Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Pita Taufatofua stole the heart of the world back in 2016 went he spent the Rio Olympic Opening Ceremonies oiled up and shirtless while repping Tonga. He competed in taekwondo at those games, but this year, he’ll be back in a much different capacity—a cross-country skier.Read more...

After sitting out his team’s first 18 games while the school investigated the “financial picture” around his vehicle, five-star freshman forward Billy Preston is leaving Kansas and going to Bosnia, where he’s signed a contract with BC Igokea.Read more...

A four-hour closed door meeting on Friday by the Michigan State Board of Trustees led to the decision that current University President Lou Anna Simon is the “right leader” to continue running MSU. This comes despite the growing public knowledge of the damage caused by MSU athletic department and U.S. gymnastics…Read more...

It’s easy to forget that when Breaking Bad premiered 10 years ago, it was just another TV show. Not a groundbreaking piece of entertainment, not a universally acclaimed series almost certain to be remembered as one of the finest shows ever made, but an odd-looking little story about Bryan Cranston selling drugs. The…Read more...

The Michigan State board of trustees gave Lou Anna Simon a vote of support Friday despite an overwhelming number of calls for the university president to resign or be fired amidst the dozens of victims testifying against Larry Nassar at the ongoing sentencing phase of his prosecution.Read more...

Chelsea fans entered today’s game against Brighton and Hove Albion in panic mode. Sitting tied for third in the Premier League but with no shot at winning the title, the team had appeared to have given up. They had scored one goal in their last four games, and had yet to win a match in regulation in 2018. Off the…Read more...

Christian Coleman, probably best known to most American sports fans as the guy who ran a fast 40, just ran 60 meters in 6.37 seconds. That breaks a world record that fellow American Maurice Greene set at 6.39 in February of 1998, a month before Coleman’s second birthday.Read more...

Dallas Fuel player Félix “xQc” Lengyel has found himself in hot water once again, this time for directing an insensitive insult at a player for the Houston Outlaws, shortly after the Outlaws swept Fuel 4-0 yesterday afternoon. Lengyel has been suspended and fined.

After qualifying for a Dota 2 major, international esports team Fnatic suddenly dumped their offlane player Khoo “Ohaiyo” Chong Xin for Saahil “Universe” Arora, reportedly during a pizza dinner.

The fourth day of Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing wrapped up today, as more than 20 women gave statements in court, addressing Nassar directly and recounting harrowing tales of sexual abuse by the former U.S.A Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor. Nassar is currently serving a prison sentence for child pornography…Read more...

Deadspin Aly Raisman Is Ready To Burn It All Down | Jezebel It’s Time to Map the Wilderness of Bad Sex | Earther Trump’s Plan to Keep National Parks Open During the Shutdown Could Be Disastrous | Splinter Zillionaire CEO Attributes $500 Employee Bonuses to Republican Tax Cuts | Very Smart Brothas I’m Pretty Sure a…Read more...

However severe the injury to Tom Brady’s throwing hand turns out to be, the mild panic it has generated in the run-up to Sunday’s AFC championship game underscores a reality that is frequently easy to take for granted: Though he may seem like he will play forever, Brady is not indestructible.Read more...

Last week’s Titans-Patriots simulation was a bloodbath, seeing 14 total players get injured including both starting quarterbacks. Will the players in today’s simulation avoid a similar fate? More importantly, who will win? Your Tecmo Super Bowl simulation is LIVE:Read more...

Last week, a grand jury in Harris County, Texas declined to indict Denver Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders on a charge of sexual assault, according to online court records. Sanders had been accused of sexual assault back in the summer, but the investigation was not public knowledge until Thursday, when TMZ…Read more...

There is at least one Overwatch pro who enjoys the character Mercy, even with her many controversial makeovers. Mikias “Snow” Yohannes, support player for Boston Uprising, stands by the controversial healer. “I think I would be the only support player that will tell you I actually enjoy playing Mercy,” he told Compete…Read more...

Philadelphia seemed already out of Eagles stories when a week ago I read the headline “Eagles Pep Band Ready for Big Game.” Where do you go after a story on whether the four guys who play the Eagles’ fight song after touchdowns are ready for the intensity of a playoff game?Read more...

As you might have gathered from the three tiebreaks and the names involved, today’s third round match between Nick Kyrgios and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was a white-hot serve-off. At 1-1 in the third set, Nick Kyrgios fired one particular serve that caught my eye. By this point I was admittedly a little delirious—it’s hard…Read more...

New York Jets wide receiver Robby Anderson was arrested early Friday morning in South Florida and charged with reckless driving, resisting arrest, eluding police, and threatening a public servant.

Tom Brady wore the gloves again. It is two days before the Patriots play in the AFC title game against the Jaguars.Read more...

You’d think that even the most seasoned and professional of goalscorers would react to popping the ball into the net with a scorpion kick by frantically running around and losing their mind. But this little Irish lad, after scoring a once-in-a-lifetime scorpion kick, just calmly turned and trudged back toward the…Read more...

Gone are the days where you started sweating just getting dressed in the moring (hopefully). It’s time to deal with single digit weather. Columbia is giving you 35% off select styles, no code needed, during their Winter Sale. Choose from over 1,000 styles for everyone. Pick up layering pieces, boots, t-shirts, and…Read more...

Olympic gold medalist gymnast Aly Raisman delivered a 13-minute victim impact statement today in front of Ingham County Circuit Judge Judge Rosemarie Aquilina and Larry Nassar himself, in which she excoriated not just Nassar for his sexual abuses against herself and nearly 150 other athletes, but also USA Gymnastics…Read more...

I grew up a collector. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe I was brainwashed, growing up in the era of Saturday morning cartoon shows, video games and pizza bribes for school work. But I liked to collect things: Baseball cards, action figures, video games, whatever.Read more...

This Monday night, about two weeks after the actual anniversary, WWE will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its flagship Monday Night Raw TV show with a live show from two different locations in New York City. While the show will be based out of Barclays Center in Brooklyn, additional action will be broadcast from the…Read more...

For a hockey player in front of the net, it’s all about getting good position and setting a screen—and also sometimes taking a puck off his dick.

I’ve been listening to a lot of KC and the Sunshine Band lately. Probably too much, by most definitions, but these extended cuts of ’70s songs on YouTube have been awesome for my productivity.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of in this world, it’s that all the most awful people in it tend to gravitate towards each other. So even though it’s weird, it’s not necessarily surprising that Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger gets name-checked in Stormy Daniels’s story about humping Donald Trump.

There’s been no stranger team in the current generation of college basketball than the Jock Landale-led Saint Mary’s Gaels. During Landale’s career (he’s now a senior), the small California school has run an offense that looks straight out of the 1950s. They give it to the tall guy under the basket, and they let him…Read more...

If you don’t have cable, but don’t want to miss the Blake Bortles vs. Case Keenum Super Bowl, you can watch it in HD with this $14 amplified antenna.

American gymnast Jordyn Wieber was a member of the U.S. gymnastics team that competed at the Summer Olympics in 2012, and won a gold medal in the team competition. Up until now, she was not known to be a victim of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of criminal sexual…Read more...

The Cleveland Cavaliers stink, a few Cavs players really want everyone to know they stink, and hopes of getting it together in time for the playoffs are getting dimmer. Last night, they blew a 23-point lead to the Orlando Magic at home only to be saved by two Isaiah Thomas free throws in the final seconds. After the…Read more...

A Logitech speaker system, a Panasonic shaver and beard trimmer, a Samsung microSD card, and more are all part of today’s best deals.Read more...

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga received a code violation at the beginning of the fourth set of his third-round match against Nick Kyrgios for telling a person in the crowd that he was going to “kick his ass,” while Kyrgios, who on the first day of the tournament told a heckler to “shut the fuck up,” remained mostly calm and…Read more...

No Shave November ended nearly two months ago, and the NHL playoffs haven’t started yet, so you don’t have an excuse to look unkempt at the moment. Luckily, a couple of Panasonic shaving products are down to their lowest prices ever today on Amazon.

Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Yasmany Tomas was arrested in Phoenix on Thursday morning after police clocked him going 105 mph on a local freeway. He has been accused of reckless driving and criminal speeding.Read more...

It’s been more than three years since Joel Embiid offered up this tidbit about his love life, with the woman in question widely thought to be none other than Rihanna, due to his long-standing public crush on her and habit of tweeting about it:Read more...

More than a dozen women gave statements in court today about the sexual abuse that they endured at the hands of former U.S.A. gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar. Currently in jail on child pornography charges, Nassar has pled guilty and is now awaiting sentencing on 10 counts of first-degree…Read more...

Over the objections of players, MLB hopes to implement a pitch clock and tighter restrictions on mound visits this season, as first reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and then in greater detail by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan.

The NBA is doing something slightly different with their all-star game this year, where the two top vote-getters from each conference will serve as captains and draft a team of their fellow starters. They won’t broadcast it, which defeats the purpose, but whatever, LeBron James and Steph Curry are the captains.…Read more...

It’s cool. Tom Brady hurt his throwing hand in practice on Wednesday and didn’t practice today, four days before the AFC Championship Game. Don’t worry about it.Read more...

Making weight in the UFC is a brutal business. Many fighters train at a dozen or so pounds heavier than their fighting weight, then try to drop all their excess weight in the day or so before a weigh-in via severe dehydration. Middleweight contender Uriah Hall had to scrap his co-headlining bout with Vitor Belfort…Read more...

Just a few days after four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles said that Larry Nassar—the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics physician who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of criminal sexual misconduct—sexually abused her at the in Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, USA Gymnastics announced that it…Read more...

Of last night’s three Overwatch League matches, two were complete blowouts that left no doubt as to which team was leaps, bounds, and jetpack boosts ahead of the other.

We’ve seen lots of tricky free kick techniques over the years, but this one from Brazil takes the cake in terms of ingenuity and unexpectedness:

Larry Nassar, who admitted to decades of sexual abuse of girls and young women, often under the guise of medical treatment, wrote a letter to the judge in charge of his sentencing hearing in which he accused her of using the hearing to get media attention for herself and expressed concern about his mental capacity to…Read more...

Even though Austin Rivers didn’t play against the Rockets earlier this week, his very presence helped spark the Rockets’ furtive voyage to the Clippers locker room to cause a commotion and not actually fight. This is because, as Bill Simmons said on Zach Lowe’s podcast, Rivers would not stop talking shit to the…Read more...

Watch that clip up there. It says all there is to say about what Andrew McCutchen meant to Pittsburgh in general, and to Pirates fans in particular. For a long time, it was damn near impossible to imagine a Pirates player who possessed enough star power to affect young fans like that. Now that McCutchen is gone, it’s…Read more...

Raptors center Lucas “Bebê” Nogueira lives in Toronto, where “everywhere you go, it’s Drake, Drake, Drake,” as he explained to CBS Sports’ James Herbert. But Bebê’s tastes are different.Read more...

Burnley manager Sean Dyche seems like the kind of guy who would munch on a big bowl of tree bark, rocks, and beetles for breakfast every morning and make a big show of it if for no other reason than to prove how much of a hardass he is. Thus it wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe a former teammate of his, Søren…Read more...