Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

I’m not sure who ordered the hit on Urban Meyer, but the NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero went No Country for Old Coaches on the Jacksonville Jaguars head man Saturday morning delivering a devastating indictment of his first and maybe last year (mis)leading the team. The piece reads more like a prosecution, using bullet…Read more...

On a dark and stormy (and windy, rainy, tornado-ridden, etc. — you get the drift) Midwestern Friday night, the Arizona basketball team landed in Indianapolis after their flight headed for Champaign-Urbana was diverted due to weather conditions. The No. 11-ranked Wildcats were flying into town the night before their…Read more...

There are a couple of ways to parse the report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe that the Trail Blazers are not willing to discuss trading Damian Lillard, “one of the Sixers’ top targets” in a potential Ben Simmons deal.Read more...

In the past week, the NHL news around here has been excessive violence, more excessive violence, the Flyers being hellaciously awful, and the latest lunatic turns in the decade-long saga of the league trying to make fetch happen in Arizona.Read more...

It makes for a neat and interesting storyline that Megan Rapinoe is unprotected for Thursday’s NWSL expansion draft, right up until you think about it.Read more...

If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again.Read more...

Lost in Minnesota trying to kick their fans in the junk again Thursday night like they have so many times this season — or last — was the performance of Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson.

The young, promising Chicago Bulls are in second place in the Eastern Conference, and the Miami Hurricanes have high hopes after hiring a new football coach — it’s like it’s 1989 all over again. Fans of both teams have great reason to be excited.Read more...

Chase Claypool may have finally received his long-awaited, much-needed wake-up call last night against the Vikings.

If you’re not a part of Flyers Twitter, well, consider yourself lucky. But you did miss fans of the Orange and Black having a totally normal one on Thursday as a movement to change PFPs to an unhappy fan wearing a bag over his/her head (much like the infamous days of New Orleans fans during the ’Ain’ts era) went viral.

Most NFL fans will tell you that in recent years the AFC has been a better conference than the NFC. Despite an NFC team winning the Super Bowl last season, they also had a 7-9 team (Washington) reach the playoffs by winning their division, along with an 8-8 team (Chicago) as a wild-card. Meanwhile, the AFC had a 10-6…Read more...

The best buzzer beaters are the ones when the play-by-play guy’s reaction is all our reactions, when he just screams because, like the rest of us, yelling is the only reaction.Read more...

Former Denver Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas died in his home Thursday at 33 years old. ESPN reports that his family believes his cause of death to have been a seizure. Thomas played at Georgia Tech and was picked in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft. He played in the league for nine years, spending eight…Read more...

A month or so ago, it appeared that Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Aminata Diallo purportedly conducted a criminal scheme so dumb that, if it wasn’t already a crime, it would be criminal.

The Utah Jazz have been a “Yeah, but… “ team for a few years now. And while it’s better than just being butt, it’s frustrating. You can tell how much of a pretender a team is by how mad their fans get when the media disregards their relevance despite the team winning 50-plus games every year.Read more...

Per reports, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson would strongly consider waiving his no-trade clause for the New Orleans Saints, Denver Broncos, or New York Giants.Read more...

The new Pac-12 commissioner is ready to shake up college football scheduling, and thank God he is. George Kliavkoff entered the world of college sports just this summer, so maybe it’s his outsider perspective that’s allowing him to think outside the box, but he has put forward the suggestion that perhaps scheduling…Read more...

I’m sure Barcelona, both their fans and the club itself, are tired of signs and symbols of how far they’ve fallen. Must get repetitive. Blockin’ out the scenery breakin’ their mind by this point. But their last Champions League game of the season was one of the harshest yet.

Time Magazine has blown out Sports Illustrated in ranking its athlete of the year by a score of 45-10. Sports Illustrated decided to go with Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady as its “Sportsperson of the Year.’ It’s easy to see how they made that choice. He’s 44 years old, and still playing in the NFL —…Read more...

Stephen Curry is on the cusp of passing Ray Allen for the most 3-point shots made in NBA history. Classified as a point guard, Curry is already top three at his position all-time in the eyes of most that follow the NBA. Portland Trail Blazers first year head coach and former NBA Finals MVP Chauncey Billups recently…Read more...

It’s easy to look at the Minnesota Vikings less than a week after handing the Detroit Lions their first victory of the season and see a huge trash can. Losing to the Lions is a harder pill to swallow for a fanbase than losing to Nick Foles in the 2018 NFC Championship Game. However, that loss last week was so…Read more...

If I told you I spent most of my freshman year of college doing The Hardy Boyz finger-guns entrance pose in the dorm hall with a couple buddies, A. you would hardly be shocked and B. I would only be one of several hundred thousand college freshmen in that year doing so. The main point of being a wrestling fan at 19 is…Read more...

We all need to accept Anthony Davis for who he is as a basketball player. He’s not a back to the basket jump hook type of scorer, a 3-point shooter, or the ball-handling guard that he would’ve been at Cleveland State — and only at Cleveland State — had he not grown seven inches between his junior and senior year of…Read more...

As the son of an NBA legend, it can be tough, especially if you take up the same sport as your pop’s. It’s even more challenging when you’re named after that legend, like Scottie Pippen Jr. is. Still, Scottie Jr. is forging his own path at Vanderbilt. He showed off his clutch genes against Temple Tuesday night,…Read more...

The worst yellow card in the history of soccer was issued on Wednesday to Sam Kerr late in the second half of the Chelsea Women’s match against Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. If anything, Kerr deserves a raise for also doing security’s job.

Mark Emmert’s greatest value to the NCAA as president is the fact that he can say just about anything with a straight face, no matter the ridiculousness of his statement. In March of 2012 he said paying college athletes is “so antithetical to what college athletics is.” He made that remarkt in Houston less than eight…Read more...

The debate of all-time anything in sports is always a conversation that can carry on forever. No matter what sport you’re a fan of, there is usually an argument to be had over who the greatest of all time is in that sport.Read more...

I wish I could write stuff like this as fiction. But unless you wrote it as Mel Brooks-ian farce, I don’t know how you’d make it believable. And I have to say that I really want to see the city of Glendale actually chain up the doors to Gila River Arena when Coyotes players attempt to show up for a morning skate in a…Read more...

Any rational Trail Blazers fan would avoid watching the team right now. Damian Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Anfernee Simons are all injured. ESPN.com’s promotion for its Portland-Golden State matchup Wednesday is a “Top five Lillard trades they’d love to see” article, and a clip of Stephen A. Smith somberly complaining…Read more...

Tiger is back. And I don’t say this lightly, nor do I make this statement without sincere consideration, but all the evidence is pointing there: Tiger is back. After suffering a car accident in February that was almost fatal and left doctors questioning whether the legendary golfer would ever walk again, Woods has…Read more...

It’s far from all CJ McCollum’s fault the Portland Trail Blazers are struggling, and currently the 10th seed in the Western Conference with an 11-14 record. His field goal and free throw percentages are down, but he’s still averaging 20.6 points per game and shooting nearly 40 percent from the 3-point line. The…Read more...

Mark Emmert’s greatest value to the NCAA as president is the fact that he can say just about anything with a straight face, no matter the ridiculousness of his statement. In March of 2012 he said paying college athletes is “so antithetical to what college athletics is.” He made that remarkt in Houston less than eight…Read more...

Christmas approaches quickly, but college football fans are acutely aware that the real late December holiday is bowl season. Just when visions of the CFB content stream finally slowing to a crawl is dancing in your head, the NCAA presents the most meaningless postseason tradition in American sports. Aside from the…Read more...

For the second straight year, this pipe dream of Luka Dončić being NBA MVP seems to be going up in flames already. Dallas started the season well, but now they’re a game under .500 (11-12) and have lost eight of their last 10 games. It’s not so much Luka’s statistical production, although his shooting percentages are…Read more...

The Los Angeles Rams demolished the Jacksonville Jaguars last Sunday. I guess the Rams were tired of losing after going winless through November. The Rams took their frustrations out on rookie head coach Urban Meyer and rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Matt Stafford threw for three touchdowns in the second half,…Read more...

Oklahoma Sooners fans are mad, including Oklahoma state Sen. Bill Coleman, who is looking to “honor” Lincoln Riley with by renam — wait what?! Say that again, internet, Coleman (R-Ponca City) is an Oklahoma State fan? And his planned backhanded slight of renaming a desolate 3-inch stretch of highway after the…Read more...

It’s not that it was surprising. Back when WWE announced it was completely reshaping it’s junior brand, NXT, I wrote that it would be the end of what fans of the black and gold had come to love. I guess I’m just impressed (while simultaneously depressed) at how ruthlessly and efficiently it came to pass. It only took…Read more...

Eighteen years ago, the most prejudiced sports league in American professional sports (Major League Baseball is a close second) created their version of “affirmative action” when they came up with the Rooney Rule — named after the legendary Steelers owner Dan Rooney — in hopes of helping diverse candidates by…Read more...

Coaches pushing their services like politicians trying to nab a presidential bid is my favorite part of any busy offseason. The season isn’t even over, and schools and coaching are already rushing to ship each other for that rose to keep them on The Bachelor: Sex Island.

Mario Cristobal is taking his talents to South Beach and is out the door at Oregon after Utah hit him in the ass with it. (Looking at the judges to see I get credit for two cliches in a lede. And… yes, “taking his talents to South Beach” qualifies.) The hire for Miami is seemingly a home run because his best trait…Read more...

It looks like USC used up their entire athletic budget on Lincoln Riley’s $100 million contract. The video of his introduction as the Trojans’ new head coach is making the Twitter rounds, an introduction that can truly only be described as a combination of an SNL skit, a vivid melatonin-induced dream, and a poorly…Read more...

At first glance, it should be go without asking that assigning sex workers to media members is not a perk of traveling to bowl games. And yet, here we are. And the story of how we got here is a journey.Read more...

Monday night, we saw a familiar outcome in the NFL: the New England Patriots beating the Buffalo Bills. Despite horrid weather conditions and having to play on the road, the Patriots continued their dominant play as of late, thus lengthening their lead in the AFC East and doing so while having their rookie…Read more...

I don’t really know what I was expecting, going to a bowling alley that’s two names removed from what it was called when my grandparents used to take me there, and thinking that maybe there would be something special about the fact that the old namesake, finally, many years late, had been elected to the Baseball Hall…Read more...

The Lakers’ Russell Westbrook-LeBron James experiment hasn’t exactly worked out how everyone in Los Angeles had hoped coming into the season. But if Westbrook had been able to persuade Kawhi Leonard to bring him along on his way to LA a couple of years ago, Westbrook would have been a Clipper and not a Laker this…Read more...

Life is about evolving, and economy of motion is one of those things we strive for. How do we do the things we have to do every day in the cleanest way possible? Mostly it’s about financial budgeting, but there comes a part in everyone’s life when you decide what you really need in your house and in your life (people,…Read more...

The IOC admitted yesterday that the charade they tried to pull was pretty much full of shit, without saying it was full of shit, to try and save whatever face it could. You see, the IOC doesn’t want anything to hurt its precious Games that are just two months away and in Beijing, even if that means being in cahoots…Read more...

Bill Belichick is the AFC’s Thanos. He’s inevitable.Read more...

In yet another measure of how irrelevant horse racing has gotten, Kentucky Derby “winner” Medina Spirit collapsed and died at Santa Anita yesterday. He had a heart attack after a workout, which 3-year-old horses don’t tend to do. It does happen, though, but is rare.Read more...