Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The average NCAA men’s basketball player should walk out of commencement with a diploma … and more than $1 million. Football players should have earned nearly the same.Read more...

No other sports league has been more vocal against inequality and systemic oppression than the WNBA.Read more...

Twenty-two miles lie between the Minneapolis corner store where George Floyd was murdered and the Tournament Player’s Club in Blaine, site of the PGA Tour’s 3M Open this past weekend. It was the first major sporting event to be played in Minnesota since May 25 — the day that Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. The…Read more...

Virginia Tech starting cornerback Caleb Farley, a projected first-round pick, decided he could end his monetarily abusive relationship with the NCAA a little earlier than scheduled. Farley became the first college football player to opt out of the 2020 season due to concerns surrounding COVID-19.

I’ve been in a very similar mindset as our own Jesse Spector about this whole baseball thing in 2020 …

We roll on with hockey’s return, this time to Edmonton where the Western Conference is playing house. And they’ve picked the small window of time every year where the air doesn’t punch you in the face and insult your children in Northern Alberta. Onwards...

It seems like Michael Jordan is no longer the same guy who infamously made tone-deaf comments like, “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” during avowed racist Sen. Jesse Helms’ re-election campaign.

The basketball gods must love irony.

It’s a good time to be a professional basketball propagandist.Read more...

The baseball season is teetering on the brink.

The winter sports and their summer bubbles return to us this weekend, because we’re descending into the Upside-Down. The NHL has decamped to Toronto and Edmonton, with a modified playoff system kicking straight off on Saturday. It’s a bit run-before-you-can-walk, with each team only getting one preseason game before…Read more...

It’s a staple of some true heel work to do all the talking and then run behind their allies when confronted. Apparently MLB won’t stand for that.

After four months of waiting, the official NBA restart is finally upon us.

In a time when many in the sports world are using their platforms to be on the right — and wrong — sides of history, Kyrie Irving has been doing the work, despite not having played a game since February.

It’s obviously awkward for the NHL and its players to find a way to join in on the Black Lives Matter movement and protests before and during their games. It’s an almost entirely white league, with a majority of players not even from this country — and even the ones who are come from a generally affluent background…Read more...

The official NBA restart is inching closer and closer.

You don’t think about the Arizona Coyotes. You might have even thought they were still the Phoenix Coyotes. No one really thinks about them, not even in the hockey world. When anyone does think about the Coyotes, it’s to either laugh at them, notice their favorite team is playing them late at night and decide to go to…Read more...

Patrick Mahomes, the starting quarterback for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, has become the youngest owner in MLB history, joining a new ownership group of the Kansas City Royals.

Listen, this whole idea is ludicrous, BUUUUUT just hear me out …Read more...

Today, I’m trashing the New York Jets.Read more...

This story has been updated.

Liars lie.

If baseball is a symbol or microcosm of our nation at large, as baseball writers like to constantly tell us while finishing their Weetabix, then it scans that both of those entities are lacking leadership at this moment. Rob Manfred has no clue what to do, because his only directive — making sure the owners squeeze…Read more...

If you can believe it, World Cup Qualifying in CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) was supposed to have started already. However, with FIFA canceling the spring, summer, and September international windows due to COVID-19, the North American region has had to devise a…Read more...

The main problem of MLB’s “strategy,” such as it was, for playing this season was that it depended on baseball people. It depended on sports people. And in the world of sports people, the binary has always been, “Playing = good, not playing = bad.” Which is how MLB got into this mess.

It’s a day we all suspected, if not outright knew, would come.

The lure is real.

Here we go.

As strange as it may sound, maybe because good news is rarer these days than adamantium, the NWSL Challenge Cup wrapped up today and would have to go down as a success. At the top of the “reasons why” list: after the Orlando Pride pulled out before even arriving in Utah, the tournament saw no positive tests for…Read more...

There was a lot to be decided on the Premier League’s long-awaited final day this morning. Two relegation spots, and two spots in the Champions League, were still up for grabs when things kicked off. It didn’t lack for drama.

Cam Perron started flipping baseball cards in first grade.

Jeff McNeil wants his dog, Willow, on TV as much as possible, according to SNY’s Steve Gelbs, but this was a ruff way to get airtime.

The NFL’s agreed upon protocols appear doomed from the start, and C.J. Mosley sees right through the league’s unbalanced expectations.Read more...

LeBron James is helping create the America we all deserve.

Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright is a devout Christian, so much so that in addition to his own regular Twitter account, where the first thing in his bio is “Follower of Jesus,” he maintains another feed called “Walking With Waino,” which links to a newsletter where posts a daily analysis of Bible passages.Read more...

All 22 teams taking part in the NBA restart down in the Orlando “bubble” have now officially competed in game action.Read more...

The poker world is devastated by news of the horrific death of Susie Zhao. Zhao, known on the circuit as Susie Q, was found dead and burned in a park in Michigan earlier this month.

Hey everyone, Michigan State football is the latest “Doofus” in the college game.Read more...

The San Francisco Giants have been lacking a complete moron in their bullpen since they let wall-punching, brawl-starting, even-had-Fox News-wondering-if-he-was-racist imbecile Hunter Strickland go after the 2018 season.

The WNBA season starts Saturday, with the Seattle Storm and New York Liberty squaring off to open a triple header that also includes the Los Angeles Sparks taking on the Phoenix Mercury and the defending champion Washington Mystics facing the Indiana Fever.Read more...

Saturday night marked another session of “Midnight Yoga” on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C.

Welcome to the 2020 Major League Baseball season. Everything here is shit.

MLB was probably hoping to get through its showcase opener, the defending champ Nationals vs. the marquee franchise Yankees, without any indication of just how stupid and dangerous this all is. But when it comes to looking stupid, no one puts MLB in a corner.Read more...

Habits and superstitions are as much a part of the NBA experience as deception and dysfunction are in the White House. However, with COVID-19, everything has changed. There are certain aspects to players’ games that must be addressed.

The Washington football team will officially be going by what they’ve been referred to for a while.Read more...

It wasn’t the unveiling of the Iceland badge. What could be? And they aren’t the Metropolitans (finally giving us the potential of a functional “Mets” franchise). But Seattle’s NHL expansion team unveiled their name and jerseys this morning, and they’re both kind of great. They are the Kraken. Or it is the Kraken.…Read more...

We got our first look at games in the NBA’s makeshift “bubble” on Wednesday when eight different teams competed in live scrimmages in Orlando.Read more...

We know what the paper says.

In 1943, with their roster torn asunder by players called into military service for World War II, the Philadelphia Eagles moved to Pittsburgh for the year, merged with the Steelers, and became known as the Steagles.Read more...