Author Archives: Nicholas Thorne

The biggest story leading up to Super Bowl XLI is not that Peyton Manning will finally get a chance to silence his critics or that the game features two historic franchises that haven’t won in far too long. Rather, it is that this year marks the first time in NFL history that one of the »

When the New York Giants drafted Tiki Barber, they could never have expected him to produce the way that he did. In his 10-year career, the Virginia graduate rewrote the Giants’ record books. He compiled all-purpose yardage at a rate comparable to the best backs in the history of the game. And yet the question »

Amid the clatter and commotion of last Thursday night’s fencing match versus NYU, I noticed something you don’t often see on collegiate uniforms: Emblazoned across the backs of some Yale fencers was “USA.” Diana Schawlowski, from Germany, and some of the other non-American fencers had the names of their own countries written in faded letters »

Ivy League Champions! It’s a phrase attached to Yale teams less frequently than some would like. So, to those members of the 2006 football team, congratulations are due. On the Wednesday before The Game, I argued that the team’s seniors could make a lasting impression on the Yale football family by instilling a winning attitude »

As of last Thursday or Friday, I would have told you that there was a new “Game” in town, that Harvard didn’t really matter, and that, because of new tailgating regulations and Yale’s chance to clinch a share of the Ivy League title at home, there wasn’t even any need to go to Cambridge this »

Lance Armstrong has made a career of setting goals and achieving them. Actually, Lance Armstrong has made a life out of this process. When doctors told Armstrong that cancer was invading his organs, he designated a very simple target — recovery — and achieved it. So it comes as no surprise that on Sunday in »

The play is called “Hard to Kings Right Idaho Yellow.” On paper, it’s a play action pass with the tight end dragging from the backside at about five yards. The twin receivers split out to the play side and run a smash-route pattern, with the slot receiver running a deep corner route and the split »

“This is what college sports should be like. These are student-athletes,” proclaimed the father of a Yale club hockey left wing on Saturday night. The students I saw skating clearly had mixed levels of experience, natural talent and competitive drive. But they were all out on a Saturday night at 8:30 playing in front of »

It’s been dubbed the “Cathedral of Sport,” with its Gothic tower soaring characteristically above the New Haven skyline. Payne Whitney Gymnasium is to athletics what Sterling Memorial Library is to books. In the entrance foyer, there is the cool of dark green marble and an eerie silence. But around each corner and down every long »

You can smell it in the air. The mercury is dropping. The leaves are turning. Fall has arrived. It’s October, and for some of us that means one thing: Major League Baseball playoffs. Which also means that I will not bore you with my usual isn’t-it-great-that-this or it’s-too-bad-that-that. Nope, what follows is a series of »

All the way back in February, I, the proud owner of a 20-game New York Yankees Season Ticket Plan, scanned the tickets I had bought. My eyes immediately fell on three dates this past weekend. Yankees vs. Red Sox. My mouth watered with the expectation of what this series might theoretically imply. An American League »

With the kickoff of the NFL’s season on Sunday, millions of Americans gladly spent hours sunk into their couches. Professional football’s popularity is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, America’s “pastime,” Major League Baseball, is struggling to deal with the integrity of its records and the rampancy of steroid use among its biggest and most popular »