MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports For Baltimore Ravens fans living in Cumberland, you were, in theory, between a rock and a hard place Sunday night as far as which team you wanted to see advance to play the Ravens in Sunday’s AFC championship game, the defending world champion Kansas City Chiefs or the Buffalo Bills,…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The circus is coming to Bawlmer, hons! Just call M&T Bank Stadium the Big Top, because the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens are going to square off for the AFC championship; and by circus, I don’t mean Taylor Swift. I mean Jason Kelce, the brother of Swift’s boyfriend…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports We used to sit in Cole Field House most weekdays reading the different newspapers that were suddenly to our avail — the Washington Post, the great Washington Star, the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore News-American, the New York Times and our own campus newspaper, the Diamondback. We usually found ourselves in Cole at roughly…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports All talk and plaudits of organizational strength, stability and adaptability, visionary player development, ingenious schemes and rich talent, while seemingly true, will be put to the test beginning (or ending) Saturday afternoon when the Baltimore Ravens host the Houston Texans in an AFC semifinal game. Will it be 2019 all…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Pitchers and catchers report in 29 days. Spring training opens in 39 days. Opening Day is 72 agonizing days away, and for the third straight year, the Baltimore Orioles have the No. 1 prospect in baseball according to Baseball America, infielder Jackson Holliday, who is just 20 years old but…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Forty years ago in March, I moved back to Cumberland and went to work for the Cumberland Times-News as a sportswriter. A lot of things have changed since then: My hair is no longer black, Greenway Avenue Stadium is no longer Fort Hill Stadium, its field is no longer grass, the football…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports What a long strange trip it was; and in just a 12-hour period from early Wednesday evening to early Thursday morning when three great football coaches — two of whom can legitimately be considered the greatest of all time — Pete Carroll, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick were all gone.…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Buffalo Bills running back Ty Johnson participated in practice Thursday afternoon wearing a red non-contact jersey as he remains in concussion protocol following the hit he took to the head Sunday night on the final play of the first half in the Bills’ 21-14 AFC East divisional win over the…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Baltimore Ravens fans are certainly hoping for another Harbaugh family reunion in another month with the same happy ending, the likes of which the nation saw Monday night from Houston after Michigan’s national-championship win over Washington, with the family patriarch, Coach Jack Harbaugh, reminding us all once again that nobody…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The latest edition of the Pittsburgh Steelers-Baltimore Ravens series resulted in the second 17-10 Steelers victory over the Ravens this season. The Steelers needed a win to have a chance to get into the playoffs; the Ravens, the top playoff seed in the AFC, needed to get home safe and…
