Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Atlanta Cockatoos need to be careful about trading the number four pick in this year’s NFL draft.

In a year that’s seen dwindling viewership across men’s sports, women’s sports seem to be hitting new highs.

LSU has been churning out wide receiver talent over the last couple seasons, none more notably than last year’s should-have-been Offensive Rookie of the Year and Vikings phenom Justin Jefferson. This year, the NFL, its scouting personnel, and everyone who gets paid to share their opinions are seemingly all in love…Read more...

Because he’s been traded to the New York Yankees, Rougned Odor has to adopt the identity of a “clean-cut” American baseball player due to a policy that’s 48 years old.

On Monday, while the college basketball world was preparing for the national championship game between Gonzaga and Baylor, East Tennessee State was busy naming its first Black men’s basketball coach.Read more...

Yes, special teams players are people too. Except this one looks like he should be playing in the backfield. So it’s no surprise that Nicho Domine, the high school punter featured in this video, lists himself as a defensive back and wide receiver on his Twitter page. The kid also says he’ll try to walk on to the…Read more...

The New York Jets won’t be, can’t be, right about this in the end.Read more...

There are few problems that La Liga can’t make worse. They’re giving the world a prime example of that in the past couple days.

Aaron Rodgers recently said that hosting Jeopardy! full-time would be a “dream job,” and it’s one that now seems within reach.Read more...

“Ughhhhhhhhhh.”

It was bad enough when the Red Sox rolled out green alternate jerseys, but at least those had some meaning to them. The Sox have worn green to honor Red Auerbach after his death, again to celebrate the Celtics beating the Lakers in the NBA Finals, and then once more for Earth Day in 2009. They looked stupid, but there…Read more...

When I saw the news that Paul Pierce got fired from ESPN, I and many others had this initial reaction:

It’s Trash Talking Tuesday, and today I’m trashing former President Donald Trump for asking fans to boycott MLB.

Gonzaga choked, and it’s Mark Few’s burden to carry.

When I get mad about the lame-ass suspensions and fines the NHL hands out for hits to the head, this is why.

This is what happens when you believe in something good:Read more...

If there were any questions about if the Jets were all in on Zach Wilson, they got answered on Monday.

The progressive heroes or “woke” decision-makers of the MLB (lol) made an uncharacteristically bold choice to strip Georgia of the 2021 All-Star Game. It’s a move that now plays into the hands of political opportunists like Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

It’s been a few weeks of conflicting emotions for USMNT fans. Which I suppose is a slight improvement on just total dread, sorrow, and Cure makeup, the usual state in which we find ourselves. Take our victories where we can find them, I guess.

When people talk about investing more resources into the women’s game, it goes far beyond any monetary value.

Shohei Ohtani’s remarkable mound/plate performance last night helped mask what otherwise was a turgid, if not torturous, ESPN broadcast. The network’s Sunday Night Baseball show has been a bane to fans for pretty much its entire existence, spawning the one site that’s basically responsible for all the sites like this…Read more...

When Rebecca Welch sounded the opening whistle during today’s Harrogate Town and Port Vale tilt, she became the first woman to referee an English Football League game.Read more...

Ah, baseball’s opening weekend, fans in the stands and the Nationals sidelined by the coronavirus.Read more...

I’ve written about Shohei Ohtani before in this space. About how he almost certainly can’t be all that he teases, and the Angels are losing out on all he can be as a hitter or a pitcher by allowing him to be both.Read more...

You can tell a lot about a person by what music they listen to.

It was at the same point last season, though not in the calendar thanks to the pandemic, that this happened. Less than 10 games left in the season, Bayern Munich facing an away date against their closest rival and looking … well, vulnerable is too strong a word. Less godly, let’s say. The chasing team, in this case RB…Read more...

Carter Hart made his return to the net after an eight-game “reset” for the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, and no, let’s not go with any rising from the dead analogies, but he was looked to as the savior of the franchise.

Charles Barkley is trying his best to be the next Jason Whitlock — the overweight and jovial Black man with a larger-than-life personality, whom you can always count on to say something to make white Americans feel good about themselves while demonizing and belittling his own people.

That was the best college basketball game I have ever seen in my lifetime.Read more...

Luke Ratliff was an Alabama student and men’s basketball superfan known around campus as “Fluffopotamus.” Last week, he made the trip to Indianapolis to watch the Tide in the Sweet 16. Ratliff was in Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse on Sunday for the game. After UCLA pulled off the upset that night, he returned to…Read more...

Bruh…

UPDATE (4/4/21, 12:24 E.T.): Initial reports of 14 positive tests within the Canucks organization have swelled to more than 20 confirmed infections among the team’s roster and coaching staff, according to TSN’s Darren Dredger:Read more...

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament hasn’t really been all that exciting this year. Sure, there have been upsets, and a handful of close games, but particularly in a year without Duke and Kentucky in the field at all, and several other traditional powers in the doldrums, not to mention the whole tournament being just…Read more...

Optioned to the minors by the Angels last week, a few days before his 28th birthday, Ty Buttrey decided that he was done with baseball. He’d accomplished his goal to “prove to every motherf***** who didn’t believe in me and doubted my ability to become an MLB player, that I could do it.”Read more...

Rockies fans have been looking for something to be excited about since the Nolan Arenado trade, and now they have it.Read more...

Nicholas Castellanos was angry about being hit by a pitch from Cardinals right-hander Jake Woodford, so when the Reds’ right fielder came in to score on a Woodford wild pitch, sliding into Woodford in the process, he made his feelings known.Read more...

You could go so far as to say Grant Hill was always meant for this.Read more...

The trailer for the new Space Jam movie came out on Saturday.Read more...

The Thunder’s starting lineup on Friday night was Aleksej Pokusevski, Théo Maledon, Moses Brown, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, and Isaiah Roby. If none of those names is familiar, don’t worry, they’ve combined for 285 games of NBA experience — 280 before Friday night.Read more...

Nicknames are endearing, but they’re not always respectful.Read more...

You mean to say that a baseball franchise with a racially insensitive name, which does all it can to harm any argument that their name isn’t just insensitive, but outright racist, by encouraging its fans to do racist chants; which moved out of team’s location name’s urban core and into another county, in order to…Read more...

Stanford vs. Arizona will be the matchup for the women’s national title, and the Pac-12 will have its first national champion since 1992, when the Cardinal — then, as now, coached by Tara VanDerveer — won its second title.

With the Houston Astros now wearing the crown as the most hated team in professional sports — as indicated by the chorus of boos and piercing screams of “CHEATER!” that rang through the Oakland Coliseum (whatever ridiculous name it has today) last night on Opening Day (ahh… welcome back baseball, and welcome back…Read more...

According to a report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, the Big3 is returning after their 2020 cancelation due to COVID.

Major League Baseball is not generally an organization that you’d think of as progressive, but Rob Manfred made a big move on Friday, stripping this year’s All-Star Game (something Rob Parker called for Deadspin on Monday) and draft from Atlanta in protest of the state of Georgia’s new voting rights restrictions.Read more...

Sunderland took another step in its quest to get out of England’s League One and back to the Championship on Friday, but the Black Cats’ 3-1 win over Oxford United wasn’t without controversy.Read more...

After getting the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, I was pretty out of it on Thursday, which meant that Opening Day was a different experience than usual. I woke up in the morning, had breakfast and walked the dog, then went right back to sleep, setting an alarm to be able to watch the first inning of the season…Read more...

This is not what Case meant by Touch Me, Tease Me.Read more...

Y’see Kevin Durant, you don’t seem to get why you’re apologizing. In one sense, I appreciate how nakedly obtuse you are about the whole thing. It beats the PR department-fueled apologies we usually get from someone like you that are treated as the real thing. You’re making it easy for everyone to see just how off the…Read more...

There’s literally nothing 19-year-old UConn freshman phenom Paige Bueckers can’t do on a basketball court. Well, except for the fact that she can’t take the floor with a WNBA team for another three years.