Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Penn State just can’t help itself. This football program is clearly out of control, but head coach James Franklin is trying his best to disguise it.Read more...

This Sunday, WWE will pester its fans with the last of the “Big Four” pay-per-views, Survivor Series. There was a time when it had earned its place alongside the Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania and SummerSlam. It’s had its share of big moments throughout its existence, from its debut continuing the Hogan-Andre rivalry, to…Read more...

The NHL’s return to action this summer came after negotiations not only to solidify health and safety protocols, but on a new collective bargaining agreement. Having endured a canceled season in 2004-05, and lockout-shortened campaigns in 1995 and 2013, everyone in the sport knew that it was important to avoid another…Read more...

If you love narratives, and any producer of a sports broadcast most certainly does, Thursday night’s NFL game had the most easy-to-reach one imaginable. Fox got two teams at the top of their division standings, one the old stand-by in Seattle, the other the up-and-coming young team with the momentum in Arizona. It was…Read more...

When organizers cancelled the Battle 4 Atlantis in September they picked an interesting replacement: Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Perhaps the most delicious part of the attempted coup by the Trump administration is that Rudy Giuliani has evolved into a laughingstock.Read more...

On a night in which Woj stripped ESPN’s telecast of the 2020 NBA Draft of any suspense due to tweeting the picks early, the worldwide leader deserves some credit for putting together a crew that, for once, knew what the hell it was talking about.Read more...

This is one of those times where you text your miserable New York Jet fan friend with a caption reading, “LMAO.”Read more...

It’s time for Cal McNair to sell the Houston Texans.

Last week, much of America learned how truly violent and depraved the plot was to kidnap and — let’s be real, murder — Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. If you didn’t catch the highlights, here are some of the allegations from Michigan’s criminal complaint against the white men involved:Read more...

Because the Bay Area sports teams haven’t endured enough injuries this year, add Klay Thompson to the mix. The three-time NBA Champion suffered a season-ending Achilles tear on Wednesday in a workout with other league players, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported.

The most lucrative move of Doug Polk’s career may be dropping five buyins to Daniel Negreanu on Wednesday in his 25,000-hand heads-up challenge.

Traditions have been tested in this year of social distancing. There is absolutely no denying it — our society looks different today than we could have imagined a year ago. Remember groups? Remember parties? Remember crowds of crazed fans expressing their simultaneous hope and disgust at the way their favorite team…Read more...

There is little question that Wrigley Field is not just a Chicago landmark, but an American one. It is the second-oldest ballpark in the land, housing the game that we still at least partially pretend is our pastime and some slice of Americana. It is a major tourist attraction, and one of the more identifiable…Read more...

It’s Thursday, which is the start of Week 11 on the football schedule. You only have this week and next to pencil your name into your league playoffs and to get that trash talk going against your leaguemates. Since this is the first of this column that you’ve seen from me, let’s set the expectation for what this is…Read more...

In America, it’s common for women not to receive protections if “it costs too much.”

LaMelo Ball could transform the Charlotte Hornets right before our eyes.Read more...

The path to a successful New York Knicks offseason is so obvious that it worries you. It worries you that regardless of who’s in charge, there’s something about that orange and blue that just leads you to shitsville after a promising start.

In honor of the 2020 NBA Draft on Wednesday, Deadspin is taking the time to rank the top ten drafts in NBA history.

Rarely are No. 1 picks a total surprise, though there was some conjecture about what exactly the T-Wolves would do with the top selection in last night’s draft. Anthony Edwards was the consensus, but everyone’s got their own ideas, and then there was the little hubbub about Edwards essentially saying the quiet part…Read more...

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that Wi-Fi is a necessity.

NBA teams want to invite fans back inside ... in an arena ... in a surging pandemic. But a new poll suggests that a majority of Americans may not be as eager to return to indoor sports venues until there is a vaccine.Read more...

If you thought Justin Herbert looked like a preadolescent before, wait until you see his new ‘do.Read more...

The most famous player in the 2020 NBA Draft is LaMelo Ball, partly due to his basketball ability, but mostly due to the crazy acts of his father, Lavar.

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, New York Mets second baseman Robinson Cano has tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug and will be suspended for the entire 2021 season, forfeiting his $24 million salary for the year.

As if it wasn’t hard enough to navigate a team or sport through a pandemic, and some would rightly suggest it’s impossible and stupid to do so, soccer has to add onto that an international break. So not only do you have strict protocols and testing and basically have to cross your fingers and clench your teeth every…Read more...

Before last week, it had probably been years since I’d heard Kim Ng’s name.

Curt Schilling is on the Hall of Fame ballot for the ninth time, his next-to-last opportunity to be voted into Cooperstown by the Baseball Writers Association of America. He seems fairly likely to make it, having appeared on 70 percent of ballots a year ago, just 5 percent shy of the threshold for induction.Read more...

Ah, yet another strange oddity in the sports calendar during pandemic life.Read more...

With greatness comes polarization, especially when your living is dependent on fighting.Read more...

It’s certainly strange to be in hockey and basketball preseason with Thanksgiving next week. It’s even weirder that we’re a month or so from a start date — one that is most certainly not rock solid — and yet we don’t know what the schedule will be. But that’s 2020 for you, as both the NHL and NBA continue to piece…Read more...

Are you really surprised?Read more...

At first it seemed something of just a run-of-the-mill, Friday news dump from WWE. Releasing a mid-card (at best) female performer/manager in Zelina Vega isn’t a huge shock, given how WWE has trimmed its roster during the pandemic despite record profits. While Vega was an excellent manager, and the author of one of…Read more...

So Twitter has basically copied and pasted Instagram and Snapchat’s story function to their platform.Read more...

During the final scenes of the 1985 cult classic “The Last Dragon,” Bruce Leroy finally reaches his full potential in a battle against his nemesis, Sho’Nuff. By achieving “The Glow,” Leroy became unstoppable.Read more...

We all knew it was coming, but seeing the Cubs put out a press release this morning saying Theo Epstein was stepping down from his role as omniscient leader and President of Baseball Ops was still jarring. For the past nine years, Cubs fans have attached to Epstein their wildest hopes and dreams. He was, the Cubs…Read more...

No, this isn’t going to happen. But can we argue that it should?Read more...

Five years ago, the Kansas City Royals were world champions. It was not a fluke or an accident, but the payoff for implementing a strategy that allowed them to compete despite not having the resources of the Yankees and Red Sox of the world.

Perhaps the news isn’t that Theo Epstein is resigning from his position of President of Baseball Operations of the Cubs, but that anyone is graciously stepping aside and handing power to the next person in line. Need more of that these days.Read more...

The fantasy playoffs are a few weeks away, which, quite frankly, is weird as hell. But, here we are. If you’re still in contention for a playoff spot, congratulations! You’ve managed to survive the weirdest, most tumultuous season in fantasy football history. Through game cancellations and last-second eligibility…Read more...

Portland, Oregon is a unique, special, weird, passionate, sleepy corner of our country. More famous for plaid shirts and craft beers than sports, that town has one lonely professional sport team to embrace, to which they have deeply enamored themselves. The Portland Trailblazers are woven into the fabric of that city,…Read more...

Houston deserves this crown.

It’s Trash Talking Tuesday and today, I’m trashing Tiger Woods for that embarrassing 12th hole in the final round of the Masters.Read more...

The timing is perfect.

Never mind that the Milwaukee Bucks are trading away draft picks in a plea for Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay, they’re also applying pressure to the rest of the Eastern Conference.

Whenever the NFL schedule is released, we Bears fans cringe whenever there’s a national game listed. Not because the Bears’ record over history on Sunday or Monday night is pretty porous, though that’s part of it. And it’s not the slagging we’ll be in for by national analysts. We’re numb to that by now. We’ve been…Read more...

Maybe having 10 months off from each other is exactly what the U.S. Men’s National Team and their fans needed. The last time we saw the national squad, they were hacking, gagging, and stumbling through the Gold Cup or attempting to play out from the back in another friendly with Mexico with truly dispiriting results.…Read more...

Having a future Hall-of-Fame quarterback on your team down the back stretch of a season where you’re fighting for playoff seeding is generally a good thing. Having said quarterback injured is definitely the opposite of a good thing. The Saints are facing that reality as Drew Brees is dealing with “multiple rib…Read more...

On Monday, we had our first official legitimate Woj Bomb of the transactional madness that is the forthcoming weeks of NBA reporting — both exact and erroneous.

In a 2020 Presidential election decided by uncomfortably slim margins in swings states, remember the number 40,000. That’s the approximate number of people who voted early at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.