FBI has reportedly planned to have its agents train in MMA ( Mixed Martial Arts ) Writer: FBI 's Kash Patel's plan to have agents learn martial arts is "surreal" and "whacky" Writer: MMA is sport, yet there is nothing remotely sportive about a genuine genuine martial art.

He says martial art is, ultimately, homicidal in character.

There are doubtless those, including many a Second Amendment enthusiast as well as those within the martial arts and self-defense world, who would object to this characterization.

The telos of the study of a martial art is make its students into maximally efficient killing contraptions, peerless combatants.

FBI agents and all decent civilians should, strictly for purposes of defending themselves and their loved ones, train in martial art.

Steve Thompson threw the ball to teammate Lewis Moody in a line-out, setting up the play that led to England ’s 2003 World Cup victory.

Thompson has spoken of routinely scrummaging more than 100 times in training, causing him to black out and the blood vessels in his eyes to burst.

He has been diagnosed with early onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) Four players alone died in the 2018-19 French season .

In 1987 , the average number of tackles in a game per team during the first ever World Cup was 48 .

By the 2023 edition, that had risen to 169 tackles and 114 carries.

Between 2002-03 , when the RFU began recording injury data, recorded concussions in the Premiership rose from around 40 per season to above 160 by 2019-20 .

Mark Gastineau has filed a $25 million lawsuit against ESPN over showing and promoting a clip from 2002 in which he berated Brett Favre for “taking a dive” so New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan could break the NFL single-season sack record.

The lawsuit claims that ESPN used the video “without his consent or permission” and led to him having “been attacked on social media with ridicule, scorn and contempt”.

The Reason Friends and Family Bracket Contest is free to enter and there is no obligation.

The deadline for bracket entry is March 20 at noon ET for the men's bracket and March 21 for the women's.

Winners

for each bracket will win $ 750 .

Look out for the first installment of Reason 's new sports and politics newsletter, Free Agent.

The Philadelphia Eagles have accepted an invitation to the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl victory.

This ends weeks of speculation that the team would not attend any celebration hosted by President Trump .

The Eagles won their first Super Bowl in 2018 , during President Trump ’s first term.

The Golden State Warriors were the most memorable team to reject President Trump publicly.

Whoopi Goldberg defended the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status , aka “transgender”) agenda with the now quite stale argument that “God doesn’t make mistakes.” Bob Greene : Goldberg ’s theory does not support her MUSS agenda but refutes it.

Greene: If the female athletes “know what they’re doing,” Goldberg should listen to them.

Whoopi Goldberg said in a 2014 episode of Late Night with David Letterman that she would lose 6 -0 to Andy Murray in five to six minutes , maybe 10 minutes if she were to play men's number one Andy Murray .

Williams , a “Have you seen female athletes?!” type if ever there were one, doesn’t be surprised at her delusion.

Goldberg is expressing the feminist view that prevailed in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s .

Basketball is the only sport that incentivizes teams to break the rules and to get caught doing so, writes Aaron Carroll .

Carroll: NBA Rule 12 , Fouls and Penalties gives teams incentives to foul and get caught.

He says teams often foul poor free-throw shooters as a defensive strategy in hopes that they can regain possession with the other team scoring less than two points.

Carroll says the rules reward such strategies, but in football, penalties punish the offending team by moving the ball closer to its goal line.

In the NBA , television ratings are down 28 percent on ESPN , while viewership has also fallen for men’s college basketball ( 21 percent ) and women's basketball ( 18-24 percent ) NBA is considering a variety of drastic changes, including shortening games from 12-minute to 10-minute quarters .

Instead, basketball could address many of its issues by embracing the rule of law and a penalty structure that disincentivizes rule breaking.

By embracing principles of the rule of law and by properly aligning penalties with incentives, the game of basketball would become better, faster, and more enjoyable, and an even truer test of skill and strategy. In this respect, the game of basketball might benefit from lessons learned in those other courts..

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Premier League football clubs fleece their paying customers.

We, the fans, are prisoners of the rapacious owners who have the laws of supply and demand horribly skewed in their favour.

Our only countervailing, and somewhat feeble, power is to envelop them with suspicion and rudeness.

Instead of grinching and whinging about our teams and the Premier League , we should celebrate them as a sporting joy.

The standard of play is often breath-taking and the games are competitive.

The influx of foreign players and managers has elevated the spectacle.

The TV rights provide a great deal of the money that generates the quality worth about 3 billion a year.

A lot of that goes to the players, now hugely rich compared to the era of Bobby Charlton and Bobby Moore .

But a lot of it has gone to build stadiums that are safer, larger and infinitely better.

A dozen Democrats were approached in Washington , D.C. , and asked to respond to recent comments by California Governor Gavin Newsom on trans-identifying males playing in female sports leagues.

Newsom called the situation “deeply unfair” to women.

Last week , Senate Democrats voted to block a Republican bill that would strip federal funding from schools that allow biological males to participate in female leagues.

Claudine Toutoungi ’s most recent collection is “ Emotional Support Horse ” (Carcanet, 2024 ) Claudine 's most recent work is Emotional support Horse’ (Car canet 2024) You have to be tough In this life. You need grit, muscle, ideally topdown private cover for your gums.’.