Ohio State lost its chance. North Carolina tried defending the national championship but couldn't hold off George Mason. Out. Xavier, Kentucky and Indiana -- gone. Kansas couldn't beat Bradley.   

Two years ago, the Xavier Musketeers taught us that all our most deflationary suspicions about college basketball are true -- the season matters only for the last six weeks and any team that doesn  

It can be a little daunting. A sheet of paper with 32 teams on two sides placed into brackets that whittle their way down to one center spot for the NCAA men's basketball champion. All across Ameri  

Try remembering the 12 years immediately before Bob Huggins and, if you can't, try to imagine them. On second thought, don't bother. That's probably the best way to remember the University of C  

In honor of the ancient Greeks, who originated the Olympics, we're reminded that nature abhors a vacuum. Today, a civilization owes its gratitude to Bode Miller, who extended the ancient wisdom f  

One is tempted at times to say Cincinnati really is in Kentucky, kind of the way Philadelphia really is in New Jersey. That in mind, the Cincinnati, Ky., athletic scene endured two earth-shatteri  

Ignore this, if you'd like. Spring training begins this week, and you know it's hard to be crabby about the Reds at the beginning of spring training, even when one's best judgment is crabby abo  

The Rolling Stones lasting twenty, thirty years -- what a stupid idea that would be. Nobody lasts that long -- very few novelists; the greatest directors don't turn out classic movies over a fort  

The most remarkable aspect of Super Bowl XL is that no aspect of it, except Jerome Bettis, is especially large. Not even 10 years ago, we couldn't get over the fuss we made about a little ol' fo  

Sketch out the ideal profile for the owner of the Reds, and behold the desire for a local with money to burn and the passion to back it up. After six years of Carl Lindner, who fired the odd silve  

So it ends, and the news is worse than expected -- not just a Bengals loss but the loss of their quarterback. And now we enter a worried offseason while Carson Palmer rebuilds his left knee and Ma  

It's good news that the Bengals proved they could beat the Pittsburgh Steelers by doing exactly that on Dec. 7. It also seems to have become bad news. Since that day, the Bengals have played fou  

To review the year in sports is to simply describe the present situation. The Bengals are going to the playoffs, the University of Cincinnati is playing basketball post-Bob Huggins and the Reds a  

We knew it would be different when they wrapped up Carson Palmer as the top selection before the 2003 draft and announced he would sit on the bench for a year. Nothing dogged the Bengals quite lik  

The Bengals' roaring success this year, combined with the Reds' decline to a 50-year low, has raised the question as to whether Cincinnati is a football town or a baseball town. As such, the qu