Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Mere mention of the names Stan Kroenke and Mike Brown, owners of the two NFL teams facing off in the Super Bowl on Sunday, triggers largely negative emotions from fans of teams they own. (LA Rams fans are nihilists, dude, so discount them.) Talk to Bengals fans, former St. Louis Rams fans, Arsenal fans, or any fans of…Read more...

It’ll take a miracle for Marcus Morris Sr. to not be suspended after extra hard foul on Ja Morant

Under Dan Snyder’s stewardship, the Washed Football Team has become a tired, dull reflection of the burgundy and gold of old. Each offseason is replete with a stream of allegations, controversies, and criminal investigations. Oh, and the team is rudderless.

I have a love/hate relationship with Olivia Benson and the ubiquitous Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU to those of us who have it on the background at least 65 percent of the time). On one hand, it’s copaganda of the highest order, where police are nearly always the good guys, and one cop in particular, Olivia…Read more...

Now that the NBA’s social justice pomp and circumstance have faded away, it’s past time the league officially apologized to former player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.

Even through its many, many bumps and hiccups (the kind of hiccups where you feel like you’ve pulled an oblique) I have been pro-VAR. It is hardly perfect, and far too much of it still depends on the whims and judgements of people. Except now being in the hands of whatever is floating between one person’s ears, we’re…Read more...

I just saw CJ McCollum in Chicago like a week ago. He seemed fine — he had 29 on 13-of-23 from the floor and played well — but the team wasn’t itself anymore. It was a Sunday morning, and I was in bed when my girlfriend asked, “Hey Portland’s playing today. Want to go?”Read more...

The Super Bowl is the biggest stage in sports, where stars are made, legends are born… and embarrassment lives forever. There are plays that just don’t get made, sure — like Scott Norwood’s field goal at the end of Super Bowl XXV — but there’s a difference between not getting the job done, and screwing up in such…Read more...

The mystery of why NBC ponies up most countries’ defense budgets for the right to broadcast the Olympics still evades me. I know what the answers are. The ratings are worth it, which means the ad rates make it worthwhile, and that those who tune in aren’t really interested in the results of various competitions.…Read more...

Over time, certain franchises take on personality archetypes. The perennially moribund Sacramento Kings are a chaotic compulsive gambler swinging wildly between winning big at the slots and squandering their winnings on shell games outside the casino. Sacramento dumping the 6-foot-5 Tyrese Haliburton into a trade…Read more...

Out west, the students are taking matters into their own hands, pushing college athletics another step further into its new athlete-empowered era — and they may be making things a lot more complicated for the NCAA.

Steph Curry is arguably the most exciting player to watch in the NBA right now. His ability to expand the floor with the range of an ICBM can make stone-faced humbugs raise an eyebrow and crack a smile in astonishment and awe. Women’s basketball hasn’t had anything like that in recent memory, that is, someone who is…Read more...

The Winter Olympics are always sports’ most unique event. For the most part, it’s a collection of niche sports getting international attention all at once. Exceptions have existed with men’s ice hockey, with five straight Olympiads allowing the NHL’s stars to participate for their countries, last taking place at the…Read more...

Could abolishing the single ownership model in the NFL be a catalyst for legitimate change in the league’s hiring processes? Probably — but there’s no real path to that abolition.Read more...

Over the weekend, former Chicago White Sox hitting strategist Matt Lisle tweeted out a video of his “friends’ son” taking BP.Read more...

Since Peng Shuai bravely penned details of her sexual abuse at the hands of former Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli in November, the 36-year-old tennis star has become a symbol for the extent of Chinese censorship. Saying that China has handled Shuai’s accusations against a high-ranking Chinese government official…Read more...

Contrary to what the NFL would like you to believe, they aren’t always the most upstanding, law-abiding group of individuals. I’m not only referring to players, but the people running these organizations all the way up to ownership.

The writing is on the wall for Bryan Harsin at Auburn, to the point where Paul Finebaum is openly speculating about Hugh Freeze coming in from Liberty — after five years of SEC exile — to take the Tigers job.Read more...

Hosting an Olympics of any kind is like when it’s your turn to host a house party after you turn 30. Yes, we all like social gatherings and it’s fun seeing everyone, but I have to spend money to feed people who dirty shit up, judge my house, complain about the free food, and then leave a mess for me to clean up? Nah,…Read more...

There’s little that can surprise anyone when it comes to the Arizona Coyotes anymore. They’re being kicked out of their building after this season. They were nearly kicked out in the middle of it. It’s apparently an abhorrent place to work. The owner might not have any actual money. And the team has sucked pond scum…Read more...

Read more...

Back in the era of slavery — which wasn’t as long ago as racists, conservatives, and the GOP would like you to believe — Black bodies would be stripped naked, or close to it, and put on the auction block where they were sold to the highest white bidders. Their height, weight, skin color, sexual organs, teeth, and…Read more...

The Cincinnati Bengals have overcome quite a bit of adversity to get to Super Bowl LVI. They had to claw their way to an AFC North championship after some bad regular-season losses, including the infamous 400-yard Mike White game against the New York Jets, followed by getting smoked by Cleveland Browns, 41-16, the…Read more...

There was no force on earth that would’ve stopped the Buffalo Bills from dragging the New England Patriots up and down the field during that 47-17 Wild-Card beatdown. But maybe that’s not the Patriots’ first-round opponent if they were able to land Odell Beckham Jr. after he was released by the Cleveland Browns in…Read more...

We would hardly be the first to point out that if the MLB owners had spent as much time talking to the MLB Players Association as they have trying to swing the PR war, the regular season just might start on time (we’re only about two or three weeks from Opening Day being delayed, and there is more hope of Joe Strummer…Read more...

So, the cat seems to have entirely escaped the bag at this point. James Harden allegedly wants out of Brooklyn barely one calendar year into his stint with the team. It sounds like it’s more than just the part-time status of teammate Kyrie Irving that’s bugging Harden. Although the Nets, losers of eight straight, may…Read more...

Brian Flores’ racial discrimination suit against the NFL has put almost every African-American coach under a CT scan, giving them permission to discuss their experiences interviewing for head coaching jobs. So far, few of them have taken the opportunity to directly criticize the team owners they may need final…Read more...

LOS ANGELES — There is no lack of confidence with the Cincinnati Bengals. Quarterback Joe Burrow returned from an ACL injury and mostly picked up where he left off in 2020, being the steadying force behind center that the Bengals have spent years trying to find. There’s JaMarr Chase, who is basically the same…Read more...

Whoever finally convinced Roger Goodell and the NFL that having a team and holding events in Las Vegas was a good idea really pulled a fast one. Vegas claimed another NFL player on Sunday night, following the AFCs’ 41-35 victory over the NFC.

It’s still worth it, every so often, to consider how impressive it is that the Ricketts family pissed all over the glow of being the ownership group that brought the first World Series title to the Northside of Chicago in 100 years to being universally hated in less than five.

To fully understand just how bad the NFL is at hiring African-American and Black coaches, a history lesson is needed.

Tiki Barber isn’t the only one, just the most recent one.

At least we can say the Winter Olympics are practiced at holding their events in a communist dictatorship, as they’ve held two of the last three in one. We’re just about three or four days into the whole thing, and already the stories of athletes being held against their will, shitty facilities, unprepared venues, and…Read more...

Close your eyes for a moment and think of all the terrible organizations in the NFL. Well, maybe don’t close your eyes, you should keep reading. Just take a second to think.

Since the Dallas Cowboys season ended in the wildcard round of the postseason, it feels more and more like Jerry Jones is already looking to the future of his head coach position. That spot, currently occupied by Mike McCarthy, feels less secure by the day. Jones is all over the map regarding his head coach. One day…Read more...

It all started with Stephen A. Smith’s Thursday appearance on NBA Today, which included a searing hot take about Kevin Durant. The Brooklyn Nets at the time were on a six-game losing streak that on Friday extended to seven. They are currently on a five-game Western Conference road trip that ends following this…Read more...

If you thought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win over the Kansas City Chiefs was bad last year, wait till you hear about the Super Bowl V, more commonly known as the “blooper bowl.” In the Big Game between the Baltimore Colts and Dallas Cowboys, the teams combined for 6 interceptions, 546 yards of total offense, a missed…Read more...

The NFL Pro Bowl used to be one of the more exciting parts of the football season, but over the years has become as irrelevant as Motorola’s two-way pager. Watching the most outstanding players the game has to offer each year at the same time has now been reduced to nothing more than filler in between championship…Read more...

It is hard to look at Olivier Giroud and think “grafter.” Because it’s not hard to look at Giroud at all. Ask Leslie Jones. It would be silly to suggest that people don’t make conclusions based on how a player looks. It’s hard to reconcile him as a pure, old-school center forward. Strong, holds up the play, brings his…Read more...

The US came extremely close to a podium spot in the only Winter Olympic discipline they’ve never medaled in: The biathlon. I’m not an expert on the sport, I’m only pretending to be after watching a couple hours of competition, but when I heard the announcers say we’ve never even medaled in the biathlon, I was shocked.Read more...

Saturday might have been the day that put Claude Giroux’s eventual candidacy for the Hall of Fame over the top. That’s a strange thing for an All-Star Game MVP nod, but sometimes you need a cherry on the sundae to bring it home.Read more...

We never got to see Micah “The Lion” Parsons run an official 40-yard dash. When the 2021 NFL combine was canceled due to COVID concerns, we were robbed of an opportunity to see several strong prospects like Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Ja’Marr Chase, Patrick Surtain II, and Micah Parsons strut their physical prowess.…Read more...

Roger Goodell isn’t fooling anyone. After releasing their initial statement regarding Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit against the league that stated they would “defend against these claims, which are without merit” and that “diversity is core to everything we do,” the NFL has conveniently leaked a new memo…Read more...

Fans fighting each other is nothing new. It’s so prevalent in soccer that they made a movie about it. While I wouldn’t recommend “Green Street Hooligans” because Elijah Wood playing a Harvard dropout-turned-soccer hooligan is as ridiculous as it sounds, I have been guilty of sharing fan fight videos on group chats…Read more...

Most Power Five Conference college football programs take as much of a deep breath as they can after the traditional National Signing Day, taking place the first Wednesday of every February. Teams’ rosters are as set as possible in the transfer-portal era of the sport after inking the final parts of your yearly…Read more...

All Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson wanted was to get some breakfast. He’d flown all the way to Las Vegas for an opportunity to be around the best players in the NFL today, and all he wanted was to congratulate a few of the guys who’d earned the Pro Bowl title this season and perhaps treat them to a nice meal at the…Read more...

The NHL doesn’t even know how to properly execute a fix.

Michigan has taken back the unfaithful Jim Harbaugh with open arms and tear-filled eyes. It’s not that he cheated on them, but it’s also not for lack of effort. It is almost a little more embarrassing that way for both parties — come on, guys, stand up for yourselves a little! He tried to leave you!

Move over Tom Brady, there’s a new retirement in the news, and it belongs to MLB umpire Joe West. After 46 years, 43 seasons, and over 5,000 games West is officially calling it quits.Read more...