Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Football fans of a certain age will remember Jay Novacek as the infuriatingly dependable third-down target of Troy Aikman on those dominant Cowboys teams of the mid-90s. Novacek retired from football in 1997. His son, Blake Novacek, was also pursuing a career in sports—sports broadcasting, to be exact—before he was…Read more...

White Sox first baseman José Abreu will miss his team’s upcoming series with the Indians, as he was hospitalized and treated for “an ingrown hair infection in his right thigh.” That’s disconcerting and gross enough on its own, but when combined with the fact that Abreu just underwent surgery for a “strangled testicle”…Read more...

In February, ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols had strong words on the Sports Illustrated report about the prevalent sexual harassment in the Dallas Mavericks’ organization—she called the team’s handling of employee complaints “truly jaw-dropping.” In her interview with team owner Mark Cuban on The Jump today, which…Read more...

At 3:12 p.m., I (and presumably many, many other people who write about basketball) received a PR blast in my inbox:Read more...

Kotaku Fortnite’s Cube Destroys The Game’s Unluckiest Building | Gizmodo Shattering the Bike Land Speed Record at 183.9MPH Looks Weirdly Chill | Foxtrot Alpha The U.S. Army Wants a Cannon with a Crazy and Nearly Impossible Range | Lifehacker How to Find Good Private Channels on Roku | The Takeout Craft beer world…Read more...

No point in keeping you waiting for this one—on Saturday, Chip the Buffalo, Colorado’s sideline mascot, blasted his dick and balls with damn t-shirt cannon and by the grace of God, someone had their phone out to film the vicious neutering of what was once a happy-go-lucky creature.

Jordan Matthews signed with the Eagles today. The receiver, who was with Philadelphia for the first three seasons of his NFL career, was signed to boost the team’s depleted receiving corps. Matthews spent last season with the Bills—the Eagles had traded him and a draft pick for cornerback Ronald Darby—and today told…Read more...

Excerpted from Beyond Broadway Joe: The Super Bowl TEAM That Changed Football, now available from Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.Read more...

It still isn’t entirely clear if Ousmane Dembélé truly fits in at Barcelona. He doesn’t seem to have level of technical mastery and precision required to thrive in Barcelona’s traditional playing style, and it’s yet to be determined whether it would be wise or even possible for him or Barça alter their natural games…Read more...

In his first Champions League match with Juventus, Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off in the 29th minute for what looked like patting (maybe forcefully patting?) Valencia defender Jeison Murillo on the head, after Murillo went down in the box. I’m no Ronaldo super fan, but that has to be the most ridiculous red card I’ve…Read more...

After Sports Illustrated published a report on Feb. 20, 2018 detailing the Dallas Mavericks’ culture of misogyny and sexual harassment, the team hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation into the organization. The result of that investigation, a 43-page report, was released today. It details multiple…Read more...

In 2012, Golf Digest published a first-person essay by Valentino Dixon (co-written with Max Adler, the magazine’s editorial director). Dixon had never played golf, never even stepped foot on a golf course; he was an inmate at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. He was serving 39-to-life for a 1991 murder.

Practically every stereotype of a New England sports fan is on display in this astounding Boston Globe video accompanying the story of Louie Iacuzzi of Malden—of course—who with his buddy found the Red Sox’s 2018 division title banner on the highway and now want a reward for its return.Read more...

Reddit’s co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian has been steadily posting online in support of his wife, Serena Williams, after her well-documented spat with an umpire in the U.S. Open final. One recent tweet by Ohanian called attention to an infamous Roger Federer outburst at the 2009 U.S. Open final,…Read more...

Clearly all was not well in Minnesota. Via The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Jon Krawczynski, we can now see the full scope of that unwellness: Jimmy Butler, the Timberwolves’ star of the present, has asked to be traded, possibly due to conflict with their star of the future, or maybe it’s just Andrew Wiggins, or…Read more...

Former Washington State quarterback Jason Gesser resigned from his position as assistant athletic director Tuesday night, less than a week after the school’s student paper first uncovered a pattern of sexual misconduct that opened the floodgates for additional reports.

Lynn Redden, the superintendent of the Onalaska Independent School District in Onalaska, Texas, was caught being racist online when he commented “When you need precision decision making you can’t count on a black quarterback,” on a Facebook post about the Houston Texans’ Week 2 loss to the Titans.

Variety and Us Weekly report that adult contemporary group Maroon 5 will be the halftime performers at February’s Super Bowl LIII (pronounced “leeeeeee”) in Atlanta, probably because Imagine Dragons was already booked as the NHL’s in-house band.Read more...

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger explained to reporters this morning how a true leader sets an example for his teammates with a tireless work ethic.Read more...

Big-time college sports programs are in a never-ending, Brewster’s Millions–style race to burn through as much money as possible in order to claim that they are not profitable and thus can’t pay players. State-of-the-art practice facilities and bloated administrator contracts used to be enough to hide all that dough,…Read more...

$80 Kindle Paperwhites, a massive Gold Standard protein sale, and the best deal we’ve seen on a weighted blanket lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.

The fall from power is never short, and it’s rarely graceful.

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Those were good times, weren’t they? When that big ESPN report on a schism between Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, driven in part by Brady’s shady nutrition “guru” Alex Guerrero, dropped right before the playoffs and set off rounds of denials and non-denials and recriminations, and a whole lot of screaming from…Read more...

You don’t have to empty your wallet to score a really nice wallet from Fossil. Eight different men’s leather wallets are on clearance right now for a mere $19, plus free shipping on all orders.

It’s been a long time since Amazon last ran a protein powder Gold Box, but they’re always a great opportunity to stock up. Today, a ton of varieties of Gold Standard whey, cassein, and BCAA are included, so find your favorite flavor before the deal expires at the end of the day.Read more...

In his last start, back on Thursday, Stephen Strasburg managed to plunk all of Jorge Alfaro, Matt Wieters, and umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, all with one pitch. It was assumed at the time that this was a fluky accident, but maybe not! Maybe he’s doing this on purpose.

The Orioles and Blue Jays are currently playing a series that has no significance whatsoever to the greater baseball universe. The only reason to have these games is so such-and-such youngster can get his first taste of life in the majors. In this case the youngster is Orioles rookie outfielder DJ Stewart, and “life…Read more...

The names of 21 NFL greats are listed at the bottom of the letter announced today demanding health insurance and pensions for Hall of Famers. By definition it’s an impressive list, but it’s getting less impressive by the hour: both Kurt Warner and Jerry Rice have now publicly disavowed the letter’s specific demands…Read more...

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston is currently serving out the end of a three-game suspension set by the NFL for groping an Uber driver. The league’s investigation over the offseason concluded that Winston had “violated the Personal Conduct Policy by touching the driver in an inappropriate and sexual…Read more...

Not too long ago the 76ers were courting Daryl Morey to replace disgraced former general manager Bryan Colangelo, in a sign of the organization’s lofty ambitions for the next chapter of Sixers basketball. By that same token, not too long ago the Sixers were hoping to court LeBron James and Paul George, and wound up…Read more...

Zlatan Ibrahimović scored what might have been the greatest goal of his life last Saturday in the L.A. Galaxy’s game against Toronto FC. Somehow, that goal—the 500th of his career—might not have been the most ruthless thing he did that day.Read more...

The first classic match of the new Champions League season came on the first day of the competition. Liverpool-PSG had everything: superstar forwards on both sides of the ball, anarchic attacks flying up and down the pitch, several goals, a wounded dick, and, maybe most importantly, a heart-stopping climax that handed…Read more...

Over the years and across dozens of blogs, Deadspin has tried to make a case for watching and enjoying tennis, the sport being played in last weekend’s Davis Cup rubber between France’s Nicolas Mahut and Spain’s Marcel Granollers.

Christian Pulisic turned 20 years old today, which means he is no longer the Wonderteen we have all known and loved, but instead a full-grown Wonderman. He showed his newfound maturity by scoring the lone goal and winner for Borussia Dortmund in the 85th minute of their Champions League opener against Club Brugge. It…Read more...

Sports and politics cannot be separated. Sports expresses, iterates, and interacts with politics at basically every point of their intersection. Even apart from the myriad ways sports, specifically, contain and are shaped by politics, as parts of what we’re still obliged to call a society even as it unravels around…Read more...

One year ago today, we introduced Ron Dauzet, a Michigan man who was being forced by his local township to sell 20 cars per month because the 218-vehicle collection on his property ran in violation of a local blight ordinance. On Sunday, I caught up with Ron and took photos of his property, which now looks totally…Read more...

During a second-round U.S. Open match on Aug. 30, umpire Mohamed Lahyani descended from his chair to give a mopey Nick Kyrgios a pep talk that included the words “I want to help you,” raising questions as to whether he overstepped boundaries as a neutral party. Lahyani has now been punished for his unusual foray into…Read more...

Even in this new Mauricio Pochettino era of success, Spurs haven’t fully cured their Spursiness. Over the past few years Tottenham have been at their most Spursy in the Champions League, and today’s tournament-opening match against Inter was no exception.Read more...

More and more Americans are getting outdoors. Since 2000, attendance rates to national parks have steadily continued an “up and to the right” growth trend. Between 2000 and 2013, year-over-year attendance bobbed between 260-280 million visitors. While that 13-year span could be considered healthy growth, what the…Read more...

The Seahawks tore it down this offseason, and now they’re 0-2, with a bad offensive line and a goddamn Schottenheimer for an offensive coordinator. But they have Michael Dickson as their punter, and that’s more fun than it may seem—and not just because Dickson knows how to drop kick.Read more...

Today, we’re talking about smartphones, Trump’s DMs, tweezers, and more.Read more...

The​ Orioles​ have won 43 games this season. They’ve lost 107. They are tied with the 1988 team for most losses in franchise history. Given all this, it’d be bigger news if players weren’t talking about how much the team sucks, but catcher Caleb Joseph, who’s been with the organization since he was drafted in 2008,…Read more...

The MMA world has lost one of its pioneers, as Japanese combat sports lifer Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto died, a month after being diagnosed with cancer. He was 41 years old.Read more...

Right now, Eden Hazard resides in perplexing plane of existence all his own. The boundaries of this plane are fuzzy and indefinite, but the simplest way to prove its unmistakable presence might be to consider the following question: Has Hazard been a disappointment?Read more...

In addition to being winless and grouchy, Antonio Brown is absent. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports today that the Steelers receiver was nowhere to be found at the team’s facilities Monday. No wonder he had no media availability:Read more...

North Texas sophomore Keegan Brewer pulled one of the ballsiest stunts in all of college football on Saturday; naturally, it took about three days for the NCAA to try to outlaw it forever.

In a letter sent Tuesday to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, and Pro Football Hall of Fame president C. David Baker, players who make up the Hall of Fame board are demanding health insurance and salaries for former NFL players now in the Hall of Fame.Read more...

Welcome to Ass Team Of The Week, a recurring feature in which we celebrate the most butt teams the NFL has to offer.

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