Weekly sports columnist Matt Hooper takes sports to a place it’s never been… improv theatre.

With the start of the 2009 college football season just days away, fans are beginning to wonder what they can expect from first-year Auburn coach Gene Chizik. Well…

It occurred to me as I was watching the Hall of Fame Game last Sunday [...]

By now – regardless of how much or how little obsessed you are with football, you should be familiar with the tragic and bizarre shooting death of McNair and his 20-year-old girlfriend Sahel Kazemi at McNair’s condominium in Nashville.

Ever wonder what it’s like working with Matt Hooper and Kyle Whitmire? We talk in circles a lot and drive all of our co-workers crazy. Take this week for example, when we riffed on the NCAA…

ESPN college football analyst Chris Fowler discusses the impact of spring football across the nation after Alabama’s record crowd in 2007.

New York’s Radio City Music Hall will be overrun with football fans during the 2009 NFL Draft beginning April 25. Detroit, a few months removed from the worst season in league history at 0-16, will make the first of 256 picks.

NFL players lost at sea, Birmingham sets a tennis attendance mark, A-Rod bitten by the karma bug…these are but a few of the signs that the end is near.

From Manny Ramirez to Andre Smith, more and more athletes are making bad financial decisions, which would be bad enough if it weren’t for the recession.

If you didn’t get enough Terry Bowden in this week’s paper, then you’re in luck! Here are those extended interview excerpts we promised from Matt Hooper’s conversation with the former Auburn and new UNA head football coach.

Terry Bowden, the scion of coaching legend Bobby Bowden and the former head coach at Auburn University from 1993 until 1998, has returned to the sidelines after an 11-year hiatus. He takes over the reigns at the University of North Alabama in Florence after former coach Mark Hudspeth elected to join Dan Mullen’s new staff at Mississippi State.

Tim Tebow. Sure he’s great…a great quarterback, great leader, great human being…and no fan can honestly deny that they wouldn’t love to see him wearing their team’s jersey. So why do we hate him so much?

In part two of our year-end NFL blowout, we present the worst 2008 had to offer. The worst players, worst team, worst game – even the worst product placement – of the 2008 season is chronicled below. And yes, there will be Brett Favre.

In an average year, the NFL can’t carry college football’s jockstrap. The college game is more passionate and more affordable than the pro alternative with only a fraction of the prima donna element. But 2008 was no average year.

Are pro sports leagues recession proof? It appears that some are not. While the NFL is busy cost-cutting and laying off workers, the Arena Football League has gone bust.

Auburn fired Tommy Tuberville for this? Gene Chizik’s 5-19 record is hardly impressive in a league that includes the likes of Saban, Richt, Meyer, Miles, Petrino and Nutt. Regardless, he’s the Tigers’ new head football coach.

It used to be, that human beings watched football teams play each other on the field, and used their own judgment to determine which team was better than the other. That was then, BCS is now.