Sports Movie of the Week

The Los Angeles Kings captured their first Stanley Cup title on Monday night. Their improbable title run made them the first eighth-seeded team to win the NHL championship. The California franchise is based in an area that is not a traditional hockey hotbed. The Kings should certainly be happy to silence critics who believed the team could never succeed in such an environment.

While millions will watch I’ll Have Another attempt to complete his improbable run at the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes this Saturday, thoroughbred horse racing remains far behind team sports in the psyche of American sports fans. But that wasn’t always the case.

With more than a century of history to its credit, baseball has inspired many movies. Few are as funny as ‘Major League,’ our Sports Movie of the Week.

The 2012 NFL Draft takes place this Thursday through Saturday. A much celebrated spring ritual for fans, draft day is also a time when the dreams of football players become reality. Each player chosen has his own unique back story, but some stories are more compelling than others.

Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) and mixed martial arts have become a significant spectator sport in the United States. With UFC 145 between Jon Jones and Rashad Evans on tap for this Saturday and a subsequent UFC on Fox event set for May 5, the ferocious sport continues to punch its way into the American mainstream.

Thanks to golfer Bubba Watson’s dramatic and improbable win at The Masters on Sunday, golf has once again found an audience well outside the well-heeled country club settings in which the sport is perhaps best known. Watson’s unique back story — a country-raised, self-taught pro with past family hardships — strikes a more common tone for a game long encumbered by a stuffy air.

April is a sports fan’s dream with the NCAA basketball championship, the NBA and NHL playoff push, golf’s Masters tournament, the NFL draft and, perhaps most celebrated of all the annual April sporting events, the opening of the Major League Baseball season. This week’s Sports Movie of the Week, ‘Bull Durham,’ is arguably the best baseball movie ever made and a perfect choice to get fans in the mo

After last week’s deluge of games, the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament has reached the regional semifinal round. The growth of the tournament’s annual ‘March Madness’ has helped make college basketball a money-making industry whose latest broadcast rights brought in more than $10 billion. As in any industry, the promise of wealth can lead to institutional corruption and ethical lapses

You’d never think of ice hockey of being the number one most popular team sport in the US, but there was definitely a time when it was.