Saturday as one of the biggest preseason national title favorites of the past 20 years. The Crimson Tide are around +180 to win the College Football Playoff at sportsbooks around the nation. Since 2001, only USC (+160) in 2005 and Alabama (+175) in 2018 had better
6:50 AM ET ESPN Fantasy The ESPN staff got together for the last fantasy football mock draft before the start of the NFL season, this time using a 10-team, 1/2 PPR format. Choose your league size, customize the scoring and set the rules you want to follow in order to create the fantasy football league
6:54 AM ET Nobody has a more stacked lineup of fantasy football analysts and NFL team reporters than ESPN. It’s the rare “backfield by committee” that is actually a good thing for fantasy managers. Ready for kickoff? Sign up now to play with friends and family. Get started >> Throughout the preseason, our NFL Nation
7:00 AM ET Jeff PassanESPN Close ESPN MLB insiderAuthor of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” He’s the old guy in the room now, and that is not an easy fact for Manny Machado to accept. At the All-Star Game in July, a week after his 30th birthday,
8:00 AM ET Anthony OlivieriESPN.com WHEN DAN LANNING walks out onto the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where his Oregon Ducks will face Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, it’ll be hard to forget from where he came: a $1,200-a-month job under Nick Saban just seven years ago. Lanning remembers the eyebrows that were raised when
7:00 AM ET ATHENS, Ga. — One day this summer, Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett knocked on an apartment door, wearing a mock U.S. Postal Service uniform. He handed a package to a woman who answered the door. “Hey, here you go,” Bennett told her. “This place is nice.” “Excuse me, why is Stetson Bennett actually
Rashid Khan is most pleased with the young crop of Afghanistan fast bowlers taking responsibility and learning from every outing. He believes this has played a massive role in the team developing as an all-rounded attack, unlike earlier when they were heavily reliant on spin. Left-arm fast bowler Fazalhaq Farooqi has been most impressive, swinging
10:04 PM ET ESPN News Services ATLANTA — Rookie Spencer Strider had 16 strikeouts to set a Braves record for a nine-inning game and allowed just two hits in eight innings to lead Atlanta to a 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies on Thursday night. Strider fanned his last two batters with two runners on
1:30 AM ET PITTSBURGH — Finally, blessedly, the Backyard Brawl returned to college football on Thursday night. Fans saw a game to tell their grandkids about, but were also reminded of the emotion, hatred and yes — profanity-laced chants — that go hand-in-hand with this lost rivalry. Eleven years separated the most recent matchup between