Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Okay. Okay. So. An ugly and kind of dumb but real thing that sometimes happens in the life of a more-or-less normal person is, you had the idea that you and your longtime pal Hubert were meeting up for Special Pal Beers together, like in old times, just the two old pals, but then you find out that your old pal also…Read more...

When I got Pepper Johnson on the phone, I had no idea what to expect. I sure as hell didn’t think we’d talk for four hours. But we did, and I still can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone else for four consecutive hours in my life. But Pepper’s got stories.Read more...

After playing the first four years of his career on a shitty rookie contract, after two consecutive lengthy offseason holdouts, and after becoming the best defensive tackle in football, Aaron Donald has finally convinced the Rams to pay him.

It’s been a weird tournament so far for U.S. Open chair umpires. Less than a week into the tournament, chair umpires—whose goal is to be an unobtrusive as possible—have been directly responsible for launching two huge controversies: First, a chair ump needlessly penalized Alize Cornet for changing her shirt on court,…Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 2 Maryland.

Usain Bolt may have retired from track, but he hasn’t given up sports entirely. He is currently signed to a trial contract with the Central Coast Mariners, an Australia A-League team, trying to realize his dream of becoming a pro soccer player. He made his official debut in a preseason friendly last night, and…Read more...

Under Armour’s Outlet is already 40% off, but when you spend $50+ and use code WORKHARD or HUSTLE20, you’ll get an additional 20% off. Why are there two codes? Great question, but if one doesn’t work, you can try the other.

May 19, 1990 was WCW’s Capital Combat pay-per-view, and the event was promoted with an added bonus: RoboCop himself would be there. The tagline for the show was actually “Return of Robocop,” though RoboCop hadn’t really appeared in wrestling before. But RoboCop 2 opened a month later. The poster for the event even…Read more...

Several months after it first made history, the indie wrestling supershow “All In” is here. On Saturday night, the much-hyped, self-funded brainchild of Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks will, after months upon months of speculation and buzz and promotion and noise, finally become real in front of over 10,000 fans at…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Look, I don’t know how much time he has left as the manager of Manchester United, and so I am begging you to enjoy José Mourinho in full Meltdown Mode while you still can. It really is one of the greatest shows in sports.

When you’re watching porn, especially one of those gauzy-lensed sensual ones, you generally do not find yourself thinking, Boy, that porn star fellow must be quite the gentleman at home.

Foxtrot Alpha This Is Why All That Fighter Jet Testing Is So Important | Gizmodo Now There’s a Water Gun That Shoots Liquid Bullets and Refills Itself | Kotaku Battle For Azeroth Is More Exciting When You’re Horde | Lifehacker Send One Scary Email This Weekend | The Takeout How to make a Brandy Alexander, a Frosty for…Read more...

According to multiple reports, the San Francisco Giants will trade soon-to-be free agent Andrew McCutchen to the Yankees ahead of Friday night’s final deadline to acquire players who will be eligible for the postseason. The Giants will receive a package headlined by mid-tier infield prospect Abiatal Avelino in return.…Read more...

Whether you’re starting or expanding your Philips Hue collection, this weekend is the time to buy more accessories. Everything below is way cheaper than usual, so place your orders before the lights go out on this sale.

Yes, it’s happening again. Nordstrom Rack has brought back their Clear the Rack sale and it’s full (and I mean FULL) of really incredible deals, with tons of stuff available under $10. Designer clothing, brands you’ve never heard of, everything in clearance an extra 25% off their already discounted prices.

Thursday night was, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of the college football season, as an actual ranked team in UCF took on UConn in the silliest rivalry in sports. (There’s also a Northwestern-Purdue game, for the true perverts among us.)Read more...

Official attendance numbers—at any sporting event—are almost always lies, at least in the sense that they rarely represent the actual number of fans who both paid for a ticket and showed up to the game. We know that instinctively; it’s not a shocking revelation to see it proved as fact. But thanks to The Wall…Read more...

Kotaku People Who Haven’t Played Spider-Man Are Mad The Developers Took Out A Puddle | Gizmodo The Physical Security Key That Keeps Google Employees From Getting Phished Is Now Available | Jalopnik I’m Tired of Borrowing Cars From My Parents! What Car Should I Buy? | Lifehacker What to Do if Your TSA Precheck Isn’t on…Read more...

By the second set, Nick Kyrgios had earned his first boos. He’d lost the first set of today’s U.S. Open match to Frenchman Pierre-Hugues Herbert on a double-fault second serve going 129 mph. Kyrgios’s serve—untouchable whenever he desires it to be—was broken to start off the second, and when he planted an easy…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

This week the Puerto Rican government raised Hurricane Maria’s official death toll from 64 to 2,975. In response to questions about the new, vastly increased estimate, President Trump said Wednesday he believed the response effort on the island had been “fantastic.”

A few weeks ago, I learned about a dystopian gathering called OzyFest where people paid real American dollars to gaze longingly at thinkfluencers and hear soup-brained psychopaths like Karl Rove host panels. The Silicon Valley–funded Ozy—which is somehow not an incisive performance art piece about our culture’s…Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 3 Alabama.

Suitcases get all the attention, but your toiletry kit is lowkey one of the most important travel accessories you can own. We asked our readers to nominate their favorites, and these were the standouts. Check out what everyone had to say below, then vote for your favorite at the bottom of the post.

According to a report from the Sacramento Bee, former Kings exec Jeffrey David embezzled $13.4 million from two Kings sponsors and used the money to buy beach houses in Southern California. David allegedly took $9 million from Golden 1 Credit Union, title sponsor for the Kings arena, and another $4.3 million from…Read more...

The group stage draw for this year’s Champions League tournament was just completed this morning, and now it is time to find out which teams have been unfairly boned and which teams were clearly the beneficiaries of a rigged lottery.

This week the NCAA informed Michigan State in a letter that it had concluded its investigation into how the athletic department handled Larry Nassar’s abuse of student-athletes, and how the school handled allegations of assault against members of the basketball and football teams. Their decision: Cleared on all…Read more...

Goalkeepers have no business existing in soccer. Maintaining an entire class of players whose job is to snuff the joy out of a game is absurd, and strapping on gloves to play a sport that prohibits the use of the hands is blasphemy. In defiance of not just strikers, but more or less everyone, the keeper believes there…Read more...

College football, the looser and more fun but also worse version of football played by younger and less well-compensated people than those in the NFL, is back baby. Or maybe is already back? Anyway the timing is complicated, because while the good stuff gets going this weekend, college football’s latest attempt to…Read more...

Ben Rothenberg, a well-known tennis writer who travels all over the world covering the sport for The New York Times and elsewhere, has thousands of avid followers. One, however, might be a little more devoted than others. Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios, the king of trash talk, tweeners, and tanking—but mostly…Read more...

If you love inky blacks and vibrant colors—and who doesn’t?—this 55" 2017 OLED LG TV is down to $1149 today at Walmart as a refurb, or an all-time low $1600 for 65", with small additional discounts available if you pick up in a store.

Some people are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.Read more...

Odell Beckham, Jr. got his money. So did Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Donald is reportedly on the verge of finally getting the Rams to pay him. Khalil Mack, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to signing an extension with the Raiders.

USB-C chargers, discounted Apple Watches, and a home security camera with free cloud storage lead off Thursday’s best deals.Read more...

io9 Even More Star Wars: Episode IX Casting Rumors | Vitals Try This Military Meditation Routine to Fall Asleep Fast | Kotaku A Retro Grand Theft Auto Would Now Be Set In The Year 2002 | Jalopnik At $2,000, Could This 1965 Nissan Patrol be For Real? | The Takeout This Papa John’s thing is never going to be over, is it…Read more...

Hurricane season is ramping up, the late summer thunderstorms are rolling in, and the snowy season is inching towards us. Thinking about how your feet will do in the precipitation? Pick up a pair of Muck boots from this Amazon Gold Box and you’ll be dry and comfortable, no matter the wet weather.

If reliability is something you crave in a pair of shoes (if it isn’t, you may need to reconsider), I bet you have Cole Haan in your closet. And if you’re looking for a new pair but don’t want to spend the normal asking price, Cole Haan is taking an extra 40% off sale styles with the code EXTRA40 at checkout.Read more...

When Reds pitcher Michael Lorenzen entered the batter’s box in the bottom of the sixth of tonight’s game against the Brewers, he was just trying to do what most pitchers do when asked to hit: his best.

Mark Jurich, son of former Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich, is extremely, extremely pissed about the location of the 20 years’ worth of tickets granted to his family as part of his dad’s termination last autumn. The tickets are not the tickets they’re used to, and Mark is reading an awful lot of meaning into…Read more...

The Baltimore Orioles came into Wednesday night a horrendous 52.5 games out of first place in the AL East, and an equally shocking and horrifying 40.5 games back of the AL Wild Card. All of that sucking and losing happened before 8:33 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, when it was announced that this devious raccoon had…Read more...

That was quick. The Cleveland Browns officially released linebacker Mychal Kendricks tonight after he was indicted on federal insider trading charges earlier in the day. GM John Dorsey said in a statement that the team knew Kendricks was part of an investigation before he was signed, but only as a victim:Read more...

The Marlins have the worst home-field advantage in baseball, drawing a whopping 4,600 fewer fans per home game than the next lowest average attendance in the league. If you bring a harp to a Marlins home game and use it to play a soothing acoustic version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning…Read more...

The Astros won 5-4 today in the final game of a three-game series against the Athletics, after DH Tyler White hit a walk-off bomb. White’s homer not only extended Houston’s lead in the AL West to 2.5 games, but set a neat little MLB record, too.

The NBA is steadily laying the foundation for the end of the rule requiring basketball prospects to wait a year after graduating from high school before declaring for the NBA Draft. Adam Silver has been making noise about this for a while, and Condoleezza Rice’s otherwise useless commission recommended it, and anyway…Read more...

PAOK scored the first goal of their Champions League qualifying match against a superior Benfica team off of a neat little coordinated free-kick routine. Watch the goal above, because it’s cool, and then ponder the following: What is it about free goals that have the big tough soccer boys afraid of a little innovation?Read more...

When the Chicago Cubs acquired Cole Hamels from the Rangers before the trade deadline, it looked like the team was just buying a lotto ticket. Hamels, who was putting up a disastrous 5.19 FIP with the Rangers in 2018, was just another formerly great but presently iffy arm who could join the rest of the Cubs’ starters…Read more...

After playing professional soccer for 15 years, Clint Dempsey—celebrated striker and guy who broke John Terry’s face—is retiring at age 35 from both the Seattle Sounders and the United States national team. The Sounders posted a statement detailing Dempsey’s long and successful career; Deuce, characteristically, kept…Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 4 Virginia Tech.

This piece is part of a recurring series that aims to be a complete guide to the laws of war. You can read previous entries here.