Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”

It’s no secret that a lot of bowl games are largely frivolous money grabs created to squeeze revenue out of free labor, profiting off every moment of eligibility until all that’s left to make money off of is sales of nameless jerseys that definitely don’t represent the likenesses of student athletes (because now you…Read more...

Ben Simmons has yet to play a single game this season for the Philadelphia 76ers. The window for his full return to the team seems to have been slammed shut once Doc Rivers booted Simmons (figuratively, unlike Urban Meyer) out of practice in October for refusing to participate in team drills. Now that a return to the…Read more...

Why Aaron? Why do you have to be like this?Read more...

There are few things more important in life than a beer you just bought at a sporting event. People are so desperate to get the tiniest of buzzes going that they’ll drop a whole Andrew Jackson on some watered-down alcohol. Thus, spilling that beer would be an absolute tragedy, fit for Shakespeare in the park. That’s…Read more...

There was no better choice for coach for the 2021 Detroit Lions than Dan Campbell. Sure sometimes he seems more like a caricature of a football coach than a real one when he gets carried away talking about toughness with those broad shoulders, and the Lions aren’t actually a better football team than they were last…Read more...

I ain’t gonna say I told you so, but man, I did try to tell everyone.

In a do-or-die season for many in the New York Giants organization, the condemned are trying to delay the guillotine. Quarterback Daniel Jones, by no fault of his own, seems to be the barometer by which General Manager Dave Gettleman will be evaluated. He knows this as much as anyone, and spent heavily trying to make…Read more...

As the omicron variant is ravaging the globe and putting the sports world in a submission hold that Bob Backlund would be proud of, it feels like we’re destined for another shutdown. But, while some schools, conferences, and leagues are trying their best to go about this in a smart and safe way, the Memphis men’s…Read more...

Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”

There comes a time in every football player’s career when they must face the harsh reality that their career is rapidly winding down. The Carolina Panthers and Cam Newton seem to be at this point, and it’s also time for us, as the NFL viewing public, to admit the same.Read more...

It used to be, long ago, when things made slightly more sense and RC Cola was a thing, that Monday Night Football was the premier game of the week. Which made it a great mystery why ABC would subject the nation to Dan Dierdorf blabbering about something at best tangentially connected to what went on on the field.…Read more...

It’s Week 15 of the NFL season, and rookie quarterbacks have been front and center, with some living up to the hype and others not as much. With that, let’s look at how the 2021 rookie class fared in Week 15.

The NHL has multiple rosters’ worth of players in COVID protocols, with the number growing seemingly by the hour. The obvious thing to do, the thing that we would have expected in the era of “an abundance of caution” (remember that?) would be for the league to shut things down for a couple of weeks, adjust the…Read more...

The Giants have clinched their fifth straight losing season, are going to miss the playoffs for the ninth time in 10 years, and the most intriguing thing about them right now is how long they’ll start Mike Glennon at quarterback over Jake Fromm. That’s because Daniel Jones, a bust from the moment he was drafted, to…Read more...

The new addition to wrestling discourse in the past couple years, and this year especially with the raft of releases from WWE, is to dream of which wrestlers will go from WWE to AEW, whether by choice or by force. And also, to dream what they will do when they get there, to fantasy book your dream matches for them.…Read more...

The NHL really needs to be asked and answer what kind of product it’s offering fans right now. It isn’t just the 60 players in COVID protocol at the moment. It’s the fact that the league does not make any exception to the salary cap for teams that are stripped of a chunk of their roster due to COVID. Which has left…Read more...

Fox has had NFL games for 28 years now, if you can believe that. Seems like only yesterday they killed Angela Lansbury with the news they had usurped CBS to grab the NFC package, which they haven’t let go of since (I was shocked to find out Lansbury, the renown actress of stage and screen is actually still alive, but…Read more...

Doug Gottlieb has made some moronic statements in his time as a sports personality. There was that time he was the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament set with Charles Barkley, Greg Gumbel, Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith and decided to go with this joke live, on-air: “I don’t why you guys asked me,” Gottlieb said, “I’m just…Read more...

Welcome to Week 15 of the NFL, where playoff races are heating up and things are getting good. Let’s see what’s cooking over at ESPN.

Who is the best pass rusher?Read more...

As I’ve said a few times, I’ve only been a wrestling fan again for about six years now. So while I’ve done my fair share of research and rewatching, my grip on wrestling history isn’t as strong as a lot of people’s.

Tom Brady is veering into a delusional confidence lane shared with Brain from Pinky and The Brain. For years we thought Brady was merely Belichick’s best student-of-the-art-of-football robot, then he wrote the TB12 Method. In that book he comes off as one who believes he’s the savior the sports world has been waiting…Read more...

Thursday Night Football has become synonymous with mediocre television. For some reason, most TNF matchups seem to involve two uninteresting teams in a game that means absolutely nothing. Not tonight, though. Tonight features a game between two highly-talented clubs with entertaining quarterbacks and a chance at a…Read more...

America’s least favorite famous-adjacent sibling has done it again. Jackson Mahomes, the younger brother of Chiefs QB Patrick, seems to be trending on Twitter every other week for some dumb reason or another. Jackson gained TikTok fame largely on the basis of being Patrick’s brother, really milking the relationship by…Read more...

There could already be a new challenger coming for Steph Curry’s long-distance shooting crown, and his name is Anthony Edwards.

Urban Meyer is out as coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars after going 2-11 in his only partial season at the helm. While that’s 13 more games than Meyer ever should have coached in the NFL, and he leaves with a lower winning percentage in the league (.154) than Marty Mornhinweg (.156), it somehow doesn’t feel like this…Read more...

Jim Harbaugh finally got a win over Urban Meyer.

With the world trying to muster up some cheer in another holiday season dampened by COVID, I personally would like to offer a sincere bah-humbug to the NFL and the SNKRS app. I didn’t want much last weekend, just a spec of pre-Christmas. Instead, I received two lumps of coal with an unofficial SNKRS app L and another…Read more...

Most of the time, the things you think will go badly don’t go badly in the way you hope. We all have an urge to watch something burn, if only for a short time, but rarely do we get the flaming wreckage we seek. A lot of times we get the conclusion, but not the show in between.

The details from the report corroborating the rumor that Rick Carlisle can be an asshole are juicy, for sure. Apparently, he belittled FODs (Friends of Luka Dončić) Dennis Smith Jr. and Salah Mejri, accusing Smith of being jealous of Dončić before trading him; saw former assistant coach Jamahl Mosely’s relationship…Read more...

Last night the basketball world held its collective breath as Steph Curry was only two 3-pt field goals away from breaking Ray Allen’s record and becoming the NBA’s all-time leader in made threes. It only took him a few minutes into the first quarter for him to grasp the brass ring, which caused the game to stop for…Read more...

Dabo Swinney, Champion of All Things Amateur, went on a tirade against the current state of the NCAA transfer portal at Clemson’s signing day event earlier today. Swinney made his stance on paying student athletes clear several years ago, when he publicly declared that he would leave coaching if college athletes ever…Read more...

Deion Sanders has caused a shift of tectonic plates in the college football world. Since March 2020, Travis Hunter, the No. 1 overall football recruit in America, has been committed to Florida State. Hunter reiterated his commitment to the university in both September and October. The Tampa Times wrote just yesterday…Read more...

Legal technicalities are robbing women’s soccer players of their dues on both sides of the pond this week. The pitch invader who ran onto the field last week in the middle of a Champions League match (and quickly went viral for getting decked by Chelsea’s Sam Kerr) will not receive a fine for his misconduct. Why? It…Read more...

Before we get into this at all, it has to be stated that Dan Szymborski, and his ZiPS computer projections, have changed the way most people watch and evaluate baseball. They are revolutionary, so to call him to the mat isn’t really fair. It’s what ESPN asked, he did his job. But this latest piece, trying to numerate…Read more...

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Nagy gonna Nagy!

Hands up, everyone: who out there was asking for a Sean Payton biopic?Read more...

According to a new report from the Washington Post, Washington Football Team owner Daniel Snyder attempted to silence a witness who had charged him with sexual misconduct in 2009.Read more...

A recent autopsy from Boston University revealed that ex-NFLer Phillip Adams, who shot six people to death before killing himself in April, had an unusually severe form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, better known as CTE, at the time of his death. A degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma, CTE…Read more...

If there was a way to slyly tell you that Cleveland has the second best scoring defense in the NBA behind the Warriors, I would do that. But me doing the whole, “I bet you couldn’t guess who the second best scoring defense in the league is” bit isn’t clever, because Cleveland is in the headline of the article.

I understand Americans hate math. I largely share that sentiment and understand no one wants computation to interfere with a day off work sitting on the couch, gorging on food and drink while watching large men collide at high rates of speed on television.

NFL teams have been looking at college coaches to fill their head coaching vacancies more than ever. In each of the past three seasons, at least one coach made the jump to the NFL after years of working at the collegiate level. Urban Meyer is the most recent college coach to take that route, and although he hadn’t…Read more...

Surprise hockey teams don’t come around in the same way as they do in the NBA. In professional basketball, generally the newest team that you have to watch has one or two young stars that are starting to find it. Like Memphis with Ja Morant of late, or the meteoric rise of the Suns. Not only do you have to check out…Read more...

Lebron James’ I Promise School is making news headlines for negative reasons stemming from an incident between the school’s now-former principal and a student. Brandi Davis recently resigned as principal of the school after being accused of smacking a student back in September. Davis has been under investigation since…Read more...

Despite onside kick rules becoming prohibitively restrictive in the NFL throughout the past decade or so, there must have been something in the air this weekend. Maybe you were sitting on your couch in a post-Sunday brunch fugue and you saw one and thought to yourself, didn’t I already watch one of these this weekend?…Read more...

Feels like we’ve been here before. The headlines from yesterday, they certainly have a familiar ring.

This site has certainly already had a healthy debate on Steph Curry. I try not to get too involved, mostly out of fear of catching a stray chair shot. I’ll just say I find Curry and the Warriors endlessly entertaining, and I’m not so deep into the basketball weeds that I have to think any more about it than that.

It’s Week 14 of the NFL season, and rookie quarterbacks have been front and center, with some living up to the hype and others not as much. With that, let’s look at how the 2021 rookie class fared in Week 14.Read more...