Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The way that NFL scheduling works, Super Bowl opponents are always teams that don’t have a lot of regular season history. Still, Bengals-Rams feels particularly unfamiliar as a matchup, for a couple of reasons.Read more...

Only seven years after a comprehensive Russian state-sponsored doping program was discovered, and two years after Russia was consequently sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Russian Olympic Committee’s 15-year-old star skater Kamila Valieva has tested positive for a banned substance, postponing the team…Read more...

When you boil down what people love about AEW so much (and Tony Khan’s running of it), it’s that the company and he usually just do the simplest thing. Just give the people what they want. It sounds like it should be obvious, but there are a lot of ways to overthink it.

Another day, another completely avoidable problem for the Washington Commanders. It’s Thursday, you know what that means. Another problem! How about hiring an investigative firm to look at claims of sexual assault against the franchise’s owner? Nope, it already happened this week. What about that lackluster team-name…Read more...

For all the cultural impact the Super Bowl has built up, from the game itself to the ridiculous ads to the high-budget halftime show, it’s honestly a crime that the following Monday hasn’t been declared a national holiday yet. While the average watcher may be going into work not feeling quite in tip-top shape on…Read more...

The Super Bowl is the most covered single sporting event on the American sporting calendar every year. No pregame leaf unturned by the gaggle of broadcast and print media, tugging at the heartstrings of even the most jaded sports fans. There’s going to be a package about how Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow went from a…Read more...

During the summer of 2006, I was a fledgling student journalist baking under the blistering sun at a preseason practice at UGA, capturing B-Roll of a fellow pimply-faced true freshman from Texas. The quarterback phenom was about to be the talk of the SEC. Matthew Stafford’s singular talent created rampant anticipation…Read more...

When you still consider yourself the league’s signature franchise, maybe things just have to be weird. The pressure the team is putting on itself year after year just warps things, and that’s before you even get to the media that considers itself some sort of modern version of the Knights of the Roundtable. And when…Read more...

LeBron James is fed up, and it feels like he’s throwing in the towel on this year’s L.A. Lakers team after Tuesday night’s 131-116 beating at the hands of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks. When asked after the game if he thought the Lakers could reach the level of the Bucks, James got right to the point…Read more...

Kentucky forward Oscar Tshiebwe had a major effect on many people’s wallets and mental state last night. For many bettors, the Kentucky-South Carolina game Tuesday night was the worst beat of 2022, and we’re less than a month and a half in.Read more...

It was 85 degrees in Los Angeles on Wednesday, but that wasn’t the reason why Roger Goodell was sweating.

It was a matter of if, not when, Auburn men’s basketball lost another game. As its football team, the biggest draw of the athletic department that overshadows every other sport combined, goes through unsettling offseason turbulence, the fightin’ Bruce Pearls are putting together the school’s best regular season,…Read more...

I wouldn’t dare lie to you folks. I couldn’t get away with it if I tried. I know very little about figure skating. It comes into my consciousness every four years, probably like most people. I find the competitors to be incredible athletes, it can be a truly beautiful art, but also struggle with anything where the…Read more...

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...

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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...