Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

About two weeks ago a friend" of mine from the 202 bumped into ESPN's Zach Lowe at a bar outside his Harlem apartment. Inevitably, my friend" ruined the mood by touching on the Washington Wizards, compelling Lowe to slump over. To say it was a vibe killer is an understatement. I will neither confirm nor deny that I...Read more...

The Los Angeles Rams have gone digging through the crates and come up with a new quarterback. According to multiple sources, the Rams have signed free agent QB Carson Wentz. The former No. 2 overall pick in 2016 last suited up for Washington and was left on the sideline during the offseason.Read more...

The In-Season Tournament courts are bad enough. Instead of just creating a new logo, the NBA is attempting to blind its customers by color pollution. At least those are only in use for a few months. The City Edition courts are around for the entire season and the theme that the Miami Heat are going with is narcissism.Read more...

After Jim Harbaugh, the college football coach with the most to lose in the Michigan sign-stealing scandal is Ohio State's Ryan Day. Coaching the Buckeyes comes with insane expectations, and there have been grumblings about Day's last two losses against its most hated rival, the team's physicality, and anything else...Read more...

Jim Harbaugh's Michigan Wolverines enter the week ranked number three in the nation in the CFP rankongs, behind top-seeded Ohio State and number two Georgia. And while all seems to be well on the field for Michigan, discipline by either the NCAA, Big Ten, or both, looms on the horizon for Harbaugh and the university.Read more...

After a week off, the Denver Broncos should feel good heading into the second half of the season. They're on a two-game win streak and beat their arch-nemesis Kansas City, 24-9, before the week off. On top of that, Russell Wilson is having the bounce-back season everyone said he needed after his first campaign in the...Read more...

With the manager carousel kicking into high gear yesterday, the MLB offseason has already kicked the pig and is on the move. The league has seemingly moved beyond trying to starve out every free agent and leave them hanging until spring training or beyond, but it also doesn't move all that quickly either. It's a...Read more...

Nick Sirianni's Philadelphia Eagles have replaced the Philly Special as the franchise's most beloved trick play with an ancient formation that dates back to Walter Camp's Saga of American Football manual. The Tush Push is the most transparent play in modern history. Unlike the vanilla QB sneak it evolved from,...Read more...

Starting quarterbacks and leading actors have a lot in common - they can carry a franchise, a lot of them and tall, and handsome, and require an undefinable level of charisma to be successful. And, as is the case in football, and Hollywood, one bad IMDB/Pro Football Reference entry can sink your career.Read more...

In the NFL, incompetence in front offices isn't just par for the course - it's expensive.Read more...

I am well aware that the old saying goes: Hindsight is 20/20." It is always easier to arrive at a correct decision after the one that is actually consequential has already been made. However, life does not grant the courtesy of that reality. We all make decisions, professional and otherwise, without knowing what the...Read more...

Delayed by a day thanks to the Premier League scheduling a pretty big match on a Monday, And it did not disappoint! Let's get to it.Read more...

I'm only adding to the discourse and giving this dickwad exactly what he wants. Aaron Rodgers wants everyone to whisper and hold their breath about his possible return this season. And that's all he wants. All he's wanted for two or three years is attention and for people to think he's some special creature bestowed...Read more...

Going into the 2023 season, predicting that the NFL's best division would be the AFC North was no hot take. It was considered the only division in which all four teams had a chance to make the playoffs. Last year, that honor went to the AFC West and the wheels proved to be creaky a few weeks into the season for every...Read more...

Seattle is one of those teams that is hard to believe in because, on paper, they don't seem to match up with other top playoff contenders in the NFC.Read more...

Man, didn't I just write this about Emma Hayes?Read more...

Northwestern has had better stretches.Read more...

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It is hard to not get a good chuckle out of the claims that US Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker would use a highly sophisticated and thorough process to find new coaches for both the Men's and Women's national teams, and for the former he landed on the guy who already had the job, and for the latter, he landed on...Read more...

You never want to be Twitter's main character, but on NBA Twitter, Paul Pierce is used to being the center of unwanted attention. He's mostly innocuous, but goofy enough to set himself up to get swirlied by the internet on a regular basis. Twitter, IG, live streams, you name it and Paul Pierce is extremely...Read more...

The Dallas Cowboys squandered an opportunity to turn up the heat on the Eagles in the NFC East on Sunday, falling to Philly, 28-23. In only their second head-to-head meeting, many feel like Dak Prescott outplayed Jalen Hurts only to come up short once again when it really matters late in the fourth quarter. Entering...Read more...

Tanking has sadly become far too big a part of the sporting lexicon. We don't really bat an eye when a team chooses to pass on a season or two and barfs up a malformed, odorous product on the fields or sheets of play with the promise of better to come. Price of doing business these days, their fans will tell...Read more...

The Buffalo Bills playing the CIncinnati Bengals, Week 9, at Paycor Stadium made me feel uneasy. There is nothing wrong with two of the NFL's best teams matching up on Sunday Night Football, but NBC's intro that centered around Damar Hamlin nearly dying 10 months prior in that stadium was total grief porn.

Caleb Williams was an emotional wreck who just needed to be held. The Trojans lost their third game of the season because they couldn't stop a Pop Warner team. Head coach Lincoln Riley fired the worst defensive coordinator in college football with two games left on the schedule. USC is a Hollywood drama.Read more...

The halfway point of the 2023 NFL season has arrived. Per usual, the hard salary cap and expanded postseason is doing what they are designed to do. Only a handful of teams have records so bad that a No. 1 overall draft pick is more likely than playoff football. The Chicago Bears, Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, N...Read more...

It was utterly predictable that the Raiders would blow the doors off the Giants in their first game free of the weight and burden that was carrying Josh McDaniels as coach.Read more...

Nike needs to get some Joshua Dobbs jerseys to the Minnesota Vikings team store as fast as possible. I might even make a purchase with the way that he has played in the first season of his long NFL career in which coaching staffs have finally, intentionally started him at quarterback. He has spent most of this season...Read more...

Tua Tagovailoa has proven to his detractors that he's a viable starting quarterback. He's proven to his critics that he can ferry nuclear-powered offense. But Tyreek Hill's cheat code speed can only get the Miami juggernaut so far. There's still a barrier left for Tagovailoa to hurdle.

(TW: sexual assault, sexual harassment)

The beauty of college football is that it's Ground Zero for raw athletes being molded into gems every week before our very eyes. However, pressure doesn't always make diamonds. Welcome to the D-List, Deadspin Dean's acknowledgment of college football's most woeful performances. This is a nod to college football's...Read more...

It's always fair to wonder what will happen to an already great player if he is put on a team with teammates who are much closer, or even on, his level. We saw it with Erling Haaland last season at Man City. But going in the opposite direction, Harry Kane seems to be answering the question, What if we give a...Read more...

There was one game that mattered more than the rest Saturday, and though it had an impact on the College Football Playoff picture, the stakes at this season's Bedlam transcended national titles. In the final iteration of Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, the Cowboys sent the Sooners packing to the SEC, 27-24, and stomped out...Read more...

Every year, Texas and Texas A&M give college football experts reason to believe in the recruiting rankings. The Lonestar State sustains so many programs outside of its two bell cows that the assumption is the schools with first dibs should be perennial national title contenders. Then you watch them play, and it makes...Read more...

The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you're less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It's really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious that casual...Read more...

Nelson Cruz retired on Thursday after 19 years in the bigs. What followed has been a steady stream of stories recalling Cruz's hitting prowess and clubhouse presence - both undeniable facts. But what serves as a side note - if that - in most of the coverage has been his involvement in the 2013 Biogenesis steroid...Read more...

More allegations of hazing and racist treatment against the Northwestern football program came to light Friday as two former Wildcat players, Noah Herron, and Rico Lamitte, alleged they and fellow Black teammates were mistreated as far back as the early 2000s. During a press conference in Chicago ahead of...Read more...

I want Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce to get all they can out of their relationship. I hope Simone Biles and Green Bay Packers safety Jonathan Owens have a long and productive marriage. I wish we lived in a world in which the level of coverage around these two power couples wasn't dictated by...Read more...

Certainly the timing fits. The overall aim, right as the baseball offseason was about to be upon us, seemed pretty clear. It definitely feels like there's a reason the San Diego Padres taking out a $50 million loan during the 2023 season came to all of us at this point in time.Read more...

Last August, I said in the past that Tyreek Hill was a high tide who could lift Tua Tagovailoa's boat. I didn't expect Miami's subterranean offense to morph into a seaplane.Read more...

To be frank, AEW is the product of impulse. Tony Khan saw the momentum that the original All In had generated, the legions of fans loyal to the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, and a host of other wrestlers in NJPW or on the indies on these shores, and Khan dove headfirst into forming a new, major wrestling...Read more...

The gluttony starts early this November with Saturday's all-you-can-gorge-yourself buffet of college football. We haven't had a season-defining slate of games yet, but that's only because it was all backlogged for Nov. 4. There are five top-25 matchups, and a litany of consequential games on top of that, so clear your...Read more...

Virginia McCaskey, the matriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Bears, is 100 years old. A common refrain from the family over the last decade has been that they want to win a Super Bowl again before Virginia goes on to the big owners' box in the sky. I have no doubt that's the case, but the team has been going...Read more...

Brooklyn Nets point guard Ben Simmons is in the early stages of reclaiming his career and getting it back on track permanently. The last couple of years have been nothing less than tumultuous and filled with drama. Most wondered (sometimes aloud) if Simmons even wanted to play basketball anymore and questioned whether...Read more...

Whether it matters that the World Series didn't resonate with audiences beyond casual baseball fans is its own discussion. The lust for ratings is something that TV networks care about because they're the ones paying for the broadcast rights. As long as the product is good, and the games and series are competitive,...Read more...

If you'd told me a sign-stealing controversy involving a man named Connor Stalions would be college football's juiciest scandal in 2023, I'd think it had something to do with a klepto College Gameday fan than clandestine operations, sideline intrigue, and infiltrated sidelines as part of football's secret intel wars....Read more...

Perhaps the challenge for Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, and Wrexham AFC is that they became such a story so quickly, that they all greatly outpaced the documentary about them. Even though the second season of the show hasn't concluded yet, we all know how it ends. Wrexham put up a record amount of points and gained...Read more...

Viewing Las Vegas Raiders interim head coach Antonio Pierce as a placeholder who checks off the diversity box isn't a slap in the face to his talent and intellect. It's a reminder of how NFL owners like Mark Davis do Black coaches by temporarily promoting" them so that they can attempt to clean up the mess the...Read more...

Remember when fans, long ago, and baseball pundits told everyone that you couldn't buy a World Series? It was more water-carrying for a majority of owners who didn't want to spend, but it was baseball truth that a team couldn't sign free agents all over the field and watch it all come together to win a championship.Read more...

Aaron Rodgers has accomplished many things during his NFL career. One of the more impressive feats that Rodgers has accomplished during his first year in New York is staying relevant. Since going down only a few plays into his first game with the Jets, Rodgers has remained in the spotlight thanks to networks like ESPN...Read more...

Several contenders were active around the 2023 NFL Trade Deadline. The Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, and Buffalo Bills all made moves to strengthen their rosters. - moves with the goal of dethroning the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs.Read more...