So the new director of football operations at New York City FC is American playing legend Claudio Reyna:

Reyna, 39, has strong ties to both MLS and Manchester City, and is one of the most decorated figures in American soccer history. He spent four seasons playing for Manchester City from 2003-07 before returning to MLS, where he joined the New York Red Bulls as the franchise’s first Designated Player. He appeared in 29 matches for the club before injuries forced him to retire midway through the 2008 season.

Reyna is leaving his position with the US Soccer Federation as Youth Technical director. This is as pitch-perfect appointment as Man City and MLS could envision. An former American international who featured in four World Cups, an ex-City midfielder, and a person with experience in youth development. That’s the appearance of course, and MLS has staged managed this with consummate professionalism.

Politically though, it was also an intelligent way to ingratiate City with the local football scene. I’m still waiting to see the chips starting to fall with regard to City’s owners, once the cable news cabal gets wind of it. But until then, smiles all around!

Sergio Garcia would like to remind us that racism still exists. Unfortunately, his method for doing so was not a public service announcement, but a joke aimed at Tiger Woods that referred to fried chicken. There are two things that are awful about this: 1) The public reinforcement of an incredibly demeaning stereotype that the majority of us would love to do away with; and 2) His attempt at irreverence wasn’t even remotely funny.

It all started two weeks ago during the Third Round at The Players Championship at Sawgrass. Tiger Woods decided to take a wood out of his bag – signifying to the crowd that he was going for the green on the par-five second hole – just as Sergio Garcia was taking his swing. The crowd cheered Woods’s decision, causing Garcia to slice his shot.

During a rain delay, Garcia vented some of his frustration while speaking with the Golf Channel:

Well, obviously Tiger was on the left and it was my turn to hit. He moved all the crowd that he needed to move, I waited for that. You do have a feel when the other guy is going to hit and right as I was in the top of the back-swing, he must have pulled a wood and everybody started screaming. So that didn’t help very much.

… and so it began.

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Today’s live episode of The Fix starts at 11am ET. Click here to vote in today’s poll. Bring your kindest Vinny Del Negro thoughts.

The NFL offseason is both a time, and a place. It’s a place where dreams can be made. Usually, football dreams, with the rah rah undrafted free agent Rudy types rising from the spring OTA ashes to their place of fall dominance. Ahhh yes, poetry.

But there are so many other dreams which are realized too. When they’re not doing things to sculpt their finely-tuned athletic machine bodies like lift weights, run, and eat apples, players have a lot of time to kill. A whole hell of a lot. That especially applies to players who are employed by teams that didn’t make the playoffs, as they haven’t played a competitive snap since early January, and as we sit here now in late May there’s still just over two months left until training camp.

That’s a chasm of space, and the mind wonders. For some, that leads to stupidity (hi, Mike Goodson). But others find the time to chase their entrepreneurial dreams with completely normal pursuits that you would associate with large football men. For example, Von Miller started a poultry farm at his Dallas area home earlier this offseason, and he also put chicken ink on his arm. That man loves his chicken.

So, how’s Plaxico Burress keeping busy? With his luxury men’s sock line, of course.

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“Jarome, can you please answer the question in such a way that it fits what I’ve already decided to write?”

The problem with the Stanley Cup Playoffs, in a way, is they focus greater attention on a smaller number of teams. This means writers who were previously writing things about the Avalanche or Flyers, for instance, are now writing about the Blackhawks or Rangers. National writers in particular, who have been paying attention to the various comings and goings of teams league-wide, descend on cities throughout North America like a plague of locusts and analyze everything with the most powerful microscopes known to man.

This, in and of itself, isn’t strictly a bad thing all of the time. National writers tend to be the very best in the business, well-connected and intelligent and insightful and knowledgable, much more so than, say, someone who just covers the Bruins all year long. But the problem is that in the ongoing pursuit of angles from which to view such-and-such a series necessarily leads to some rather silly observations, from national and local writers alike, to take hold and become part of the national hockey conversation to the point where it can dominate the zeitgeist.

Take the San Jose Sharks. They are good this year. Well, they’re good every year. But they’re good this year too. This in and of itself is no real surprise, especially because they’re not, like, exceptionally good. They finished sixth in the West, not great or anything, but up one spot from last year. That’s also down from winning-the-division-every-year. But the media’s narrative is that this year’s Sharks are different, likely because they swept the Canucks. The reason for this difference seemingly had very little to do with half of Vancouver’s roster being out injured, but everything to do with The Coming Of Age Of Logan Couture.

The number of times you’ve heard “The Sharks are Logan Couture’s team now” is near-astronomical and it must be said that he is indeed very, very good and probably, at age 23 and a multiple-year veteran, becoming a more vocal leader. But the way people talk about this team, you would think Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau — LOSERS WHO STINK AND CAN’T WIN — have been left by the curb with the bottles and cans to be picked up by the local sanitation department. This was only reinforced when Couture was the one who happened to score the overtime game-winner in Game 3 to help the Sharks avoid going down 3-0 in their series. This was one of 25 goals Couture has scored since the season began in late January, but this more or less random event, the result of a lengthy power play opportunity in overtime, lent credibility to the idea that he’s The Leader now. Thornton and Marleau, meanwhile, shuffle around in the background, mere point-a-game players in this postseason because, again, they are losers. And Couture is not, no matter how many games his team is down in this series with Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest announcements at yesterday’s Microsoft reveal of the Xbox One was their new partnership with the NFL. The technology for this collaboration is brand new, so it has potential to be great, or a disaster.

Here’s how it works: You’ll be able to sync your fantasy account and watch live NFL programming through your XBOX (obviously not free). When somebody scores, updates will be “snapped” to the right side of your screen (see image below). Of course, this is only for U.S. markets right now, but Microsoft has a global rollout plan that they haven’t released info on yet.

But the fantasy football aspect is just the beginning. The deal itself is worth $400 million over 5 years, and Microsoft will also be bringing their technology to the sidelines via Microsoft Surface tablets. The shots of wide receivers huddling around a binder, reviewing their previous drives will be no longer. Most of the paper will be substituted for tablets as early as 2014.

Giants splash game is tight tho

Baseball is the weirdest game. The season is so long that early season games seem almost meaningless. By the time September rolls around, even the most dramatic May walkoff victory is long forgotten. Just one of one-sixty-two, another victory of 90 if you’re a playoff team.

But in May, late-inning heroics fuel the game. It is the value of the unexpected that keeps so many of us coming back. You never really know what you’ll see – every at bat presents a fresh opportunity for amazement.

Last night, just a random Tuesday night in May, supplied more than its share of amazement. No baseball fan could ask for much more from a Tuesday night in late May. We saw walkoffs a plenty, dramatic home runs as precursor to those walkoff shots, great pitching performances and another historic night from a young player who already has a fair bit of history to his name.

It was baseball and it was awesome.

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With the bevy of rumours, reports and general speculation over Bryan Colangelo’s job status running rampant over the last few weeks, we’ve already had plenty of time to assess Colangelo’s actions and words recently. On that note, I’m not going to spend any time on Colangelo’s conference call with the media from earlier today after it was announced that he was being relieved of his General Manager duties.

Having said that, new Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Tim Leiweke held a much more candid media call on Tuesday morning that is worth talking about, so here are some talking points from that call..

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