Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

It’s not just that you can’t always get what you want—sometimes, once what you want finally materializes, you wonder why you ever wanted it in the first place.

On the heels of Frank Broyles’s first most significant moment of his career, he got foreshadowing of the second, still a quarter of a century away. It was the winter of 1965, and Broyles had just coached Arkansas to an 11-0 record and a national football championship as chosen by the Football Writers Association of…Read more...

When the Roman Empire disintegrated over the course of the fifth century, only half of it actually fell, the western half. The eastern half of the Roman Empire would survive in one form or another for a thousand years.Read more...

Some people are fans of the Washington Redskins. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Redskins. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Former Ravens linebacker Zach Orr, who retired in January when doctors discovered he had a congenital spine condition, only to unretire in June, has retired again.

Due to recent events, all of America is suddenly talking about the possibility of removing the Confederate monuments that infest our countryside. Great. Here is a guide to how to talk about this issue like an absolute simpering little coward, courtesy of the Washington Post.Read more...

This weekend, someone not named Simone Biles will win the national championship in women’s gymnastics for the first time since 2012. Biles, the winner of five Olympic medals in Rio (four of them gold), has taken 2017 off from training and competition to write a New York Times bestseller, win an ESPY award, and compete…Read more...

ESPN televised Jacksonville’s preseason game Thursday—a rare national game for the Jaguars—which meant a lot of people who would otherwise never think about Blake Bortles now had to think about Blake Bortles. The general takeaway was Holy shit, this guy’s terrible.Read more...

A few days ago, Diego Costa let some wandering Daily Mail reporter into his home in Brazil and proceeded to lay out in considerable, hilarious detail just how fed up he is with how Chelsea and the manager, Antonio Conte, who Costa says “lacks charisma,” have treated him. Today Conte himself was asked about this. He…Read more...

The starters only played one drive in the Eagles’ first preseason game last week, but there was still plenty to talk about afterward for Eagles fans. Carson Wentz, the team’s second-year QB, went 4-for-4 with a touchdown pass to rookie Mack Hollins. Afterward, the team then jettisoned former first-round wide receiver…Read more...

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On Wednesday, Michael Bennett—who sits in protest of the national anthem, and was promptly challenged by a local columnist to quit football if he wants to have political opinions—said things would be very different if it weren’t only black players protesting. “It would take a white player to really get things…Read more...

If your board game collection is gathering dust, it’s time to freshen up your options with Amazon’s one-day Gold Box deal.

Adrián Beltré, baseball’s premier purveyor of jokes and joy, put his skills on display again Thursday night. With Beltré on second, White Sox pitcher Reynaldo López tried to pick him off—but the pickoff attempt got away from second baseman Tim Anderson and rolled into the outfield, giving Beltré space to pretend to…Read more...

Blake Bortles is, believe it or not, still Blake Bortles. He made this fact abundantly clear tonight, in a preseason game against the Buccaneers that is best encapsulated by this pass attempt:Read more...

Yesterday, we brought you an update on the Cardinals’ arrogant claim to the cat that ran across their stadium field last week. A local nonprofit, St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach, is caring for the feline until the organization finds it a suitable new home—with the Cardinals as just one of “thousands” of groups and…Read more...

From the lobby of their Barcelona hotel, the Oregon State men’s basketball team witnessed what athletic director Scott Barnes described as the “horrific carnage” of today’s terror attack. All players and members of the coaching staff are safe.Read more...

Previous rumors of new Miami Marlins owner Derek Jeter’s desire to remove the stadium’s dinger sculpture will not be coming to fruition, as Miami-Dade County officials have spoken up to clarify that it is a work of public art that cannot be moved.Read more...

It’s hard to find anything truly shocking nowadays in a world that seemingly no longer has any rules, but that an ostensibly proud and legitimate newspaper like the Wall Street Journal sees fit to regularly lend its imprimatur of legitimacy to the rambling thoughts of a blithering idiot like Jason Whitlock is,…Read more...

Kevin Durant said today that he will not visit the White House if invited, noting that he does not agree with or respect President Donald TrumpRead more...

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What’s better than baseball or dogs? Baseball and dogs. The Rockies held a Bark at the Park event last night, wherein canines barked at their park while the Rockies beat up on the Braves. I’m sure it was a good time for everyone, except maybe the Braves, who lost by 15 runs, but at least they got to hang out next to a…Read more...

Jets linebacker Jordan Jenkins didn’t hide his feelings about what went down over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., from the creeping normalization of the KKK and its sympathizers to the neo-Nazi murder of a counter-protestor to the president’s refusal to call what happened for what it is.Read more...

Marshawn Lynch, Oakland hero, returned to the NFL this year and signed with his hometown Raiders after a taking a year off from football. After the team wrapped up in Napa today, Lynch had a chance to reflect on his first training camp in two years, as well as his recent national anthem protest. Lynch is always good…Read more...

Victoria Azarenka, the former world No. 1 who returned to the tour earlier this year after giving birth to her son Leo last December, is embroiled in a custody battle with her son’s father, Billy McKeague, a golf pro she met in Hawaii, and it may force her to miss the U.S. Open that begins later this month.Read more...

I went to Rockford, Ill. to watch girls play baseball 63 years after the real Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League played their last season and 25 years after A League Of Their Own introduced their story to a new generation. The Peaches were the most successful team of the…Read more...

Everton hosted Croatian side Hajduk Split for a Europa League qualifier this afternoon, which meant that hundreds of Hajduk fans traveled to Liverpool for the game. They appeared to be ready to get rowdy before the match, and they delivered once things started. Everton’s Michael Keane (no apparent relation) scored in…Read more...

The Tampa Bay Lighting, Rays, and Buccaneers have just released a joint statement in which they offer to provide financial resources necessary to remove a Confederate monument from downtown Tampa.

Four years ahead of the expiration of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith says the two sides are already headed for “small-A armageddon,” whether that be a lockout or a strike. Here’s a brief video from an interview Smith did with The MMQB’s Albert Breer:Read more...

The athletics program at the University of California, Berkeley, in, say, 2037 will barely resemble what you see today. And the hammer is already starting to fall.

Roger Goodell is back in full Ginger Hammer mode this preseason, suspending Ezekiel Elliott for six games and inciting a war with the NFLPA and the Cowboys that’s only going to get uglier. Now, you already know that the NFL is a veritable slot machine when it comes to doling out punishment for players who have…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Baltimore Ravens. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Baltimore Ravens. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Madden NFL 18 has a story mode, a first for a Madden game. Called “Longshot,” it follows the career of fictional would-be quarterback Devin Wade. Unlike Madden 18’s Ultimate Team mode, which allows you to feel like an all-powerful football god who can make record-setting numbers of touchdowns per game, Longshot isn’t…Read more...

“Brian Kelly is not pulling back,” Bleacher Report’s Matt Hayes writes in his feature on the Notre Dame football coach. That’s the angle: that the irascible, gurgling Kelly, whose program finished 4-8 last season, will not alter his approach as he hopes to restore the program to its winning ways. That’s a shame for…Read more...

In this early excerpt from NBA Jam, a book from Boss Fight Books and author Reyan Ali coming in 2018, we learn about the night the development team from Midway let arcadegoers get their hands on their innovative, soon-to-be-legendary basketball game for the first time.

Sunglass Warehouse has some of the best pricing out there, but they’ve amped it up this week. Their clearance section is already full of deeply discounted shades, but use the code KINJASALE40 and get an additional 40% off. That means you can grab pairs for as low as $2, so you really have no excuse not to get a backup.Read more...

Yesterday, San Francisco 49ers GM John Lynch was asked about Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett’s decision to sit for the national anthem before a preseason game last weekend. Here’s part of what Lynch had to say about it (via ESPN):

News of perhaps the largest defamation settlement in U.S. history came and went with a whimper last week. In two footnotes in its third-quarter earnings report, The Walt Disney Company whispered that it spent a cool $177 million—not including additional cash from insurers—“in connection with the settlement of…Read more...

I don’t think Donald Trump really is a Nazi, in the same way and for the same basic reasons I don’t think he’s really a Confederate apologist, or a Republican, or a Russian operative, or anything. Honestly, even his white supremacism is a second-order thing, an artifact of the coincidence that he, himself, is white,…Read more...

In their infinite wisdom, NBC recently saw fit to take a good and beloved Premier League broadcast strategy and make it bad and hated by cleaving its once-unified televised and streaming services into two smaller and less satisfying parts, and charging for each separately. Turner, which recently bought Champions…Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 22 Illinois.

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Cubs pitcher John Lackey is 38 years old and, going into last night’s game against the Reds, had never stolen a base. That changed in the bottom of the fourth inning, when Lackey hit a two-out single and then, somehow, stole second.

Aaron Judge’s home run into the third deck in left Citi Field was officially measured at 457 feet. His teammates weren’t buying it.Read more...

Iced coffee is a brilliant way to sell people ice for the price of coffee (which is mostly water to begin with). Cold brew on the other hand is a different process that results in less acidity, among other benefits, and you can do it yourself at home with this top-selling Takeya, now down to $19 on Amazon.

There are any number of logical team strategies for dealing with injuries. Call up help from the minor leagues. Get a little more creative than usual with your defensive alignments. Let a catcher make his first career appearance at third base, but live in such terror of him actually having to field the ball that you…Read more...

A document discussing “football team rules” at Minnesota included a set of “pitfalls around college athletics,” which listed 15 activities as varied as getting parking tickets, not telling the truth, and gang rape. The two-page document came out today as one of the exhibits included in an independent review of how the…Read more...

Memphis Grizzles coach David Fizdale shared his perspective on last weekend’s white nationalist rally and subsequent domestic terrorism in Charlottesville in an interview today, condemning President Donald Trump’s response to the event and calling for Confederate memorials to be taken down.Read more...

An external review of the University of Minnesota’s sexual assault investigation last year found that the school complied with federal law and institutional policy throughout. But it also noted “weak leadership” and poor communication by the football coaching staff as partially responsible for the team’s brief call to…Read more...

The Cardinals are planning a “Welcome Home” ceremony for a cat the team is publicly calling “ours,” even though they have not yet been granted custody by St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach, the local organization currently responsible for the feline and the process of finding it a new home.Read more...