Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Today, I’m trashing the NCAA.Read more...

College football’s season is hanging by a thread, as some conferences have postponed their seasons for the fall, and the Power 5 leaning in that direction. Knowing that the interruption of football will drive home to their constituents just how shambolic their handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been (you would…Read more...

It was yet another banner day for MLB, which seems to be having them one after another. They’ve sat next to the cooler at the casino, by choice, except that they’ll still walk out of the casino with most of their chips. After all, it’s not their chips they’re playing with. And if the players continue to be the same…Read more...

Colin Kaepernick knows that food insecurity is an issue of human rights, poverty and racial justice. It’s also a problem that is getting worse because of COVID.Read more...

It was expected.

In a bit of true hockey hilarity, the actual NHL bubble-ized playoffs will begin without either of the “hosts” on Tuesday. Both the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers scheduled a date for their respective faces with the pavement, and hence will have to watch these modified playoffs take place in their hometowns…Read more...

There are a lot of things going on in this country right now. America is the laughingstock of the world after being unable to contain the COVID pandemic, largely because a non-insignificant portion of the population has decided to believe anti-vax Facebook posts over actual science. We’re in the midst of a racial…Read more...

The Houston Astros, instead of being content to take its shaming and move on, have decided to stick with their furious campaign to be the boil on the ass of baseball. Both they and the Oakland A’s are staring down the barrel of some pretty serious suspensions after a benches-clearing brawl yesterday afternoon in…Read more...

A combination of health and legal risks have led to smaller college conferences to cancel their fall football seasons. But it looks like the Power 5 is up next.Read more...

For all we know, LeBron James could be right.Read more...

Ozzie Guillen is a dick.Read more...

While MLB sorts through various positive COVID-19 cases in its league, and the NBA hunkers down in a theoretical bubble in Orlando to finish its season, the NFL — even while agreeing to cancel it’s preseason — has made it clear the ball will be snapped under the bright lights this fall.Read more...

The electorate has been polled, but to what extent have they been Polar Bear-ed? We still don’t know.Read more...

The last stage of finishing the 2019-2020 season is upon us, more than a year after it started. The Champions League returns tomorrow, though in an abbreviated form. The quarterfinals and semifinals will not be two legs, but one-offs in Lisbon. It does change the tournament, and possibly in a major way. We’ll get to…Read more...

About half the players in college football at the Division I level and up to 75 percent of NFL players are Black. But coaching jobs in the college and pro ranks are overwhelmingly given to white men.

There’s a serious implication in the headline on USA Today’s report about Major League Baseball’s increased safety measures to try to get through the rest of this shortened season without further coronavirus interruptions.Read more...

At this moment, the sports world is experiencing a sentiment that African-Americans have always known.Read more...

- No league can like it when, every time their commissioner opens his mouth, it immediately becomes a jenkem distillery (go ahead and Urban Dictionary THAT, I dare ya!), but that’s where MLB finds itself. Rob Manfred ran to the press, stood on the bucket he carries so we could see more than his forehead, and declared…Read more...

Of the four majors of professional golf, the PGA Championship is too often the least anticipated major for most golf fans. Traditionally it was held in August, the final major of the season after the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open- tough acts to follow. Last year the tournament was moved from August to…Read more...

The NCAA Division III Presidents Council’s decision, Wednesday, to cancel all fall sports championships for the 2020-21 school year in what could foreshadow the fate of larger divisions.Read more...

The great Pete Hamill, an icon of New York City and journalism, died on Wednesday. He was 85. According to an obituary written by Larry McShane of the New York Daily News:Read more...

The NCAA will allow students to opt-out of the season due to concerns over COVID-19 and still honor athletic scholarships, it was reported Wednesday.Read more...

Putting that in present tense is a mistake, of course. Stan Kroenke has been the shithead owner of Arsenal FC for a long while now, along with his other teams. Today was perhaps his coup de asshole, though.Read more...

He’s much like the fictional superstar Roy Hobbs in the American Arthurian legend of a baseball book and movie The Natural — a left-handed hitter with incredible power, known for hitting towering home runs whose entry into the majors was delayed until his mid-30s. He’s a bit like Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis of Bull…Read more...

The Championship Playoff Final is often labeled “The Richest Match In The World.” Because it is. The winner gets promoted to the Premier League, and along with it the aircraft carrier of TV money, increased ticket prices, uptick in merchandise, and everything else. It is estimated that winning the game is worth some…Read more...

This morning, the University of Connecticut announced it would cancel the 2020 football season. The decision makes UConn the first FBS school to cancel football.Read more...

We’ve had our first ejection out of the NHL bubble, as the New York Rangers never came close to beating the Carolina Hurricanes and have hence been punted out of Toronto. I hope they line them outside the hotel and loudly shut the gate behind them as all the players of the teams still competing watch from their…Read more...

The WNBA pulls no goddamn punches.

Today, I’m trashing the NBA for trying to get Zion Williamson and the Pelicans into the NBA playoffs.

It was always going to be a trudge for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are the only team in the NL Central not at least making an effort to win. They’ve been stripped of almost any recognizable players. Their fans have to watch Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow anchor the competitive Rays while Chris Archer, the return in…Read more...

Tennis legend Rafael Nadal has decided to skip the U.S. Open. Nadal broke the news via Twitter, where he outlined his concerns about the spread of COVID-19.Read more...

Foresight can be invaluable, especially for a league that’s always its own worst enemy.

Baseball announcers love to tell you the great thing about the game is that every day you have a chance, maybe even likely, to see something you’ve never seen before. That doesn’t always hold true, but it’s a lovely thought. All sports promise something memorable and awe-inspiring at a moment’s notice. That’s why…Read more...

After the Sixers blew the ’76-’77 finals to the Portland Trailblazers, the franchise adopted the regrettable slogan, “We owe you one!” Well, contemporary Sixers fans owe the franchise that finally paid in full in 1983.Read more...

Major League Baseball’s plan for this fall, an expanded postseason in which 16 of 30 teams have a chance to win the World Series, is patently ludicrous.Read more...

Since the #WeAreUnited letter released via the Players’ Tribune, Pac-12 players have come out to publicly support the letter written by a collection of conference athletes.

The baseball season made up of duct tape and used chewing gum continued to roll on. The Cardinals and Tigers series this week was postponed, while the infected Cardinals were rented cars to drive themselves from Milwaukee back to St. Louis. No word on whether the doors on said cars were controlled remotely to keep the…Read more...

The NHL is an infuriating league to follow but every once in a while the game of hockey provides us moments in which we remember why we watch it.Read more...

Update (August 4, 12:00 p.m.): The Florida Bar confirmed that it has opened a second investigation into Michael Grieco, centered around the lawmaker’s alleged witness tampering in the ongoing Quinton Dunbar/DeAndre Baker armed robbery case.

Update: Ryan Reaves reversed course and kneeled for the anthem before Vegas’s game against Dallas, along with Robin Lehner, Tyler Seguin, and Jason Dickinson.Read more...

With all the leagues that had to restructure their schedules or create a completely new tournament now back in action, we’ve seen various ways of trying to incorporate fans into the TV presentation. All leagues want you to know just how much they miss you (or your money), and how welcome you (or your money) will be…Read more...

One step forward, two steps back. That’s usually how the fight for progress goes in America.Read more...

MLB’s messiah has arrived.Read more...

While the Mets were pulling their weekly Mets’ing with Yoenis Cespedes and his decision to opt-out/Irish goodbye the season, the rest of the league continues to try and treat the Coronavirus much like an annoying co-worker with the hopes that if you wait until lunch to walk by their desk, everything will be ok. The…Read more...

John Woods Jr. has been in his son’s shoes.Read more...

Yoenis Cespedes went missing in action this afternoon, sparking a brief panic and outpouring of concern for the Mets slugger’s safety — but now, it appears he chose to opt out of the season without first letting team management know.

It’s not like people aren’t aware of how awful Kelly Loeffler is. In addition to probably engaging in insider trading and trying to make a buck off Americans dying of COVID-19 (which both the GOP-controlled Senate and Bill Barr’s Justice Department declined to look into - quelle coincidence!), Loeffler has shown open…Read more...

UPDATE: According to Spokesman Review’s Theo Lawson, multiple Washington State players who shared the #WeAreUnited hashtag in response to today’s Players’ Tribune article have been released for the season.Read more...

Whatever Arsenal actually accomplished, and whatever they actually promise after yesterday’s FA Cup triumph over Chelsea, there’s hope. Hope that new manager Mikel Arteta is ready to take the club beyond where Unai Emery did, beyond where legend Arsene Wenger left them before that, and hope that he can either convince…Read more...

Sometimes we say or do things that we just can’t shake. They haunt us forever.Read more...