Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

University of Florida small forward Keyontae Johnson collapsed on the court during the first half of their game Saturday against Florida State.

Daniil Vovchenko scored the game-winner in Severstal’s 4-3 win over Spartak Moscow on Friday with the move invented by Michigan player Mike Legg in 1996 and duplicated by Andrei Svechinikov of the Carolina Hurricanes last season.

This college football season is an exercise in madness, but it’s continuing to be weirdly historic.Read more...

Kyrie Irving has placed himself firmly back in the news cycle. This time it’s for being a hypocrite.

Cam Newton was benched in the fourth quarter last night, and rightfully so — he looked awful, and has for a while.Read more...

Maybe it’s COVID-19.Read more...

Doug Polk has backed up the truck to the tune of almost $1 million in his high-stakes grudge match against Daniel Negreanu.

Dick Allen’s death on Monday is just the latest failure of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Allen had become a popular candidate in recent years, as the sabermetrics movement showed what a powerful and impactful hitter he was. His raw statistics alone — 351 home runs, a .292 career average — are impressive. But they’re even…Read more...

Most of the season, the focus has been on Bill Belichick and Tom Brady recovering from their breakup in different places. Brady moved away, tried to start his whole life over (while still keeping his 6-foot-5 tight-end Teddy Bear for security), make a clean break, that whole thing. Bill is still trying to pick up the…Read more...

Dave Dombrowski is what is still wrong with Major League Baseball.Read more...

Nobody in sports repeats their mistakes quite like the NHL, the league that lost the entire 2004-05 season to a lockout, then came back in 2012 and had another lockout that cost half a season, all after also having half the 1994-95 season wiped out by a lockout.

A youth football coach in Florida assaulted one of his players on December 7, and LeBron James had a lot to say about it.

Sorry, LSU, you aren’t sliding your way out of this one.

Blake Griffin deserves better than this.

Yesterday, we broke down some quarterback and running back matchups to watch in the Week 14 slate. Picking up where we left off, let’s start looking at wide receiver and tight end matchups to help with your playoff roster decisions.Read more...

My short time in talk radio was filled with hurdle after hurdle. Getting a shot on-air was like learning to surf on choppy waters.

It’s dishonest to say that any sporting event can have a feel-good event right now. While sports can be a healthy distraction or unifying force for a community, these days they basically act as a perfect sketch of just about everything wrong with the country’s handling and response to the pandemic, from its wanton…Read more...

Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett has come a long way from November 14, 2019.Read more...

Add Ben & Jerry’s to the list of companies willing to take a chance on Colin Kaepernick before an NFL team.Read more...

James Harden wants out of the world curated just for him.Read more...

The last few months have revealed the scope of damage dealt by COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands are dead. Millions more have been infected. No one knows yet what lingering health effects they will face.

Watching a football game during a pandemic is a bit like watching people smoke on the sidelines for three hours. No one on the field will die of lung cancer during the game, but, from a public health standpoint, it’s not good.

There’s seemingly a parade of stories about how the only people not getting utterly fucked during this pandemic are the ones who never get utterly fucked. If you feel like you see something like Tom Brady’s boat purchased with money meant for small businesses, it’s because you do. And if there’s a gaping wound in this…Read more...

Because there’s a lot of Canadian TV money invested in it, hockey’s World Junior Championships are still on track to take place at the end of the month. Canada is the host this year for the event that is, to our northern neighbours, analogous on the sports landscape to March Madness, and damn if they’re going to let a…Read more...

The Panthers didn’t have any new positive coronavirus cases on Wednesday, which is good. The eight players that Carolina had to put on the COVID-19 reserve list this week, not so good.

You made the fantasy football playoffs? In this economy? Congratulations, you lucky SOB! Navigating this season of turmoil deserves a lot of respect — or a tip of the hat to lady luck. Either way, as the Roman philosopher Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Full disclosure: I went to IU. Historically, we are a basketball school, though even that has fallen in shadow after the glory days of the 80s and early 90s. My point is, we are not, and have never been, a football school.Read more...

Wednesday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

This offseason will most certainly be a busy one for quarterbacks. A handful of big-name starters are sure to be wearing new uniforms in 2021, either through free agency, retirement, or because they no longer fit with their current team. Here are five starting QBs likely to end up on another team, or gone from the…Read more...

Sometimes you just have to see it to believe it. This is one of those times.

By now, you know that Dez Bryant tested positive for COVID-19 just minutes before last night’s game.

As college basketball continues to be the live-action version of the cartoon dog sitting at his breakfast nook amongst an inferno, it is screaming for someone, anyone, to act like an actual adult. For a group of people that claim to be leaders and shapers of men, no one seems to be acting like either.

Formula One driver Nikita Mazepin is in hot water after a video on his Instagram showed him inappropriately grabbing a woman’s chest.Read more...

We know what you’re trying to say, Odell. And honestly, you’re not wrong.

A wide swath of soccer fans have been clamoring for a promotion/relegation system for MLS. Hell, even a small slice of fans of other sports with the loosest grip on reality, especially with the rash of tank-jobs in MLB or the NBA, have said promotion/relegation would put a halt to that phenomenon, as far-fetched as it…Read more...

It’s rare you get any spikiness from ESPN, or evidence of a spine, and especially when it comes to college basketball. For the most part, every analyst for college hoops on the World Wide Leader is there to be a cheerleader and get a good taste of various coaches’ asses. It’s why every coach is addressed as “Coach…Read more...

The saga of the COVID outbreak within the Baltimore Ravens organization just won’t quit. Twenty minutes before their Tuesday night game with the Cowboys was set to get started, Ravens receiver and former Cowboy Dez Bryant tweeted that he was pulled from his pre-game warmups because he had tested positive for COVID.

Now that the baseball Winter Meetings have begun, such as they are in this altered pandemic-form, some real moves are being made. Lance Lynn and Adam Eaton have joined the White Sox either via trade or signing, Carlos Santana has got on the Royals express to 72 wins, and rumors are flying after the non-tender deadline.

Three years ago, Sean McVay could seemingly do no wrong. He was the wunderkind of the NFL, a savant of offensive play-calling, the maestro of the second coming of the “Greatest Show on Turf.” Whatever he touched turned to gold. Any assistant lucky enough to shake his hand suddenly shot up job boards around the league.

With only a few weeks left in the NFL regular season, and with Philip Rivers turning 39 today, it’s time to take a look at some of the grizzled vets of the league. Actually, the grizzliest, if you will. Some should probably hang it up after week 17. Others may have a few years left in the tank.

Tuesday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

In a stunning scene on soccer’s biggest stage, players from PSG and Basaksehir walked off the field at Parc de Princes in the first half after an assistant coach for Basaksehir, former player Pierre Webo, accused the fourth official of calling him the n-word.

The Dodgers won their first championship since 1988 with Justin Turner on the field until the eighth inning of the deciding game, even though he had coronavirus, and then didn’t stop him from coming back out to celebrate with the team, taking his mask down and exposing more people to the virus.Read more...

When COVID-19 cancels the greatest rivalry in sports, then maybe sports shouldn’t be happening.Read more...

Let’s not complicate this.

Brian O’Nora opted out of umpiring in the 2020 season, and baseball hardly missed him. According to Bloomberg Businessweek’s Umpire Auditor, from 2012-19, O’Nora had a correct call rate of 87 percent, the same percentage as notoriously lousy umps Joe West and Kerwin Danley, and a point worse than the gold standard of…Read more...

Because hockey can’t have nice things, nor does it really deserve them: In the immediate aftermath of the news that they had locked in on a starting date for a new season and the players had turned back to the owners, a lawsuit against one of its signature teams for staying silent on sexual assault came on the scene.…Read more...

It’s Trash Talking Tuesday, and today I’m trashing boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr.Read more...

Every so often, a blind squirrel finds a nut. And there’s been no blinder squirrel than the NHL players’ union over the years. This is a side that got locked out for an entire season and still got a salary cap with no exceptions enforced on it. Eight years later it got locked out again and got an even worse salary cap…Read more...