Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

“We have never covered up things around here. We just didn’t have problems.”

Prior to 2021, I was chugging along on the Ryan Tannehill hype train. I still believed Derrick Henry was the key to Tennessee’s success, but I saw way too many people claiming Tannehill was a bum. He hadn’t done anything to prove he wasn’t able to contend in the AFC. He’d defeated Lamar Jackson and Tom Brady in the…Read more...

Mike Bossy, star of one of the NHL’s greatest dynasties, died Thursday night according to TVA Sports, a French-language network in Canada where Bossy was a hockey analyst.

There was no Jackie Robinson Day in 1972. On the 25th anniversary of him breaking the MLB color barrier on April 15, 1947 the league hadn’t retired his number. In fact until June 1972, the Dodgers had never retired a number. They would do so for him, Sandy Koufax, and Roy Campanella. The league didn’t even acknowledge…Read more...

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Russia’s brutal war isn’t stopping the Ukraine national football team from returning to competition. With the 2022 FIFA World Cup starting in November, the Ukrainians are one of seven teams vying for the final three unclaimed spots in the tournament with three hailing from Europe.

Hateful people run the same plays when they’re up against the wall. Misogynists tell us they have daughters. Homophobes claim they “love everyone” as God instructed. And racists surrounded themselves with people from the community they’ve discriminated against.

The generations of sports fans who grew up learning and loving a sport and team through the radio are disappearing these days. Another one came to a close on Thursday night in Chicago, though this one was a little different. We were a group out of place and time, which we came to identify ourselves by.

It took 2,559 days after Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Major League Baseball to have its 42nd Black player appear in a game. Those seven years and two days saw 11 of the league’s 16 franchises integrate. The Boston Red Sox were the last to do so with Pumpsie Green in July 1959, more than five…Read more...

Baker Mayfield hasn’t done himself any favors since learning of his official demise in Cleveland after the Browns traded for his replacement, DeShaun Watson. The 22 civil cases for sexual misconduct still pending for Watson weren’t enough to scare the Browns away, which meant the end of Mayfield’s career in Cleveland.…Read more...

If I ever became President (let’s hope that’s never the case), my first executive order would be to make it illegal to say “Urban Meyer” and “NFL” in the same sentence, unless of course that name and organization are separated by either the phrase “does not belong in...” or “does not belong anywhere near...”, then and…Read more...

At Smoothie King Center in New Orleans they serve frozen daiquiris, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta there is a barbershop, at FedExForum in Memphis they regularly play, from the Oscar winning film Hustle and Flow, “Whoop that Trick.”Read more...

The fans who tuned into ESPN’s pregame coverage of San Antonio and New Orleans Wednesday night got a little extra treat. There was a Zion Williamson sighting on the court. Before the game, Williamson did some on-court work and put on a show for those in attendance, mostly team staff.Read more...

We’ve got a new rivalry on our hands — the tension has been brewing all off-season between LSU and Notre Dame, and it escalated this week when former Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron was photographed observing a spring practice in South Bend.Read more...

The buddy cops driving the MLB’s unwritten rules squad car last night were Bob Melvin and Eric Hosmer of the SDPD. The Padres’ manager and first baseman respectively took issue with a bunt single by Giants’ utility man Mauricio Dubón in the sixth inning with San Francisco up nine runs.

Trying to help his team become the second from the Spanish capital to qualify for the UEFA Champions League semifinals, Stefan Savić went from composed center back to savage at the drop of a hat.

While the individual storylines AEW tell can be incredibly intricate and dense (sometimes drenched in history with other companies and/or countries and playing on things only a certain few will know from a decade in the past), the premise of the whole company is pretty simple. Give the people what they want. Put…Read more...

College coaches griping about the transfer portal and NIL deals turning college athletics into the Wild West is the new salmon crudo, aka a dish that’s so popular and served so often that Padma and Tom made fun of its omnipresence during an episode of Top Chef.

No one knows how long this iteration of the XFL will last, but the league has already proven that NFL owners are liars.Read more...

Look, I understand the arguments and the rationale. Clayton Kershaw is coming off an injury-plagued season and he didn’t even have a proper spring training to prepare for this season. He’s 34 and hasn’t had a 200-inning season since 2015.Read more...

Dave Roberts must have had a ski mask on yesterday in Minneapolis.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones got fans buzzing Wednesday when he stated the team would consider trading up in this year’s NFL draft. This immediately got Cowboys nations’ minds working regarding who Jones has his eye on if he’s willing to move up the ladder from their current draft spot of No. 24.Read more...

As one of my editors pointed out yesterday, maybe we should just be relieved that Chris Pronger can type at all given how his career was ended. That’s generally the hope for any hockey player, as forlorn as it may be. And perhaps Pronger was trying to do the right thing and illustrate how so many former players can…Read more...

Thirty-six wins, zero losses. That’s what the Oklahoma softball team’s record is right now, breaking the all-time Division I record previously set in 1999 by UCLA at 35-0. Now, with a streak this absurd, this dominant, you’d think there have been hiccups. Perhaps there were a few games where Oklahoma barely squeaked…Read more...

Sometimes, the best part of sports is the pettiness that we get to witness on a public scale.Read more...

For the past two months, people around Brittney Griner and the WNBA have been low-key. The idea was that any loud calls to have the basketball star released from her Russian prison as Vladimir Putin launched an assault against Ukraine would only upset the authoritarian, and so the wise course was to work quietly and…Read more...

The Minnesota Timberwolves have been getting bodied all over the internet for their excessive celebration after surviving and advancing past the Kawhi-less Clippers team in their play-in game. And rightfully so, because the Timberwolves haven’t done anything yet. Their reward will be a battle against the No. 2 seed in…Read more...

As a journalist, I’m always skeptical when someone isn’t allowed to talk. So when I read that Texas senior defensive lineman Moro Ojomo is taking a Steve Sarkisian-enforced break from talking to reporters “for a while” after criticizing the Longhorn’s culture, my immediate reaction was to question why.Read more...

Welcome to Narrative Ball, a series dedicated to pointing out some lesser known players and changing the narrative surrounding them in an effort to put them in the same class as some of the best players in baseball. This is not just an attempt to shine a light on someone worthy of more praise than they receive, but…Read more...

Patrick Beverley showed out on Tuesday night against the LA Clippers. He may have shown his whole ass after the Timberwolves’ 109-105 play-in game win. But Beverley also showed us how players like himself hang around the NBA for a decade.

Oh, Aaron Rodgers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — we’ll stop writing about the guy when he stops giving us things to write about. The latest from the Green Bay QB is a video that was filmed a month ago making the rounds on Twitter of him playing football with some kids at Jserra High School in Orange…Read more...

The animal rights protestors never fail to keep us entertained (remember when they wanted to rename the bullpen in baseball?), and Glue Lady is no different. Late in the second quarter of the play-in game between the Timberwolves and the Clippers last night, the cameras cut away from a Minnesota free throw to show a…Read more...

“You’re really going to do this?” is a question one canceled ABC drama character asks another right before they pack up their sedan and move across the country by themselves. It’s something my family not-so-subtly asked me when I told them I was moving to Chicago after more than a decade in the mountains. And now, the…Read more...

MLB owners and front offices probably forgot the concept of shame long ago. I doubt most of them could spell it much less define it at this point. You still see owners in other sports wince when one of theirs goes off script and lets in a glimpse of how things really work behind the curtain (see: Snyder, Daniel). But…Read more...

“You’re really going to do this?” is a question one canceled ABC drama character asks another right before they pack up their sedan and move across the country by themselves. It’s something my family not-so-subtly asked me when I told them I was moving to Chicago after more than a decade in the mountains. And now, the…Read more...

Perhaps fittingly for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the 2022 Draft will be held amid the backdrop of casinos on the Las Vegas strip. The NFL Drafts is always a high-stakes poker table. Even with rookie wage scale contracts, drafting the wrong guy is a multi-million dollar mistake. There’s a reason why the same losing…Read more...

The 2nd leg of Chelsea-Real Madrid will go down as an all-time classic, as Chelsea overcame a 3-1 first leg deficit to take a 4-3 aggregate lead, only to blow it and lose the tie in extra time to Real Madrid 5-4, even though they won the game 3-2. Chelsea were far and away the better team, with Thomas Tuchel’s…Read more...

Tony Dungy is one of the most important Black figures in NFL history, who has broken barriers on and off the field. Tony Dungy frequently finds himself in problematic situations that impede the community that he intends to do right by. Two things can be true at the same time.

Unfortunately for the NBA, this playoff run may be without the Golden State Warriors very quickly. They have been battling injuries all season, and the most recent one might stretch into their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets. While the Nuggets are an interesting story for NBA-heads, they won’t move the…Read more...

Harassing female employees may not have been enough to get him fired, but Congress’ latest findings on Dan Snyder may finally bury the Washington Commanders owner. Washington’s former Vice President of Sales and Customer Service, Jason Friedman, has reportedly provided the House Oversight Committee with documentation…Read more...

Positions in basketball are entirely different than almost every sport. In baseball a pitcher is required to stand at the mound until he decides to throw a pitch, make a pick-off attempt, or step off to take a break. In football, a play cannot be called for an offensive lineman to receive the ball unless a tackle is…Read more...

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been agonizingly close to capturing that digital championship on a season of Madden or FIFA only to have the computer pull some lucky bullshit and ruin hours worth of investment.

The first HBCU player selected in two decades, first round picks from Northwestern and Florida Gulf Coast, UConn and South Carolina waiting until the second round to hear names from their rosters called — yesterday’s WNBA draft showed us just how shaken up the college basketball world has become.Read more...

Being a woman and a sports fan means looking at your phone first thing every morning and steeling yourself for the repeated punches to the gut.

Day two of the play-in tournament features the 9 and 10 seeds from each conference. These games haven’t been talked about as much as the day one games, but could be even more exciting. One of them will be a showdown between two of the hottest young guards in the league, and the other features a player that came close…Read more...

When setting up for the current MLS season, which started the last weekend of February, one of the major themes was the league locking in its new TV deal sometime in March. MLS’s TV deal has been paltry when compared to the other sports leagues ($90m a year), and there was a feeling that while the new one still…Read more...

First things first, I just want to say that I know he’s only played four career games, but that doesn’t take away from how insane Cleveland’s 24-year-old rookie, Steven Kwan, has been during this stretch. In 19 plate appearances, Kwan has recorded nine hits (three extra-base hits) and six walks for a triple slash of…Read more...

Spring game season is upon us, and the college football programs that didn’t hold their annual glorified practices last weekend are scheduled to put them on this Saturday. It’s a nice way to catch a nap, check in on a quarterback battle, or get a sneak peek at any coaching changes.

Cam Newton’s appearance on an episode of the Barstool podcast Mllion Dollaz Worth of Game this Sunday went viral for all the wrong reasons. What began as a wholesome foray into his parents and traditional upbringing descended into cringe-worthy commentary about the behavior of modern women in relationships.

Bless the Dallas Mavericks’ hearts, they went for it on Sunday. They were one game behind the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference standings. If the Warriors — sans Stephen Curry — had lost to the New Orleans Pelicans and the Mavericks defeated the San Antonio Spurs, the Mavs would have jumped the Warriors…Read more...