The Chargers sputtered for a while yesterday, but finally turned it on enough to beat Tennessee and ensure that the Jacksonville Jaguars will be the next team to come into Foxboro and try to spoil the Pats' Date With Destiny. The Jags, everyone's chic pick to make a wild-card run in the AFC, barely beat Pittsburgh, but the consensus is that they're well-suited to giving the Pats as tough a game as they've had all......

BC was hoping for results similar to, or better than, the last time they saw Virginia Tech. That was the game back in October when the Hokies outplayed the Eagles for about 90% of the game, until Matt Ryan led an improbable comeback to keep BC's ACC title (and, at the time, national title hopes) alive. Well, so much for that. Virginia Tech outplayed BC for most of the game, including the last few minutes,......

Celtics coach Doc Rivers would have been entitled to skip last night's game in New Jersey. Spending the day at his father's funeral, 1000 miles away from the Meadowlands, he was fully prepared to call it a day and watch his team on TV. But his mom told him that Dad would have wanted him on the sideline, so Doc caught a charter flight and walked into the C's locker room an hour before game......

Maybe someday, when all this is over, we'll sit down with (or maybe without) Terry Francona and we'll all have a good laugh out of all of this. Because when it became obvious that Curt Schilling didn't have it (and he was OK, but clearly didn't have his A game, or even the B+ game he's been getting by with), maybe a different manager would have gone to Jon Lester, or Julian Tavarez (whoops! he's......

The nailbiting, the pacing, the swearing, the chainsmoking - they all end tonight. Except maybe at Tommy Heinsohn's house. Tonight, we find out the next step in the Celtics' drive back to relevance. Will Danny Ainge swing one of the deals we've heard about? Will we be welcoming Kevin Garnett (no way), Shawn Marion (probably not), Dikembe Mutombo (possible) or Bill Telfair? Or will Danny stand pat and actually use his #5 pick to draft......

Things were looking bleak in Canada yesterday. Leonard Cohen bleak. Down 3-1 after seven innings, the Sox looked like the "feast or famine" roller coaster was about to take another big dip. Then Manny homered to tie it. He's finally off the schnide, and only one behind Miracle Mirabelli now. Then in the bottom of the eighth, Alex Cora survived a tough slide by the Jays' Lyle Overbay to turn a rally-killing double play. Cora,......

Last night, the Red Sox absolutely tore up the Orange County Angels - whoops, the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, 10 to 1. The Wakefield-Mirabelli machine was in top form. Pitcher Tim Wakefield pitched a beautiful game, allowing only one run, and catcher Doug Mirabelli surprised everyone, hitting a home run. That homer galvanized the Red Sox, and everything went downhill for the Angels. When Jonathan Papelbon arrived at the plate mound to close, he......

There's two ways to handle a loss. Even if that loss is an utterly flat performance against an utterly forgettable K.C. team that made Gil Meche look like Christy Mathewson and Mark Grudzielanek look like Rogers Hornsby. The first way to approach it is, hey, it's only one game. Even the best teams in history lose more than fifty times a season. And Pedro lost Opening Day in 2004, and we know how that turned......

Who cares about any other sport? It's Red Sox Opening Day! They will be up against the Kansas City Royals late this afternoon at 4:10 pm. It will be on NESN and ESPN and on WRKO and WEEI if you're catching it on the way home. Here's the lineup from the official site: 1. Julio Lugo, SS 2. Kevin Youklis, 1B 3. David Ortiz, DH 4. Manny Ramirez, LF 5. J.D. Drew, RF 6. Mike......

The season has begun! Well, it really starts for the Red Sox tomorrow when they play against the Kansas City Royals, but we have a raging case of spring fever. The Red Sox held their last spring training game against the Phillies. With Daisuke Matsuzaka pitching, the team won 7 to 5. However, on Fox 25, we caught a glimpse of the Phillies' Pat Burrell giving Terry Francona the one-fingered salute. When people are flipping......

The NCAA final four is tonight, with Georgetown playing Ohio State at 6 pm and UCLA playing Florida at 8:47 pm. To which we say, go anyone but Georgetown! Apologies to Doc Rivers' son, Jeremiah Rivers, who plays on the team as a guard with burly center Roy Hibbert, but we can't root for the team that thumped Boston College. And the start of baseball season is tomorrow. Since the first game of baseball season......

Normally, we avoid Saturday Night Live like the plague because it just isn't funny. And we avoid Peyton Manning like the plague like any good Patriots fan. However, we saw clips of Peyton Manning on Saturday Night Live, and we were floored. We were laughing, and there's good reason why this athlete-service spoof is getting aired all over the place: The Bruins lost another one in a big way. The Pittsburgh Penguins took 'em down......

--Red Sox center fielder Coco Crisp is making the publicity rounds to remind everyone that he is back and ready to play after being hampered with a busted finger. He is also saying that he doesn't care what you, the fan, think about him: "I don’t care if people think I suck or they think I’m good. I just go out there and have fun, and hopefully the ball falls. . . . If the......

You probably read yesterday that Jonathan Papelbon will, in fact, be the Red Sox closer this year, and probably for years to come. Why they didn't just announce this at the beginning of camp, when we all suspected this was going to happen eventually, is beyond us. But we still love the idea of players blogging, if it means Dan Shaughnessy will fade further into irrelevance. The bad news in Fort Myers is that......

The brackets are here. Get it, and hide it from your boss! On second thought, your boss probably has one, too. The No. 1 seeds are Florida, North Carolina, Kansas, and Ohio State. Boston College is a seventh seed and will play against 10th seeded Texas Tech. At least they know what they'll be getting into with coach/professional nutter Bobby Knight. The Patriots buying frenzy continues, and they may have acquired a player who will......

OK, so maybe that 4th Super Bowl is a bit further away than Bostonist originally thought. The Pats were, sad to say, trounced by division rival Miami Dolphins on Sunday, 21-0. This one was ugly folks, from the jump. Alas, Bostonist should have had a bit of a clue that this could be coming, with Tommy's record down in Miami (a place he is under .500, 2-4 career) and the injuries the Pats were......