Sports

He was already serving a lengthy prison sentence; now onetime St. Louis Rams running back Lawrence Phillips is being charged with murder in the death of his cellmate. Phillips was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend and other charges in 2006.

The new charges against Phillips, 40, stem from the death of his fellow inmate at the Kern Valley State Prison in California this past spring. Officials are accusing Phillips of strangling Damion Soward, 37.

On Wednesday, in honor of footballs that are inflated, we must discuss extra points. The NFL is monkeying around with the extra point again. You think it should? Do you have a better idea? Do we even need an extra point? Why do we have an extra point?

Well, the extra point is vestigial, a leftover from the good old 19th century days when football had identity problems and couldn't decide whether or not it was rugby. Or something. At that point, in fact, what was sort of the extra point counted more than the touchdown itself.

In the latest high-profile change for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, organizers withdrew their games' official logo Tuesday, after weeks of heavy criticism. A graphic designer had filed a lawsuit over the resemblance to his own work.

Belgian designer Olivier Debie first complained about the logo soon after it was unveiled in July, saying the image presented by Japanese designer Kenjiro Sano was too similar to one he created for the Theatre de Liège in 2011. Debie had noted that his logo was widely shared on Pinterest.

Though they were not victorious in Sunday's Little League World Series title game, the Red Land Little League Team received a hero's welcome from fans in Lewisberry, Pa., Sunday night.

They lined the streets, cheered and waved signs for a team that still owns the bragging rights to the title "United States champions," which they won on Saturday. But the next day, Red Land came up short in a tension-filled Little League World Series title game — jumping out to an eight-run lead but ultimately losing 18-11 to Japan.

Always, the ever-tantalizing, ever-impossible discussion in every sport revolves around who's the greatest player ever. It's so difficult trying to compare champions from different eras, but it's a constant party game and especially in vogue now, as Serena Williams prepares to try to win the U.S. Open. Doing so would not only give her the first tennis Grand Slam since Steffi Graf won in 1988 but would give Williams her 22 major titles, tying Graf at the top of the tree.

The clubs, balls, vast verdant courses, garish outfits: Golf in America has arguably become rather ho-hum and predictable as the 2015 PGA Championship tournament tees off this week at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wis.

Updated at 2:46 p.m. ET

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the NFL appeared in a Manhattan court today to update a federal judge on whether both sides are any closer to resolving a dispute over the quarterback's pending four-game "deflategate" suspension.

The public portion of the hearing lasted approximately 80 minutes before U.S. Judge Richard Berman met separately with Brady and league officials in private.

It's been less than a year since a domestic violence scandal erupted in the National Football League. The infamous Ray Rice video from last September and the league's mishandling of the case plunged the NFL into an unprecedented crisis.

It also spurred the league into action after years of doing little or nothing about the problem of domestic violence. The problem continues, and so do the efforts to fight it.

NFL Football Hall of Famer and longtime sports broadcaster Frank Gifford died Sunday at his Connecticut home at age 84.

He "died suddenly this beautiful Sunday morning of natural causes," the family confirmed in a brief statement.

Receiver and running back Gifford attended the University of Southern California on a football scholarship before going pro. He played for the New York Giants in a career on the field that spanned 1952 to 1964. He made the Pro Bowl in seven of his 12 NFL seasons.

Americans love competitors — in business, in politics, and in sports. And for some of us from the bad old days when only the guys got to play team sports, it's a very special thing to see women blowing through doors that not so long ago were closed to them.

Because college football and basketball are so prominent, when the best players move up to the pros they're already well-known.

However, baseball's different.

How many of you pretty good sports fans can tell me who won the baseball College World Series just a few weeks ago? Same with the players. Even the stars drafted highest are anonymous except to the real cognoscenti. And even then, whereas invariably the can't-miss prospects in other sports don't miss, hardly ever miss, in baseball nobody ever says: Can't miss. Fact is, the ones who miss too often are the scouts.

Greg Louganis is the best diver of his generation — perhaps the best the world has ever seen. The four-time gold medalist is the only man to ever sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympics.

The new documentary Back on Board, by director Cheryl Furjanic and producer Will Sweeney, contrasts that success with the inner turmoil Louganis experienced rising to stardom at such a young age.

According to a review of the results of 12,000 blood tests, the world of track and field has a doping problem that is as big as the one cycling had at the height of Lance Armstrong's popularity.

That's according to the Sunday Times and Germany's public broadcaster ARD/WDR, which obtained a leak of documents with the bloodwork of 5,000 athletes.

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper, a premier wrestler in the now-WWE during the 1980s and 1990s who fought Hulk Hogan and Mr. T in the main event at the first WrestleMania in 1985, has died, the company reports. He was 61.

No need to be a baseball fan to get caught up in the drama that unfolded before our eyes during the television broadcast of the Mets-Padres game at Citi Field in New York on Wednesday evening.

It wasn't a baseball drama, but a life drama that puts all of us — and our reliance on, and misplaced confidence in, Twitter (and other new technologies of would-be connectedness) as a source of information — on the spot.

Americans have been intentionally ramming cars into each other for sport for decades. And at this time of year, fans crowd into county fairs to see battered, souped-up cars bash each other to pieces.

This steel equivalent of blood sport draws a passionate following, and the drivers say it is deeply addicting.

"There's nothing better," says John Green, a demolition derby driver at a recent fair in Franklin County, Kan. "A lot of people say they would do it, but until you get in there and do it you never know the real feeling."

A couple weeks ago, Code Switch blogger Gene Demby and I sat down to reflect on a decade-old sports moment — a single play in a single game — and describe how it affected us as rival fans of the teams involved. In this second episode of the series we're calling The Giant Foam Finger, the two of us tackle a far unwieldier subject: hatred.

In the famous Disney movie, a carpenter named Geppetto longed to have a son. He carved a puppet of a boy, and, wouldn't you know it, the wooden Pinocchio magically became a real child. Fantasy games are the Pinocchio of sport, for all who play them become Geppettos. Isn't it the dream of every fan to construct his or her own team, as Geppetto wanted to carve out a son?