Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

For once, U.S. Soccer is doing something smart. The federation confirmed that it will announce the next manager of the USWNT on Monday, and multiple reports, including from Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, say the choice is going to be Reign FC boss Vlatko Andonovski. Rejoice, because this is the right choice.

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

On Wednesday, the University of Missouri’s athletic department contributed its part to the NCAA’s inclusion week (which runs for less than an actual week, naturally), and boy was it crummy. Photos of several of their athletes explaining why they are “more than a student athlete.” The messages displayed in front of…Read more...

One dream is that it never ends. The cartilage never recedes and the synapses fire as fast as ever, and you just keep going. Every morning you pop out of bed without the reminder of the 100 times you hit the ground in practice the day before and your body and mind never tire of the routine. Everyone knows that this is…Read more...

Heart-pounding scenes in England’s second division on Wednesday when Bristol City pulled off a thrilling last-minute comeback victory over Charlton Athletic. Bristol manager Lee Johnson spoke effusively after the match about what an “unbelievable feeling” it was, though he wasn’t quite ready for the interviewer’s…Read more...

Have you ever wondered what it would take for a person to perform Street Fighter’s Tatsumaki Senpukyaku in real life? Or how loud the Dragonborn would have to shout to attract all those dragons in Skyrim? Or maybe if the scream energy used by the monsters in Monsters, Inc. is actually viable as a power source? One…Read more...

In a different context, it would be hilarious.Read more...

Kelsey McKinney, a features writer at our sister site Deadspin, announced today that her debut novel, God Spare The Girls, will be published at some point in the future by The Book Group. Kelsey, a fellow medium, is a friend to patrickredford.kinja.com, and she was gracious enough to grant patrickredford.kinja.com an…Read more...

Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers opened up the Warriors’ shiny new San Francisco arena by hanging 141 points on the hapless Dubs. That’s the most in almost a decade. Golden State looked terribly thin, with D’Angelo Russell and Draymond Green both posting plus-minus lines of -35 and Green admitting that “we fucking…Read more...

I am never going to forgive the Houston Astros. Not because they’ve dropped two straight at home to the Washington Nationals in this year’s World Series, although that was pretty grotesque. (They gave up a crucial home run to Kurt Suzuki, who is 129 years old.) No, it’s because their idiot assistant GM belched some…Read more...

LAFC finally did it. After three draws and two losses in five tries, the younger brother of Los Angeles triumphed over its bullying older sibling on Thursday night, defeating the LA Galaxy 5–3 and advancing to the Western Conference finals. It was the most hyped edition of El Tráfico yet, with the highest of stakes on…Read more...

Here is an item that might actually cheer Skins fans about their cheerless excuse for a football team:Read more...

“We talk internally about being on the ‘bleeding edge,’” Astros GM Jeff Luhnow told the McKinsey Quarterly in June of 2018. The exceedingly collegial two-part interview was a homecoming of sorts for Luhnow, who worked at the management consulting giant for five years before going into the baseball business. “We know…Read more...

Joe Buck is about to have the most difficult day of his professional life, because unlike his Jose Altuve home run call from the American League Championship Series, he must speak.

For Crouton, fame came in the form of a wheelbarrow.Read more...

LAFC beat Zlatan Ibrahimović and LA Galaxy 5–3 in Thursday night’s El Tráfico, beating their rivals for the first time ever, bouncing them from the MLS playoffs, and advancing to the club’s first Western Conference final. LAFC star Carlos Vela figured prominently, scoring a pair of first-half goals and setting up a…Read more...

The XFL player draft, held October 15, had a whopping 71 rounds, during which eight teams filled out their rosters with a combined 568 guys. But a maximum of 567 of those guys will proceed to whatever the next stage of this project winds up being, after former University of Tennessee standout and recent Arizona…Read more...

At the beginning of Inside the NBA on Thursday, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley sat with commissioner Adam Silver just a couple days after the crew tackled the league’s China debacle for the first time this season. As a quick note for context about this segment’s somber tone and pacing, the crew spent…Read more...

The godforsaken Suns got their season off to a rare positive start Wednesday, erasing an 11-point first-half deficit and wiping out the visiting Kings, 124–95. Exciting second-year center Deandre Ayton was a huge factor, piling up 18 points, 11 rebounds, and four blocks, and finishing a game-high plus-25 in 33…Read more...

Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow came before assembled members of the press Thursday evening in D.C., to face the music for now-fired assistant GM Brandon Taubman’s locker room taunts directed at three women reporters after his team’s ALCS-clinching victory, and for the Astros publicly and falsely accusing Sports…Read more...

The battle for the Baddest Motherfucker in the Game will not be happening at UFC 244, as Nate Diaz has pulled out of the event. The 34-year-old welterweight provided a strange explanation for his withdrawal from the fight against Jorge Masvidal on Twitter, which included a claim that UFC asked him to keep the results…Read more...

Because he’s the reigning MVP, because he plays in Milwaukee, and because the 2019 summer was defined by NBA stars switching teams—one of whom previously and publicly talked about how he wanted to stay—Giannis Antetokounmpo will face intense scrutiny over his forthcoming free agency decision in 2021 until he signs…Read more...

The Houston Astros have fired assistant GM Brandon Taubman for conduct that “does not reflect the values” of the organization, according to a team statement released on Thursday.Read more...

Kelsey said she saw the film Yesterday on a plane. I said I didn’t understand why “Eleanor Rigby” was such a popular Beatles song. This being Deadspin, we have, after hours of yelling at each other in Slack, reached the natural endpoint of this, which is a democratically produced staff ranking of classic rock radio…Read more...

In the Year of Our Lord 2019, an NFL franchise is doing all it can to force an injured player to postpone surgery for the sake of the team, to the point of withholding his pay. What, exactly, are the Jets trying to prove by insisting that left guard Kelechi Osemele wait until after the season to have the torn labrum…Read more...

This season cannot be going the way Christian Pulisic would’ve hoped. After a promising start to his Chelsea tenure, the American phenom’s status on the team took a nosedive. At its lowest point, Pulisic dropped from being a regular starter to arguably being the fifth winger on the roster, an often unused substitute…Read more...

Oh. Hello, casual basketball fan. I did not see you there, looking the other way, rightly paying attention to the 2019 World Series instead of the ragged, sloppy opening games of the NBA’s very long and low-key regular season, which I am now hearing actually happened two days ago. Ah. Hm. That can’t be right.Read more...

The Washington Nationals completed their four-game NLCS sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals Tuesday night, 7–4, and advanced to the franchise’s first World Series. They did it with a seven-run first inning, and then mostly held on for dear life, but they had a bunch of help from the Cardinals themselves, who crapped the…Read more...

LeBron James finally spoke on Monday about the outsized controversy surrounding Daryl Morey’s deleted tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. LeBron’s position was weak and transparently cynical, and he took a justified beating for sharing it, and ultimately spent part of his Monday night trying to…Read more...

About a month after his trade request, and after three weeks of not suiting up for the Jaguars, cornerback Jalen Ramsey has been traded out of Jacksonville and sent to Los Angeles. Though not that long ago it looked like the Jaguars were going to ignore Ramsey’s wishes, he’ll go play for a .500 Rams team that’s trying…Read more...

It’s the fourth Democratic presidential primary debate and you know what that means: 12 candidates are ready to repeatedly interrupt each other in an effort to claim more time for their prepared talking points! Will Joe Biden’s eye fill with blood again? (Maybe.) Will Andrew Yang wear a tie? (No.) Will the moderators…Read more...

Cubs executive Theo Epstein is embroiled in a not-at-all-classic security deposit dispute with a landlord whose home in Paradise Valley, Arizona Epstein rented with his family during spring training in 2015. The landlord says Epstein’s small family dog was a prolific piss-monster; Epstein says the home was overrun…Read more...

The Houston Astros doubled their lead against the Yankees in the seventh inning of Game 3 this evening, not with the fancy-pants longballs that initially gave them a 2-0 advantage, but with some gritty, scrappy, heads-up baserunning that was unironically delightful to watch. Through just one hit and a bit of…Read more...

This is Floyd. He weighs 190 pounds. He is safe now.

The Miami Grand Prix that never was may still be, according to a report from the Miami Herald. The Herald reports that Formula One came to a preliminary agreement with the Miami Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium for a race in May 2021, and both are waiting for approval from the government of Miami-Dade County.

Leave it to Carli Lloyd to win the World Cup at 37 years of age, appearing in every match as the team’s crucial super-sub and performing the role with aplomb, and still being extremely mad at how everything went down because she didn’t play literally every single minute of every single game.Read more...

Multiple MMA outlets reported on a brief physical altercation between two of MMA’s most prominent managers during a Professional Fighters League card Friday night at Mandalay Bay. Ibrahim Kawa of First Round Management told ESPN that Ali Abdelaziz of Dominance MMA approached him in the crowd and said, “I need to talk…Read more...

For whatever his faults may be (not being on your favorite team, hubris, brazenly studying the room without trying to hide it, etc.), LeBron James has consistently been a voice of progressive reason, but he has also been relentlessly acquisitive. Thus, no one ought to be nearly so surprised, shocked, or offended that…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about napkins, doctors, baseball, stadium food storage methods, and more.

LOS ANGELES — The LA84 Foundation is turning 35 years old. If you don’t live in Southern California or don’t work in the sports nonprofit industrial complex, you probably haven’t heard of it. But the foundation commands a reverence from a certain set of LA normie (read: suburban homeowners), and has come to embody the…Read more...

On the most generous possible read, the NBA-China news cycle has revealed just how little players and coaches have ever considered the ethical stakes of doing business with an authoritarian state. The more cynical read is that they understand these stakes well enough but have decided there’s way too much money on the…Read more...

Anyone could have seen this coming. After England striker Tammy Abraham said the team would walk off the field in Sofia, Bulgaria if faced racist abuse from the crowd, and after manager Gareth Southgate wavered on that claim, saying the Three Lions would adhere to UEFA’s established anti-racism protocol, this was…Read more...

A Columbia sale, Lumix G7 camera, an affordable posture corrector, and an Amazon Warehouse sale lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.

Stephen Strasburg kicked ass last night, striking out 12 Cardinals hitters in seven innings of work and leading his team to an 8-1 Game 3 victory. As you can see in the image above, all that hard work was repaid when he entered the dugout after recording his final out of the night and received a group hug from his…Read more...

The XFL Draft starts today at 10 a.m. Eastern, and it might actually be worth checking in on, because it sounds bananas. There are going to be 71 rounds! Teams get only 90 seconds between picks! It’ll be done via conference call, and if you work in an office you know those never work. This font’s italics don’t slant…Read more...

Drill Brush is exactly what it sounds like, and you can get a starter pack of brushes for just $11 on Amazon today. They’re Jolie Kerr-approved, but the drill isn’t included, obviously.

Sure, the Lions could have scored some more touchdowns Monday night. Their offense started hot, with a neat flea-flicker for a 66-yard gain on the first drive, and a 58-yard Matthew Stafford bomb to wideout Marvin Hall on the second. For all the opportunities in the red zone, they couldn’t get the job done. The…Read more...

For my money, the two best highlights of the Nationals’ 8–1 Game 3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, a result that makes the rest of this series almost a formality, were bloopers. One looked stupid and hilarious and mattered not at all; the other almost looked like a very cool catch, until it didn’t, and mattered a ton…Read more...

LeBron James has been silent on the matter of China throwing a massive temper tantrum over Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeting and deleting a limp slogan in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. With the NBA spasming and losing bowel control around him, the world’s most visible basketball player…Read more...

He scored Miami’s first 14 points on 5-for-5 shooting in Monday night’s preseason game against the Hawks, but it is probably best not to read too much into 19-year-old rookie Tyler Herro, the greatest shooting guard in the history of the Miami Heat, and for that matter, the NBA. Preseason basketball has very little…Read more...