The end of the National Football League’s regular season on Sunday triggered the start of two annual events: the playoffs, and the period when a wave of teams fire head coaches and general managers and start frenzied searches for their replacements. The league has little control over the outcomes of the games. But over the…

Congress should narrow a loophole that could spare Shohei Ohtani from paying tens of millions in California taxes, the state controller said Monday. The Dodgers last month signed Ohtani to a 10-year, $700-million contract, with Ohtani deferring $680 million until after the contract expires in 2033. By that time, Ohtani could have returned to Japan…

When the Nordiques left Quebec nearly 30 years ago, the hockey team’s departure fueled the kind of mythologizing and nostalgia familiar to fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Nordiques’ stint in Quebec, playing there in the N.H.L. from 1979 to 1995, overlapped with the French-speaking province’s two failed attempts to secede from the rest of…

Pete Carroll will not return as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks next season but will remain with the franchise as an adviser, the team announced Wednesday. Carroll, who’d just completed his 14th season with the Seahawks, made it clear at a news conference Wednesday that he would have preferred to return next season as…

Alijah Arenas is human. He misses shots, he makes turnovers. It encouraged Birmingham coach Nick Halic to order Arenas to be double-teamed the entire game Wednesday. The strategy was working at times. The Chatsworth High sophomore missed his first six shots and was limited to 10 points at halftime. It was only a matter of…

Ron Salcer knew that his brilliant father had secured patents on 16 inventions that ranged from plastic table cloths to unbreakable roller hockey pucks, and he sensed that William Salcer’s physical and mental strength had allowed him to survive the Holocaust and make a new life. Ron knew his mother, Katarina, also from a small…