Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Bill Belichick is a grown human being and can do whatever he wants. If he wishes to continue coaching football after his 72nd birthday to win a Super Bowl without Tom Brady, or simply because he is not ready for the silence of retirement, more power to him.Read more...

Every year, Scott Boras holds court at the GM meetings. Sometimes it's the winter meetings, sometimes it's both. Because both of those gatherings are basically just conventions where no media member can actually attend any of the seminars or see the meetings, Boras's beat poetry performed by a suburban dad after one...Read more...

The scene in San Francisco is much different than it was this time last year for the Golden State Warriors. This time last season, the team was trying to move past the Draymond Green-Jordan Poole incident and were on the struggle bus early on. One year later, Poole was shipped to Washington in favor of Chris Paul, and...Read more...

This year's relatively mundane College Football Playoff rankings may be lost amid the Big Ten's sign-stealing scandal, but fans should cherish this status quo now, because it's going to get extremely stupid in 2024. Instead of picking the best four teams from five power conferences, the committee will have to pick 12...Read more...

The G-League has found the ideal broadcast partner. For the next two seasons, games will be aired on the streaming service, Tubi. On Wednesday, the G-League put out a press release announcing this new partnership that will include some original content featuring the individual players as well as the games themselves.Read more...

Remember the NBA's 75th-anniversary ad campaign where Michael B. Jordan drives a bus down the fictional NBA Lane and narrates through the legacies of some of The Association's impact stars? The NBA Struggle Bus is a rickety old jalopy with torn-up seats driving down that same street, but at night, and the exhaust pipe...Read more...

A record 10 rookie quarterbacks will have started an NFL game this year after Sunday. While some were bound to start from Day 1 - i.e. the top picks Bryce Young, and C.J. Stroud - others have found their way into a starting gig via injuries to and/or inconsistency from incumbent signal-callers.Read more...

Less than 10 games into the NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers have already logged a complaint to Commissioner Adam Silver's office regarding a lack of foul calls. However, according to reports, it wasn't concerning the team in general but about LeBron James. Of course, this action isn't unusual for teams, but doing...Read more...

Let's keep the ship rolling and move over to the NL's East Coast conglomerate, which may have sparked the game's best current rivalry. Or at least the one that has the most whining, non-Cardinals division. It's time for the NL East.Read more...

It's been nearly two and a half months since two women were wounded by a stray bullet(s?) while taking in a White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field. You'd think two fans getting shot while enjoying America's pastime would be big news - and it was, for a while. But this is Chicago, the city the right loves to point to...Read more...

Kyler Murray is about to test the advancements of modern science with a return to the field Sunday. The Arizona Cardinals quarterback tore his ACL in December, and either is in a rush to secure his starting gig or auditioning for a role elsewhere if the team continues on its current trajectory. At 1-8, the season is...Read more...

As is the case when it comes to missing children, it's about who it happens to - not that it's happening. And right now, the Chicago Blackhawks are in the midst of a sex scandal that would be the biggest story in sports - if Americans cared about hockey.

A person's last memory of Martavis Bryant in the NFL depends on perspective. For some, that last image might be the 36-yard touchdown pass that he caught for the Pittsburgh Steelers during their 45-42 Divisional Round loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Others might think of when he commented on Instagram Juju...Read more...

Brian Cashman held court for the New York media on Tuesday. He was not exactly in a charitable mood. Which was understandable, if only that he's had the same job for 25 years. Anyone's bound to get a little fidgety. Throw in the fact that he's been dealing with the New York media and New York fanbase, and it's a...Read more...

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...