Andrew Kerth 
Football returns in nine days. The defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks open the 2026 NFL training camp season when their rookies report on July 17, the 49ers follow a day later, and by July 28, the leaguewide veteran deadline, all 32 teams will be in camp, beginning the six-week gauntlet that turns 90-man offseason … Read more
For 147 years, from the first championship in 1877 through 2024, every “out” at Wimbledon was called by a human being in a Ralph Lauren uniform. In 2025, that ended: the All England Club switched to full electronic line calling, retiring around 300 line judges in one stroke, abolishing the player challenge system entirely, and … Read more
For the first time in the World Cup’s 96-year history, the final will have a halftime show, and FIFA is not easing into the concept. On July 19 at MetLife Stadium, somewhere around 3:50 p.m. ET, Madonna, Shakira, and BTS will share a stage built in the middle of the biggest sporting event on Earth, … Read more
At 6 p.m. ET on July 31, Major League Baseball’s trade market slams shut, completely. Since 2019 there is no August escape hatch, no waiver-trade workaround, no second deadline: the July date is the only one, which is precisely why the final 48 hours have become baseball’s frantic midseason holiday, complete with all-night front-office phone … Read more
Tennis is the only major sport where the score goes 15, 30, 40, where zero is called “love,” where a tie at 40 is called “deuce,” and where nobody alive can tell you with certainty why. The scoring system is a 600-year-old inheritance from medieval France, so old that its original logic is genuinely lost, … Read more
If the Open Championship ends in a tie on Sunday, there’s no Monday round, no sudden-death coin flip, and no shootout at a single hole. The Open settles its ties with a format unique among golf’s majors: a four-hole aggregate playoff, played immediately, over a set stretch of the host course, lowest total score over … Read more
The winner of the 2025 Open Championship earned $3.1 million from a total purse of $17 million, numbers worth holding against the championship’s origin: the first Open, in 1860, paid its winner nothing at all. Not a reduced sum, nothing, the champion received a red leather belt to hold for a year, and when modest … Read more
Golf’s oldest championship has a naming problem that flares up every July: is it “The Open,” “The Open Championship,” or “the British Open”? The organizers are emphatic, it is The Open Championship, “The Open” for short, and the definite article is doing real work: this was the first, the original, the one all other “opens” … Read more
Every July, golf broadcasts fill with a word that most casual fans nod along to without ever quite defining: links. The Open Championship is played exclusively on links courses, it’s a requirement, not a preference, and the word describes something far more specific than “a course near the ocean.” True linksland is a particular kind … Read more
Wimbledon employs a hawk. His name is Rufus, he’s a Harris’s hawk, he reports for work before dawn during the Championships, he carries his own security accreditation, and his job title, printed on the pass, is “Bird Scarer.” Every morning before the gates open, Rufus flies patrol over Centre Court and the grounds to convince … Read more