Leicester, the NFL head coach and Brexit

IT was a contentious decision of national significance – game-changing even – that has already prompted some of its key players and more than 600,000 people to call for a re-run or for the final result to be overturned.

Sean Payton in his Leicester Panthers kit. Photo: Arlo White

However the decision has been made and whatever the rights and wrongs the country, the whole world, must accept that it is the Los Angeles Rams and not the New Orleans Saints that will represent the National Football Conference (NFC) in Super Bowl LIII against the immovable empire that is the New England Patriots.

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Record of the year: The Story of O.J. – Jay-Z

“O.J like ‘I’m not black, I’m O.J’…okay”

THE seeds of the record of the year 2017 can be found in the seven months leading up to last January.

In May 2016 US cable sports channel ESPN released its five-part documentary O.J: Made in America. That August American football player Colin Kaepernick, while a member of the San Francisco 49ers – OJ’s hometown team where he brought his famed playing career to an end – remained seated on the bench as his teammates stood for the US national anthem ahead of a pre-season game.

Gridiron, doping and sporting redemption

Jason Livingston went from the Olympics to a Welsh American Football team via Cardiff City

BRITISH American Football has agreed an anti-doping code – which might seem strange for a sport that off the field has more in common with Sunday league than it does the NFL’s Monday Night Football – but it brings back memories of the game’s connection to one of British sport’s most infamous doping cases.

Jason Livingston # 44

In July 1992 the world’s best athletes had gathered in Barcelona for the Olympic Games but as the track and field events were due to begin promising British sprinter Jason Livingston was heading home in, as these things are always reported, “disgrace”.

Britain’s American Football Warriors

"It's the sport of kings, better than diamond rings/That's why we're here to sing, football/Sundays in the snow, referee's whistle blows/Weekend warriors toe-to-toe, football."

WHAT can better encapsulate the 1980s than an LL Cool J rap, a Goldie Hawn film and American Football? Ladies Love recorded his feelings for America's game in Football Rap, the theme tune to 1986 comedy Wildcats.

Will Johnny Football be a winner on Super Bowl Sunday?

THE World Championship – or to be more precise the NFL title – is up for grabs on Sunday but could the real Super Bowl winner be a still amateur college student? 

Super Bowl XLVIII – or 48 if you must – pits the league’s best offensive team, the Denver Broncos against its best defence, the Seattle Seahawks in a fitting collision of rival forces.