Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

I know you football fans out there that are preparing for your Super Bowl parties with great enthusiasm are doing so out of a love for the day, but also to mask some pain.

I don’t watch sporting events for the players or the game. Seeing incredible athletes accomplish phenomenal feats that I wouldn’t dream of doing in a billion years...nope, not for me. Rather, I watch sports because of the officials. To be so close to the action despite having none of the athletic prowess, yet still…Read more...

A dull day with the Brooklyn Nets is merely the calm before a Kyrie Irving storm. On Friday afternoon, the Nets star point guard added another chapter to his tumultuous tenure in Brooklyn by placing his finger on a metaphorical dead man’s switch by outright requesting a trade from the Nets.Read more...

Brooklyn Nets heat magnet and resident conspiracy theorist Kyrie Irving wants the team to deal him elsewhere prior to the NBA trade deadline or he’ll leave as a free agent, as reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

An arrest warrant was issued Thursday for Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon for allegedly pointing a gun at a woman in downtown Cincinnati last month.

Jerry Jones is so far into his own head that he’s paralyzed by fear (or the effects of old age). In one of Jones’ many rambling interviews where he talks Dallas football, the Cowboys owner said it’s “pretty impressive” that the L.A. Rams and Philadelphia Eagles have made the Super Bowl after going all in, but he…Read more...

David Tepper is saying all the right things — he just isn’t doing them. The Carolina Panthers owner made waves this week when he insisted that he was doing his part in breaking up the NFL’s “old boys’ network” of wealthy white owners that seldomly hire Black people and minorities to positions of power, particularly as…Read more...

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Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you.Read more...

After leaving fans trying to decipher her cryptic tweets in Taylor Swift style about where she would end up next season, Breanna Stewart has gone back to her home state of New York.Read more...

There is some comfort in knowing that the higher-ups at CBS see and hear the same things we do during their NFL broadcast. They can’t miss that Tony Romo is merely making noises like some sort of fusion between a pin and whoopee cushion and not much else. It seems they even tried to do something about it. But when…Read more...

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If you’ve ever wondered why your Uncle Frankie was screaming at the top of his lungs six inches away from the television screen even though his favorite team wasn’t playing in the game, it was because the mortgage payment was coming up and if Cam Newton had fallen on that fumble, maybe he wouldn’t have had to find a…Read more...

Nick Siranni has come a long way from his cringeworthy, double-talk-filled, introductory press conference in 2021. As the Philadelphia Eagles head coach, he has led the team to consecutive playoff appearances. This season they had the best record in the NFC and are playing in the Super Bowl. An accomplishment so…Read more...

The Arena Football League is making a comeback and is set to hit the field again in 2024. Arena football has been around in a couple of different incarnations since 1987 but hasn’t been active since 2019. For a long time, it was a primary alternative to the NFL in the United States. Now it feels like just another…Read more...

It’s no secret that this current iteration of the NBA has struggled to make its regular season meaningful. Star players miss games night to night, and the matchups we anticipate because they could be a preview of the postseason all of the sudden are rendered moot. Only two things really move the NBA’s needle on social…Read more...

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A rising tide lifts all boats, so they tell me. The tide on the women’s side of AEW, for pretty much its entire three-plus-year existence, seemed pretty stagnant, with the occasional spike that promised more but rarely delivered a change in altitude. While not wanting to put too much on her shoulders (though they…Read more...

What do Bob Myers, Travis Schlenk, Rob Pelinka, and Monte McNair have in common? They’re each experiencing different stages of the NBA’s own burgeoning nepo baby regimes.

Nathaniel Hackett should be honored this year at the NFL Honors ceremony with the biggest shyster in the game award. Within a 12-month period, Hackett coaxed two NFL franchises into hiring him. He convinced the Denver Broncos he was worthy of being a head coach and failed miserably. Now Hackett allegedly persuaded the…Read more...

The quarterback market is drying up and the offseason hasn’t officially begun yet. With Tom Brady announcing his second retirement via Twitter, the next available decaying legend is Aaron Rodgers. The career Packer has returned to his usual cryptic, blameless self, and who knows what his future holds.Read more...

Despite being an annual news story around this time of the year — due to the circus that’s caused by the way that coaches are fired and hired in the Lone Star State — DeMeco Ryans is returning home to be the newest head coach of the Houston Texans. They say “home is where the heart is,” but the Texans don’t love…Read more...

This is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll make it quick because you have slides to scroll through, and I have better things to write than clickbait. It feels like a lot of NFL teams with a franchise guy under center have fewer blue chips players than most of the squads in search of a QB, which leads to trade rumors…Read more...

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There is no fanbase that can whipsaw from beseeching the masses to watch their sport to getting pissed off at any mainstream coverage or attention quite like hockey fans. Any discussion of hockey’s ratings and popularity always includes a collection of the same reasons it’s not more popular, along with a scowl from…Read more...

Less than a month since he went into cardiac arrest on Monday Night Football, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin made his first public speaking appearance since the incident on Tuesday night as a surprise guest at a taping of FOX’s upcoming season of The Masked Singer. Per TMZ Sports, Hamlin attended the taping with…Read more...

Have you watched Power Slap: Road to the Title on TBS? Highly recommended for torturing prisoners of war. It’s awful and I wrote about just how infuriating the show is at length. Something about the mind-numbing act of unprotected slaps to the face did get me thinking of combat sports that would do better on…Read more...

Jerry Jones championed the construction of Jerry World — AT&T Stadium — to host major sporting events far and wide, not simply for eight or nine Dallas Cowboys home games per year. His building hosted a Super Bowl in 2011 but weather problems in the Metroplex made that one a miserable experience. Now an NBA game…Read more...

Thomas Edward Patrick Brady, Jr. will forever be known as one of, if not the greatest quarterbacks of all time. After 23 years with New England and Tampa Bay, the three-time MVP and seven-time Super Bowl champion is hanging up his cleats, and unlike last year, I actually believe him this time.Read more...

“Frugal” would be one word to describe Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson during his playing career in the NFL. During a recent sit-down interview with Shannon Sharpe on his “Club Shay Shay” podcast, Johnson revealed his secret to holding onto most of his earnings from football.Read more...

The comeback king may finally be done, but Tom Brady’s football obituary should begin with his error of making one comeback too many. The venerable Patriots legend Tampa Bay Buccaneers mercenary-for-hire announced his retirement in a no-frills social media post on Wednesday morning.

Welcome, once again, to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, where we mock the monthly bottom-of-the-barrel in the sports world. Special shoutout to the very dead Bobby Hull!Read more...

You have to hand it to Chelsea FC’s new-ish owner Todd Boehly. If you’re replacing Roman Abramovich as owner, and ushering in a new era after the club’s trophy-laden one that the Russian Oligarch oversaw, you can win over the fans by going on a spending binge that would even make Abramovich raise one of his very…Read more...

I don’t know why anyone is surprised when a city putting on the Super Bowl goes overboard trying to make sure its streets are clean before hosting thousands of fans and hundreds of media members. There are levels to lengths that they go, and it varies from allegedly euthanizing stray dogs (turns out, that was false),…Read more...

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The Women’s World Cup is nearing, and as is tradition, FIFA marked the occasion with controversy. Host countries Australia and New Zealand are urging the soccer federation to back out of its sponsorship with Visit Saudi. The main issue with the deal is Saudi Arabia’s ever-present, awful record of women’s rights…Read more...

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Do you really believe there are two Damar Hamlins? Conspiracy theorists continue to move the goalposts in typical conspiracy theorist fashion. I’m apprehensive to even talk about this stuff because I don’t want to further spread any disinformation, but this is a great example of their way of thinking — any…Read more...

Adult sensibilities don’t belong in youth sports. Grown people take sports way too seriously. Countless times overzealous parents, coaches, and spectators have tainted the purity of amateur sports. An assistant coach on the staff of the junior varsity basketball team in Portsmouth, Virginia recently attempted to pull…Read more...

No team with a shot to win the Super Bowl next season wanted a quarterback who’ll be 46 when he plays his next NFL game. That’s gotta be why Tom Brady is retiring. After a prolific 20-year career with the Patriots and a three-year run with the Buccaneers, Brady said in a video on social media Wednesday morning that…Read more...

NBA, I’m ready to bargain. I complain regularly about the uniforms because back when the NBA was a proper league, the home team wore white except for the Los Angeles Lakers gold. I can accept that those days are long gone, but Adam Silver please meet me 25 percent of the way. If a classic matchup is taking place —…Read more...

The NFL coaching roulette wheel started to spin pretty violently yesterday, with DeMeco Ryans heading to the Texans now that San Francisco’s season is over, which left Sean Payton’s path to Denver open. Though that path was a two-way street, given the draft picks the Broncos had to send back to New Orleans for the…Read more...

In case you missed it, we had Chandler Parsons sighting recently, and it wasn’t on an NBA team’s injured reserve list. The oft-injured former NBA player is no longer on a roster in the Association if you can believe that. Now that his play days are officially over, Parsons can be seen on FanDuel TV offering his two…Read more...

Super Bowl 57 already has a ton of storylines. Andy Reid will be facing a franchise that he once led to football’s biggest stage. Travis and Jason Kelce are making history as the first brothers to play against each other in the game. Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are the first two Black quarterbacks to headline. And…Read more...

There will be no Sean Payton on Fox Sports next season, he has found a new place to coach. ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting that Payton will be the Denver Broncos’ next head coach. The Broncos and Payton’s former team, the New Orleans Saints, finalized compensation.Read more...

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The gentrifiers of Brooklyn caught a raw deal on Monday night. The Los Angeles Lakers are in New York on a back-to-back, meaning that LeBron James and Anthony Davis were only going to play one game. People who purchased tickets for the Brooklyn Nets game received the short end of the load management stick. It’s the…Read more...

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The way we relate to professional athletes is a funny thing. They come into our homes via the TV weekly, nightly, and sometimes even hourly. In the fleeting few moments, we see them off the field (or ice, or diamond, or pitch), they are typically friendly, jovial, and serious about their profession, but not in a way…Read more...

Earning the distinction of cover athlete for your sport’s premier video game franchise is a unique honor. You didn’t necessarily win any awards, championships, or playoff games, but you played well enough for people to consider you the most marketable face they could put on the cover of their product — a product that…Read more...