Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

I have very few rituals around work, but one of them is getting very mad and swearing at my computer around 5 p.m. (nearly) every day because either my computer or my internet or both are freaking out. One hypothesis, offered by my colleague Jack—who has a knack for offering helpful solutions for potentially avoiding…Read more...

It stinks when a team up late in the game can milk the clock for the better part of a minute just because they snag an offensive rebound and cache the ball deep in the backcourt. The NBA’s newly announced shot clock rule should cut down on that idling, and force more actual basketball plays to occur:

In June of last year, Melisa Reidy-Russell, ex-wife of Cubs shortstop Addison Russell, wrote on Instagram about being cheated on and lied to. A friend left a comment on the same post saying that Reidy-Russell had been physically and mentally abused. Soon afterward, Reidy-Russell applied for a divorce, and her lawyer…Read more...

The NCAA can’t be criticized enough. More proof comes with this week’s tale of an Ohio softball star who will have to sit out her freshman college season as punishment for changing her mind, while still in high school, about what university she wanted to attend.Read more...

The Minnesota meltdown continues, in dribs and drabs, and the framing of the latest Woj Bomb over at ESPN is extremely enjoyable. Just have a nibble from the first three grafs:

Does human ingenuity know no bounds?Read more...

Over the last decade, athletes and reporters and professors and even shithead Kentucky governor Matt Bevin have come around to the idea of college athletes being compensated for their time and work. But one not-quite-disinterested group has been very noticeable and stubborn in its resistance to the idea. College…Read more...

I have never left a job in a huff. I have never stormed out. I have never flipped my boss the double bird. I have never quit a job with proud disregard for the potential consequences. The closest I ever came to such a fever dream was when I quit a legal ad firm after just three weeks on the job, because I had gotten…Read more...

Pro Football Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson has been making the rounds this week, ever since he spearheaded the drafting of a letter that demands better benefits for retired NFL players—at first, specifically Hall of Famers. The rollout of that letter and the fallout that has ensued has been messy, to say the least.Read more...

Shit’s real weird now.

The problem with entertainment options these days—TV shows, sports, books, blogs—is that there are too many of them. This especially applies to professional wrestling.

Summer is almost over. But the sweet memories of those last months remain: Sweating through your clothes, forgetting to correctly apply sunscreen and getting burnt, getting so drunk you embarrass yourself, forgetting your sunglasses and not being able to see. And also some good things, too, presumably.Read more...

Meet Benjamin Kololli, a 26-year-old soccer player currently plying his trade in Switzerland. Kololli was in Cyprus yesterday, with his squad FC Zürich playing a big match against AEK Larnaca. Kololli is an important player, so he would not have been shocked to have been placed smack dab in the middle of the game’s…Read more...

Cristiano Ronaldo’s sister Katia Aveiro, who previously said that people who vandalized a statue of her brother on their home island of Madeira should be exiled to Syria, has defended her brother on social media again. This time, she did so after he was sent off in Juventus’s Champions League match against Valencia…Read more...

Fifty eggs is a lot of eggs, it turns out. Maybe you knew that already, without having to learn it by eating them; congrats, your smart-guy medal is in the mail.Read more...

A one-day sale on fast-charging Anker gear, our favorite HDTV bias lights, and an affordable wood pellet smoker lead off Friday’s best deals.

A 24-year-old Red Sox fan, on his way back to New England from Yankee Stadium after watching Boston play the Yankees on Wednesday night*, was electrocuted and died after climbing on top of the train and touching overhead wires.

io9 Even More Rumors About Who Could Star in Birds of Prey | Jalopnik These Two Barn-Find Plymouth Superbirds Are Going to Sell for All the Money | Kotaku The Coolest Stuff For Sale At Tokyo Game Show 2018 | Offspring Improve Homework Time With These Concentration Hacks for Kids | The Takeout Last Call: Can you cut…Read more...

An Instagram account that belongs to Melisa Reidy-Russell, the ex-wife of Chicago Cubs shortstop Addison Russell, added a link to its bio late Thursday. The link leads to a blog post describing years of physical and emotional abuse by an unnamed former spouse.Read more...

Some 53 days after the Red Sox won the AL East, they made it official. With a back-and-forth 11-6 win at Yankee Stadium, Boston put the finishing touches on a regular season that’s all but assured to end with the most wins in franchise history.

Show off your school pride while you hydrate with Amazon’s one-day sale on NCAA-branded CamelBak water bottles. The sales page is daunting, but it’s really just two products: the Eddy and the Chute. Just click on one of them, and you’ll see a dropdown menu with all of the available schools.

It’s been a shit year for Bryce Harper, measured against expectations, and even aside from the Nationals being an even bigger disappointment than usual. He came on in the second half, but he’s still gonna finish the year batting around or below .250, and with a growing reputation as a guy who can be neutralized by the…Read more...

Well that was exhilarating. Baker Mayfield came into Thursday night’s game with the Browns down 14–0 and their offense doing just nothing, and he played a brilliant half of football to bring his team back, and the Browns secured their first win since Christmas Eve 2016.

Tyrod Taylor was pulled late in the second quarter and ruled out for the second half after suffering a concussion against the Jets Thursday night. He was having a shitty game, completing just four of 14 passes for 19 yards, and leading the Browns to just four first downs and zero points. Taylor being unavailable could…Read more...

A poor, foolish possum somehow made its way into the stands at Thursday night’s Jets-Browns game, in Cleveland. Maybe he’s a big Baker Mayfield fan! It’s unlikely the little fellow had a valid ticket—as such, he was captured and put into a box by a jersey-clad gentleman who seems really admirably comfortable handling…Read more...

History was made in Thursday afternoon’s Angels-Athletics game. Surprisingly, it was not made by the Athletics, who beat the absolute shit out of the Angels by the football score of 21–3. No, it was made by Francisco Arcia of the Angels, who became the first MLB player ever to pitch, catch, and smoke a dong in the…Read more...

Former Brown Isaiah Crowell scored a couple touchdowns in the first half of Thursday night’s Jets-Browns game. On the second of these Crowell used his touchdown celebration to do something very rude to the football, before throwing it into the end zone stands, to be caught by Browns fans:Read more...

Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov sat for a press conference Thursday afternoon, a little more than two weeks ahead of their October 6 showdown at UFC 229. You will be pleased to learn that settling in for this nearly hour-long video is very much worth your time, as an enjoyer of absurdity and shamelessness (jump…Read more...

CNN has a copy of the upcoming Stormy Daniels book and reported today several stories in it—including one part where Daniels talks about an experience with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who, to the surprise of no one, was hanging out with Donald Trump in 2006 at a Lake Tahoe hotel.Read more...

The California Sunday Magazine has published an interview with Warriors coach Steve Kerr and his old coach Phil Jackson. The two ring wearers discussed the art of coaching, including the importance of mindfulness (a lesson Carmelo Anthony certainly internalized, along with a warm glass of milk). Kerr credited Jackson…Read more...

Bournemouth winger Ryan Fraser is extremely cool. He’s super fast, loves running at defenders, can muscle his way into and around the penalty area almost at will, and when he gets there, he’s pretty good at slipping the ball to a teammate or smashing it at the goal himself. These traits are common among Premier League…Read more...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.

Golf Digest is not a political publication. Recent stories include “2018 Ryder Cup frequently asked questions” and “Web.com Tour introduces the Evans Scholars Invitational to schedule, with all proceeds aiding caddies’ college scholarships.” Many of the cover lines in the monthly print issue are about improving your…Read more...

The wonderful state of New Hampshire—full disclosure: I grew up in New Hampshire—has made national news this week, as the world has been captivated by the Granite State’s inability to properly dispose of a dead minke whale that washed ashore at Jenness Beach in Rye Monday. Though a juvenile, the whale’s carcass was…Read more...

Fans aren’t alone: Even beer vendors hate being inside Jack Kent Cooke’s Folly.Read more...

Sixteen games into the Oakland A’s historic 20-game win streak back in 2002, Mike Davie realized how cheap team ownership truly was.

You hear it sometimes: you had to be there. Sometimes this is true, for instance with extreme weather events or certain live music performances. And in the case of this week’s Live Deadcast, which Megan, Drew, and I recorded in front of a roiling crowd of rowdies in Rex Grossman jerseys on Monday night at Chicago’s…Read more...

Our readers listed these Crabby Wallets as one of their favorite front pocket wallets, and today, you can save $5 off a whole bunch of different colors and materials (click here for elastic models, and here for canvas) when you clip the on-page coupon. These wallets can hold up to 10 cards, include a ring for your…Read more...

Lauri Markkanen, who was drafted at No. 7 by the Timberwolves last year only to be shipped off to Chicago in the Jimmy Butler deal, seems awfully nostalgic about that moment today.

Tottenham Hotspur played last season at Wembley Stadium while its brand new, state-of-the-art home stadium was under construction. It wasn’t ideal, but it was supposed to have paid off when the new park opened this month for Spurs’ Premier League game against Liverpool. That didn’t happen, as last week’s match was…Read more...

In 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency suspended Russia’s national anti-doping agency in the face of overwhelming evidence that the government was running a sophisticated doping operation for its top athletes. As of today—despite Russia’s failure to meet the basic conditions of its suspension, and outrage from athletes…Read more...

The Raiders are 0-2, and Bears pass-rusher extraordinaire Khalil Mack has:

Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share.

Gizmodo Something Unexpected and Weird Is Happening Beneath California’s Deadliest Faults | Jalopnik The Cadillac CTS-V and ATS-V Are Coming to an End; I’m Not Crying, It’s Fine, Everything Is Fine (UPDATE: GM Says No) | Kotaku Hackers Have Already Cracked Open The Switch Online’s NES Library | Lifehacker The Best…Read more...

Yasiel Puig sucked the life out of the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday night by doing what he’s done better than anyone this past week—crush dingers.Read more...

NHL opening night is less than two weeks away, and it’s safe to assume the Canadiens, mired in mediocrity and dysfunction, feel like they have a lot to prove. They’re also not going to be very good at hockey, which is often a recipe for a team eager to scrap. Yes, even in preseason.Read more...

You’re going to have to put a little effort into keeping up, here, because it involves multiple different social media platforms, and I am getting too old for this shit.

The one-armed bench press seems like a fine strength training exercise, although probably there are better ways of doing it than with a full barbell smashing off your chest. At any rate, if you were going to pick a baseball player to show up in a video doing one-armed 135-pound bench presses with a full barbell, you’d…Read more...

The United States Anti-Doping Agency finally announced Wednesday its punishment of Jon Jones, for failing a doping test at UFC 214 last July. The USADA arbitrator found that Jones’s steroid use was unintentional, and hit Jones with a 15-month suspension, retroactive to July 28, 2017.Read more...

All the reporting about the souring of the relationship between Jimmy Butler and the Timberwolves points to fit issues between Butler, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Andrew Wiggins. Butler’s “honest conversations” with Wolves brass led in short order to a trade request, and a list of preferred trade partners that suggested…Read more...