Lothrop Sports

Connor Lothrop If you are an American sports fan who does not really have a grasp on the workings on the transfer market of European soccer, you’re in luck; it’s not really that complex of a system. At least, not compared to the horrors contained in the various Collective Bargaining Agreements of the NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL, and—the worst of them all—the MLS. Where all those leagues have rules about trades, salary caps, and free agency, European soccer has money. Most player transactions in soccer are straight up player-for-money deals. Once the player has been sold to his new club, he signs a new contract and starts practicing with the team right away. A player can also be loaned from one team to another for various reasons. A loan rarely involves money changing hands, except for the team taking control of the player paying his wages until he returns to his parent club. There is the occasional player for player swap (like the Henrikh Mkhitaryan/Alexis Sanchez orchestrated by Arsenal an...

Connor Lothrop Baseball’s offseason has been getting slower and slower by the year. Top-level signings and blockbuster trades had been entirely non-existent, until AJ Pollock signed for the LA Dodgers today. The extended will-they-won’t-they trade scenario with Miami and JT Realmuto has swung decidedly to nada, despite the weak market of catchers in contending teams. Before the Pollock signing, he biggest news of the the new year was Diamondbacks-Yankees trade for a replacement level utility man and the Tampa Bay Rays signing of OF Avisail Garcia. In fact, the most exciting storyline of the offseason has been Heisman Trophy winner and Oakland draft pick Kyler Murray’s decision to declare for the NFL Draft. Whether or not he will report to The Cactus League for spring training with Oakland remains a mystery. However, the MLB’s leading story since the Red Sox World Series victory has been the incredible, slow burn free agencies of OF Bryce Harper and SS/3B Manny Machado. Both have be...

When will we learn that the New England head coach is simply going to outsmart opponents Connor Lothrop Midway through the fourth quarter of the Patriots’ 41-28 drubbing of the LA Chargers, CBS color commentator Tony Romo encapsulated the Patriots approach under Belichick in one sentence: "The Ravens did a good job of containing the Chargers last week, so Belichick decided to say, 'Let's go out, stay after and work hard an extra two hours a day, and we're going to become the Ravens.'" And emulate Baltimore they did. The Patriots had an almost perfect first half performance, jumping out to a 35-7 lead at the break. All of this is due to what the Patriots have done best for nearly 20 years in the playoffs; creating a gameplan and executing it. The previous week, the fifth-seeded Chargers bottled up the lightning Lamar Jackson, the latest in a succession of running quarterbacks. In order to counter his speed, the chargers mainly left four linemen in th...