Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The sound the ball makes when it rockets off the back of Tebow’s batting helmet is startlingly, frighteningly loud:Read more...

Marshawn Lynch of the Oakland Raiders sat through the pregame performance of the national anthem at last night’s preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals.Read more...

When pundits rail against the “alt-left”; or melt down over “campus inquisitions” by supposedly fanatical social justice warriors; or when our paper of record explicitly equates fascists with the anti-fascists who turn up to oppose them, those they are attacking are the kinds of people who showed up in…Read more...

First pitch in Washington was delayed three hours Saturday night and there was still a steady drizzle when the game got underway. While attempting to run out a ground ball in the first inning, Bryce Harper hit first base awkwardly and slipped on the slick surface. He immediately fell to the ground clutching his knee…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. The Olympics are garbage.Read more...

A rushed and contentious Friday meeting returned the result the Los Angeles City Council was hoping for: a unanimous council endorsement of the 2028 Olympics bid, and agreement that the city would cover any cost overruns associated with the games. From a Los Angeles Times report:Read more...

Here’s cyclist Lars Boom celebrating his victory on stage five of the Binckback Tour with an emphatic “up yours”:Read more...

Anti-Fascism and anti-racism protests that began in response to an alt-right rally near the University of Virginia campus last night has resulted in violent clashes, with the latest reports and video showing a car plowing through a crowded street of people.

This is your post-tattoo cleanup guide.Read more...

Here is a harrowing-as-hell video of Rich Hill taking a pitch directly to the Adam’s apple:Read more...

Here was an unexpected feature of Friday’s torch-lit Neo-Nazi white nationalist march in Charlottesville: a bunch of racist bozos marching around with placards featuring the Detroit Red Wings logo:Read more...

Now here is a damn sports bet:Read more...

Cardinals Cat, the kitten that invaded a Royals-Cardinals game at Busch Stadium Wednesday night and inspired the Cardinals to victory, has been found. And you know what? They threw the little asshole in jail, where he belongs:Read more...

In the immediate aftermath of a dispiriting and embarrassing Friday afternoon loss to a heavy bag, Conor McGregor and the UFC have been working to redeem and restore some of the McGregor’s reputation as a fighter, mostly at the expense of McGregor’s recent sparring partner, Paulie Malignaggi.

Earlier tonight, aspiring boxer Conor McGregor lost to a heavy bag in a public workout so feeble and ridiculous that anyone watching had to wonder whether McGregor had some mysterious business reason for masquerading as a clown or just is one. Perhaps in response, UFC figurehead Dana White has posted the following…Read more...

Sometimes, there aren’t any good answers. Today, NFL officials announced that they had decided to suspend a player accused of domestic violence for six games: The same penalty they promised years ago, and then went about ignoring as they saw fit. This seemed to make people quite happy, which was all the people who run…Read more...

We’re only in the first week of preseason and already there have been roughly seven billion injuries across NFL training camps. The poor Dolphins had to coax fat Jay Cutler out of retirement. Are we in for yet another year of decimated rosters and subpar primetime matchups? That’s the subject of this week’s Deadcast.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Later.Read more...

My colleague Patrick Redford already laid out which Premier League clubs to watch when you’re trying to take a nap; so unless you enjoy soccer’s equivalent of eating your way through a tub of raw broccoli, steer clear of those guys (except Everton) and allow me to tell which clubs are going to be fun as hell, and thus…Read more...

Emma Coburn kicked at just the right time.

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. 24 Tennessee.

I like doing dishes but hate the vile blobs used to do them. Sponges are deeply disgusting, and though you may try to convince me otherwise I have always felt this way, based on little more than my senses (i.e. after a few days of use, they tend to smell, look, and in all likelihood, taste bad).

Some players blame repetitive stress and high expectations for poor performance. One League of Legends player has a different reason: A little too much lovin’.

This week, the public was treated to a rendition of one of Aesop’s lesser-known fables, The Troll, the Moron, and the Stooge. There was no real moral, just a reminder that a sizable portion of the internet consists of opportunists tugging on their own nuts and screeching when they feel they haven’t received enough…Read more...

It’s hard to parody a man like LaVar Ball, who is already a parody of himself. And yet, I laughed a few times at Kenan Thompson’s impression, which is deadly accurate and benefits from his willingness to lean into the absurd brags.Read more...

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

We all laughed and cried together at every unpredictable twist during the summer’s preeminent melodrama known as NeyWatch, and we were sad to see it end. Luckily for us, that saga was such a hit that it has led to a spin-off series starring a couple of the same characters—namely Barcelona and Philippe Coutinho—called …Read more...

The picture is still one of the first things that comes up when you search “Steubenville rape case.” The girl is a blur of pixelation, but you can see where her shirt lifts to expose her stomach and lower back. There are two boys carrying her by her wrists and ankles, and her head is slung back toward the floor at an…Read more...

Philips Wake-Up lights have long been one of our readers’ favorite products, but now Vansky is making its own version for a lot less money.

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were doomed from the start. Some daft optimists thought that maybe, just maybe, if we just believed in Brazil, the politicians would pull through on their promises that the games would lift the city up to a new level of prosperity. But a year later, the opposite is true.Read more...

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott has been suspended for six games for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy:

Glenn Howard has been one of Canada’s top curlers for years, and the four-time world champion is again attempting to represent Canada in the 2018 Winter Olympics. The master strategist and his team, ranked 17th in the world and 11th in Canada, qualified for the opening round of the Canadian curling trials. The team…Read more...

The current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players’ union runs through the 2020 season. But even with training camps in full swing and the focus turning to FOOTBAW, there are still a number of labor-management issues percolating behind the scenes. Deadspin recently spoke to Bengals offensive…Read more...

The Marlins lost 3-2 to the Nationals last night after surrendering a 2-1 lead in the sixth when Bryce Harper banged an RBI double off the right-field wall. Getting beat by a player as good as Harper isn’t anything to be ashamed of, except when he was never supposed to be given the chance in the first place.

Six people from Santa Clara, California have been arrested and charged with selling arcade cabinets full of “counterfeit games”, which they are alleged to have been profiting off to live like rock stars.

Kotaku Massive No Man’s Sky Update Adds Basic Multiplayer | io9 Reshoots Made One Justice League Hero Go Through Some Changes | Jalopnik Here’s Video Of That Car Falling Seven Stories Out Of A Parking Garage Last Month | Lifehacker Top 10 Ways to Boost Your Home Wi-Fi |Read more...

The NCAA put out a press release Thursday announcing it had adopted a new a sexual violence policy, complete with a press release and a fluffy writeup by the Associated Press. But the NCAA saying it’s news doesn’t make it news. The policy, as described by its own press release, is meaningless. All it does is reiterate…Read more...

It is Friday, my dudes, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Maybe you’ve spent all week like Paide in the Estonian Cup clip up above, kicking around in your own end, measuring your options, looking to push forward but mostly dithering back and forth, eventually torpedoing your own cause and wondering why you even…Read more...

Rookie Packers wide receiver Malachi Dupre needed to be carted off the field after being hit hard by Eagles safety Tre Sullivan during the fourth quarter of tonight’s preseason game. There was no flag on the play.Read more...

Of the five starting pitchers who began the year in the Mets’ rotation, all save one have spent time on the disabled list. That one is Jacob deGrom. And here he is tonight, getting struck squarely on the right arm by a 99-mph line drive in the seventh inning:

The Bears’ first dose of 2017 preseason action—and therefore the first game of their Mike Glennon era—initially looked pretty good, in that they won their coin toss tonight against the Broncos. But things started going south, uh, pretty much immediately after:

Today was the first round of the PGA Championship, hosted this year at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C. It’s been an eventful one, to say the least, for John Daly.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Later.Read more...

The Overwatch League has added to its rapidly expanding collection of widely loathed traditional-sports honchos, as Stan and Josh Kroenke, owners of Arsenal, the Los Angeles Rams, a dizzying array of Colorado franchises, and whatever is on Stan’s head have bought a Los Angeles team for a reported $20 million.Read more...

Foxtrot Alpha Why Guam Is Important Enough To Be In North Korea’s Crosshairs | Kotaku Overwatch, A Game About Teamwork, Is Getting A Free-For-All Deathmatch Mode | Gizmodo Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It | Lifehacker How to Survive Nuclear Fallout |Read more...

A high school football player in Farmingville, N.Y., died today after being hit in the head during a team conditioning exercise that involved players carrying a log overhead.Read more...

Ethan Skolnick, a Miami-based CBS Sports NBA reporter and radio host, was arrested Wednesday and charged with “battery on a person 65 years of age or older” for allegedly beating up his father.Read more...

On Thursday, just three days before Tottenham Hotspur’s Premier League season opener and three weeks before the summer transfer window closes, the worst newspaper in England published a shocking interview with Tottenham’s 27-year-old star left back Danny Rose, horrifying Spurs supporters the world over.Read more...

Today was a wild fourth day of preliminary hearings in the case of 18 Penn State fraternity brothers charged in the February hazing death of Tim Piazza. Lawyers for members of Beta Theta Pi are attempting to get the case thrown out before it reaches trial, and a Penn State football staffer’s role in the night’s events…Read more...