If you like daytime drama and nighttime reality TV, you have to love Auburn. If you're a fan of hair-raising, jaw-dropping endings that go down in the most unthinkable, improbable ways, you should paint your face orange and blue, warm up your toilet paper throwing arm and scream "War Eagle!" at the top of your lungs at every opportunity. Nobody makes sports worth watching quite like the Tigers. In victory and defeat. In football, basketball, baseball, secret plane trips and e

How do you build a winning culture virtually from scratch? How do you lay the physical and mental foundation for a championship football team when, for two years, you don't play a single game? Lyle Henley understands. UAB's director of athletic performance will share his insight as one of the distinguished presenters at the Birmingham Sports Performance Coaches Clinic on June 1. Henley played a key role in building UAB's 2018 Conference USA championship team in the program's

If you're going to rip Gus Malzahn's offense, there are specific examples of well-documented ineptitude. See Clemson 2016, birth of the Coxcat. Or Clemson 2017, a k a Honk If You Sacked Jarrett Stidham. Until the bowl explosion against Purdue, the 2018 season produced too many duds and not enough fireworks. But to say Malzahn's offense "might be one of the worst offenses in football," as former NFL GM Michael Lombardi did in the wake of the NFL Draft, is beyond misguided. It'

If you don't think Alabama lives in Clemson's head, despite the mind-boggling events of Jan. 7, 2019, think again. The Tigers have removed all doubt by putting their biggest fear in writing. Dabo Swinney's fat new contract, making him the highest-paid coach in college football by total volume at $93 million over 10 years, contains an Alabama clause. To be precise, it's an "Alabama enhancement" that increases his standard buyout by 50 percent if his alma mater brings him home

Shame on you. Shame on all of you who wrote an email, attended a meeting, raised a voice or otherwise worked to keep a Major League Baseball Youth Academy out of George Ward Park - and thus out of Birmingham. You've succeeded, at least for the time being, in holding this city back and robbing this city's children of an enriching, enduring experience. Major League Baseball, at least for now, has turned its attention elsewhere, according to the MLB official who had been working

What's in a name? In this case, the bottom line is $15 million, or $1 million a year for 15 years, but the message matters far beyond the money. Protective Life Corporation lending its name to Protective Stadium through a long-term sponsorship agreement with the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex is more than a marketing deal. Protective didn't just give the new $174-million open-air multi-use stadium at Uptown a name. It gave us a lesson in how to protect this house. "T

Admit it. You wanted it. Not as much as he did, of course, but your desire was just as honest. Even if you once lost all respect for him, you wanted Tiger Woods to win the Masters. Again. Just one more time. After all these years, after all those self-inflicted indignities and career-threatening surgeries, you wanted the most dominant athlete of our time to return to that rare air. You wanted him at age 43 to scramble into the wayback machine and take you with him. And so he

There's something about the start of the Masters that turns every sports writer in the South into Scarlett O'Hara, before all her beaus ran off to fight the Yankees. The most hard-bitten hacks start gushing about azaleas, Amen Corner and Magnolia Lane. Makes me want to reach for my smelling salts. Not that I don't have my own Masters memories. Did I ever tell you about the time Tiger Woods and I went a few rounds at Augusta National? It's true. I swear on my vintage Wilson 1-

Samir Doughty, the glue guy on an Auburn team whose bond was essential to its unprecedented journey, committed the Final Four foul that will live in infamy. Eyes still red, he met the press at his locker and refused to blame the officials. "They're going to do their job the best that they can," he said. "The referees don't try to tell me how to put the ball in the hoop. I'm not going to tell them how to make the right or wrong call." The morning after, it was easy to see he c

No way no how nowhere should a game of Final Four magnitude be decided that way. Foul on Auburn? Maybe, but the official on the scene didn't hesitate to call it with .6 seconds left. Double dribble on Virginia a second or so earlier? Absolutely, but the two officials looking right at it flat ignored it. Their ignorance was the inexcusable, unconscionable difference in an incredible, unforgettable game. Make that call, and it's Auburn ball with a two-point lead with two second

I can hear the cynics and skeptics now. What did you expect? No one should be surprised. Fool me more than once, shame on me. I get it. The sad, sudden suspension of the Alliance of American Football, which includes the Birmingham Iron, before the end of its first season, feels like deja vu all over again. It's not the first time Birmingham has been failed by a spring football league, by poor planning, mismanagement or misguided decision-making at the league level. The statem

Never say never. Auburn's going to the Final Four. Never say a football school can't excel at basketball. Auburn's going to the Final Four. Never say past is prologue, history is destiny and you should stay in your lane. Auburn's going to the Final Four, for the love of Charles Barkley, and the Tigers spilled three gallons of blue blood to get there. No one in the history of college basketball had ever beaten Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky in succession in the NCAA Tourn

Truth, meet fiction. This magical Auburn basketball season, equal parts faith, trust and pixie dust (and more practical things that come in 3s), has arrived at Neverland. After the biggest, largest, hugest, most incredible, indelible, phantasmagorical victory in the program's existence, upon reaching the Sweet 16 and reducing the esteemed North Carolina Tar Heels to a puddle of Crying Jordans, these Tigers can't bask or rest. They can't fully mourn the heart-wrenching torn AC

A few thoughts on baseball, community and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Birmingham: What does Jayla Montgomery want to be when she grows up? A TV sports reporter. The teenager works toward that goal in one of the many vocational programs at the Major League Baseball Youth Academy in New Orleans. That program allowed her to spend a day last May working with the MLB Network, in front of and behind the camera, at a Yankees-Astros game in Houston. https://www.mlb.com/news/