Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The XFL returned today with a rap. Really.

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

An exclusive broadcasting deal between ESL, one of the largest esports organizations in the world, and Facebook, a malignant social media tumor too insinuated into daily life to safely remove, has shown the shortcomings of gaming company Valve’s hands-off approach after the first major Dota 2 tournament subject to the…Read more...

The legend goes that Warren Miller taught himself to ski back in 1937, when he was on a trip to the San Gabriel Mountains with his Boy Scout troop. He spent all of $2 on a pair of beat-up wooden skis and a set of bamboo poles, then looked out on “the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: my first view of an untracked…Read more...

On the night of Sunday, Jan. 21, as the entirety of the sports world was consumed with football and the results of the NFL’s conference championships, Dejan Kovacevic made an announcement. It was almost understated, given the importance of the changes to his site, DK Pittsburgh Sports. Kovacevic wrote that his…Read more...

Michigan State University, the employer of serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar for over two decades, did not notify federal officials of their investigation into Nassar in 2014, and has been slow in providing the federal government with documents related to Nassar despite being under Department of Education oversight…Read more...

This was to be the year that officially consecrated a new Real Madrid dynasty. After historic European success—back-to-back Champions League trophies, making for three such titles in four years—and the arguably even more Herculean feat of beating out Lionel Messi’s team for status as La Liga champions, the world’s…Read more...

The darkest day in NFL history began with several Philadelphia Eagles players arriving at Veterans Stadium at midnight, some 13 hours before the scheduled kickoff of a game against the Chicago Bears. They weren’t there to play; they were there precisely not to play. More specifically, they were there to stand sentry…Read more...

The NBA season is currently in the fatty middle of its schedule, and 45 or so games in, it feels as if there’s not a whole lot left to discover. The Pacers are surprisingly good, I guess, and the Thunder are finally on track. The Magic are just as diarrheal as they’ve been for the past half decade. By this point, you…Read more...

Simona Halep will play the Australian Open final. On its face, the fact of that doesn’t seem particularly remarkable or surprising. She is after all, the highest-ranked player in the world, the top seed at this tournament, and only a few months removed from her last major final. She has yet to lose a match in 2018.…Read more...

More than 150 women have come forward to say that former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar sexually abused them. The abuse spanned decades and happened under the eye of USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, the U.S. Olympic Committee, parents, gymnastics coaches, counselors, and law enforcement. The case came…Read more...

Kids nowadays! All they care about is Nando’s and Jeremy Corbyn and none of them even want to hear just how dope it can be to roll a fake block of cheese down the street. That’s why the annual Stilton, England cheese rolling competition has been canceled this year.Read more...

Barring something truly unexpected like a teary confession from Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera becoming the subject of a startling exposé, Alex Rodriguez will, when he joins the ballot in 2022, become the final strong candidate for baseball’s Hall of Fame to have both made his name in the sport’s doping era and to be…Read more...

Last night, London Spitfire DPS player Joon-yeong “Profit” Park shot a middle finger at the camera right after he got brought out as a substitution in the team’s second game against SF Shock. But Profit didn’t think anybody would see it.

Last week I received a campaign flyer from Florida state senator Dana Young, urging me to sign a petition banning coke dogs. It is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.Read more...

Donald Trump, president of the United States, boards Air Force One en route to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where he plans to tell leaders from around the world a rambling and unconvincing story involving former Night Court star Markie Post.Read more...

During a conversation about Kevin Durant’s battle with the NBA’s officiating staff on yesterday’s NBA Countdown, Brian Windhorst offhandedly mentioned that Draymond Green had previously and publicly said “every referee should be fired.”Read more...

In September, TMZ reported that Carl Johnson, an NFL line judge and the league’s former top ref, was under investigation for domestic violence in Louisiana. Johnson had been the NFL’s VP of officiating from 2010 to 2012, and since then had returned to the field. The investigation was due to a request for a temporary…Read more...

Andre Drummond is having the best season of his career, thanks in huge part to improvements as a free-throw shooter and passer, but it wasn’t enough to earn him his second All-Star selection. On Tuesday, he took his frustrations to Twitter:Read more...

io9 More Speculation about Captain Marvel’s Potential Appearance in the Next Two Avengers Films | Kotaku BioWare Doubles Down On Anthem As Pressure Mounts | Jalopnik Commercial Airlines Found A Way To Make Using The Bathroom Even Worse | The A.V. Club S.E. Hinton explains The Outsiders’ tragic…Read more...

One Eagles player will be seeing the Super Bowl for the first time on February 4. Not just seeing it in person. Seeing it for the first time entirely. According to him, at least.Read more...

As worked up as we all were for the results of Baseball Hall of Fame voting, I suppose the players who got in were probably even more excited. As is tradition, cameras were rolling when Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome, and Trevor Hoffman received the phone calls letting them know they’ve got a date in…Read more...

TCL’s 2017 4K TVs aren’t technological marvels, but they might just represent the best value in the TV world, and three different sizes are on sale right now in preparation for the Super Bowl.Read more...

Dyson’s DC65 is our readers’ favorite vacuum, and you can pick up a refurb of the Animal model for just $190 today.

Former Michigan State gymnast Lindsey Lemke says that John Geddert—the former Olympic coach who worked closely with Larry Nassar and suddenly announced his retirement this week, after USA Gymnastics suspended him—threatened her after she spoke in court about the abuse she experienced at his gym.Read more...

University of Kansas police were called to the men’s basketball dorm today because a man reportedly stopped by several times to try giving at least one player some advice on shooting free throws, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.Read more...

Many of the conceptual arguments around the Baseball Hall of Fame aren’t really about baseball. Debates about players who used steroids are about justice or punishment or cheating. Debates about the character clause are about the separation between the sport and the people who play it. Debates about the size of the…Read more...

Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon will finally resign tomorrow, less than a week after MSU’s board of trustees voted to stand behind her. Trustees attempted to downplay Simon’s role in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal and vouched for her fundraising chops, but the State News and Detroit Free Press both…Read more...

Yesterday, 2010 world championships silver medalist Mattie Larson read her victim impact statement at Larry Nassar’s sentencing. Larson related a litany of horrors from her time as a member of the national team—the coaching staff shunning her at the 2010 world championships after she made a mistake, how she harmed…Read more...

For the sixth year in a row, baseball’s home run king and a seven-time Cy Young winner have both been refused entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Neither Barry Bonds, the second-greatest hitter of all-time by fWAR, nor Roger Clemens, the best pitcher ever by that same stat, cleared the 75 percent vote threshold …Read more...

Overwatch League has a code of conduct, but no, you can’t see it, at least not until league commissioner Nate Nanzer gets around to putting it online, which he still hasn’t done two weeks into the league’s inaugural season.

Here is the current state of Markelle Fultz’s free-throw stroke (please watch with the sound on):

Kotaku BioWare Doubles Down On Anthem As Pressure Mounts | Field Guide 10 Actually Cool Uses for a USB Drive | Jalopnik The Story Behind The Honda Ridgeline’s Wildly, Unusually Detailed Wikipedia Page | Lifehacker How to Turn Your Old iPhone Into a Cute Minimalistic Feature Phone | The Takeout The millennials have now…Read more...

This was always how it was meant to end. Rachael Denhollander, a lawyer and the mother of three, standing across from Larry Nassar, the man who has sexually abused hundreds of women and girls under the guise of medical treatment, delivering her victim impact statement a year and a half after she first went to the …Read more...

My beloved Aston Villa, once champions of Europe but now languishing in England’s second division, haven’t given me much to smile about the last few years. Except for today, with some A+ video game-related social media banter.

Nick Foles wasn’t supposed to be able to do this.Read more...

Washington State QB Luke Falk arrived in Alabama for the Senior Bowl wearing a No. 3 jersey to honor his teammate Tyler Hilinski, who died by suicide earlier this month. Falk and Hilinski played for the Cougars together for a few years, and as Falk heads towards the NFL Draft, he said he wanted to honor Hilinski’s…Read more...

This is the kind of goal that makes me want to laugh and puke at the same time. On the one hand, it’s objectively hilarious when world-class athletes are reduced to helpless props in a pinball blooper. On the other, if Marcos Alonso or Antonio Rüdiger were positioned just inches differently, they could have been saved…Read more...

Are you one of the beautiful people heading to the frosty North for Super Bowl LII? Well then, you can toss all your other Super Bowl party invites in the urinal, because Deadspin is having a Very Large Adult Game party of its own. And it’s gonna be SO exclusive (open to the public) and SO fancy (a $10 ticket gets you…Read more...

Maybe you’re already convinced on the question of standard-issue egomania of celebrity chefs, but anyway let me feed you some real quotes from Esquire about a chef-guy putting some bread on coals:

The Cleveland Cavaliers suck. They can’t play defense. They’re accusing each other of faking sick. And while it has become ritual for this team to endure a prolonged stretch of eating shit in the regular season before getting their act together in time to brush the rest of an eternally weak Eastern Conference aside in…Read more...

Are you ready for the next era of Leeds United soccer? Are your ears pinned back to howl at the moon like a wolf, only it’s not the moon, it’s Leeds’ new club crest??? Do you love, uh, celebrating fans?????

On Monday night, WWE celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Monday Night Raw flagship television show by splitting the telecast between Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom, which was Raw’s original home. Based on the limited history of pro wrestling cards from multiple venues, the…Read more...

Imagine a world, one that very much resembles our own, set in some not-too-distant, semi-dystopian future. A sort of bizarro version of our modern Western society, where the increasing imposition upon society of otherwise benign technology and social media has warped the very fabric and structure of our lives and…Read more...

When a survivor of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse makes her impact statement to the court, she is first asked to state and spell her name for the record. And then Judge Rosemarie Aquilina asks her, “What would you like me to know?”

The U.S. Olympic Committee has been curiously quiet during sentencing of former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar. Right as Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison this afternoon for 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct—and after 156 women* gave statements describing Nassar’s…Read more...

At the final day of Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing today, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina read excerpts from a letter that Nassar wrote two months after agreeing to plea guilty to 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. In his letter, Nassar came off as defiant and wrote as if he was still somehow innocent,…Read more...

Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison today by Judge Rosemarie Aquilina for 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The sentence came down following the seventh day of victim impact statements in the Ingham County, Mich., courtroom, after 156 women spoke in open court about the damage done…Read more...

The short answer here is: “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, define ‘worry.’”Read more...

You can save $50 off this 12-piece stainless steel set or $25 off this nonstick set in today’s T-fal Gold Box. These are not your favorite All-Clad tri-ply pans, but I’m sure they get the job done for the occasional cook. If you’re not in the market for a new cookset, this ceramic nonstick square pan is a good $15…Read more...