Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

“Athletes are young and healthy, let them get it.”

Every team in every league that decided to return to play after the pandemic shutdown was going to struggle to hold onto their form from before the break. Three months without playing, and weeks and weeks of not even training, made everything a crapshoot. For teams that seemingly had something magical going on, it has…Read more...

It’s already bursting.

Last Thursday, University of Arizona President Robert Robbins answered a hypothetical question. Because of the state’s dramatic COVID caseload, Robbins said he would not open on-campus classes for students if the semester started now.Read more...

One of college basketball’s most contentious coaches is speaking out on the start to the 2020-21 season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.Read more...

Baseball is America’s national pastime, but the use of racially coded language when referring to players is not a phenomenon that’s specific only to baseball. Certainly, if you’ve heard about an NFL cornerback with “deceptive speed” or an NBA guard with “outstanding leadership qualities,” you can make as good a guess…Read more...

It was a big ask for any football club to hang on to whatever they had before the shutdown due to coronavirus. A three-month break is larger than the normal offseason these teams get. When everything was on ground as shaky as Barcelona’s lead in La Liga, it was probably always doomed. The only thing that could save…Read more...

Don’t listen to them.

They are the champions, my friends ...Read more...

Charismatic singer Trey Songz, who uses his platform to get other stars to do charitable work with the “Feed Your City” challenge, shared the story of Yahne Coleman, a young Black woman who joined the Sixers’ dance team around 2010. She said she suffered abuse at the hands of her teammates, stating they would talk…Read more...

Ramogi Huma has had a front row seat to coercive physical, psychological and sexual abuse that takes place at the hands of college athletic departments and the NCAA.Read more...

A friend messaged me early this morning about an Instagram thread by Ian Desmond that I had to read.Read more...

It becomes harder and infinitely more tiring to pick out particular bits of shit as we crawl through this sewer of history, whether that’s sports or society in general. The next thing you see is hardly more surprising or shocking than the last. So Sportsnet’s Eric Engels’s thread today on how NHL players actually feel…Read more...

There has never been a major city in the United States that’s enjoyed a longer run as America’s “Black Mecca” than Atlanta.Read more...

With MLB’s announcement last week that it will officially return, every major professional league is in the pool. The NWSL started this past weekend in Utah. MLS will start next week with a tournament in Orlando. As we move along, the NBA, NHL, and WNBA will return with their various plans. Lurking in the background…Read more...

It can be hard defending a post in the wilderness. Lonely. Mysterious. Hopeless. Death, destruction and defeat surround you, threatening to strip you of all you’ve gained, and all you are, leaving you to pick up the pieces and start again. Only to have that threat linger over you again and again.

This morning, the Minnesota Twins became the first MLB team to sideline “at risk” coaches for the season due to COVID-19 with the Minnesota Star Tribune reporting that Bill Evers, 66, and Bob McClure, 68, would not coach in this year’s truncated season. Evers and McClure are the oldest coaches on the Twins.

For a group of people who have considered themselves the toughest, most down-to-Earth, fight-through-everything bunch for decades, NHL players and fans sure do bitch a lot. We got an excellent example of that this past weekend.Read more...

This. Is. Glorious.Read more...

(Disclaimer: This post reflects only the feelings of the author. The rest of the Deadspin staff wants to assure our readers we will definitely not be cheering for the Patriots under any circumstances whatsoever.Read more...

You’ve heard of Black Power.

The state of Mississippi legislature has voted to change its state flag due to the presence of the Confederate flag within it.

In the span of 30 years, sports documentaries have gone from a niche subject area most broadcasters avoided to must-watch television events. Recent series like The Last Dance, Cheer, and Last Chance U, are immensely popular among sports fans and non-sports fans alike. Sports documentaries are also receiving more…Read more...

For a few hours on Saturday, things got uncomfortable for the ownership of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Over the week leading up to Liverpool clinching the Premier League title on Thursday with Manchester City’s loss to Chelsea, NBC wanted you to believe that their 30-year wait was on par with some of the more storied championship droughts in North America. Hell, a great number of Liverpool supporters wanted to believe…Read more...

Privacy has rarely been a luxury afforded to some of the best professional athletes in the world.

In 1995, there were 361 homicides in Washington, D.C., and that death toll, more than double last year’s tragic tally of 166, represented a five-year low. The violence of the drug wars of the early ’90s ravaged The District, earning the city the nickname, the “Murder Capital” of America.

If you like a good, old-fashioned fistfight, we got an instant classic for the “Just Bleed” crowd last night in Las Vegas.

Twenty-two starters clothed in Black Black Lives Matter T-shirts from the North Carolina Courage and Portland Thorns knelt during the national anthem before the National Women’s Soccer League kicked off their first game of the Challenge Cup Saturday.Read more...

Texas is one of the hottest of hotspots for coronavirus right now, and Governor Greg Abbott announced on Friday that the Lone Star State’s aggressive reopening will be rolled back some, with bars closing and river-rafting banned.Read more...

Morehouse College announced that the school is choosing its students’ health over dollars. The school is shutting down all fall sports.Read more...

A prominent Native American leader is calling on players for Washington D.C.’s NFL franchise to “rise to the occasion and become heroes” by refusing to play for a team “branded by a racial slur against Native Americans.”

A North Carolina racetrack owner is facing massive criticism and boycotts from fans after he decided to advertise “Bubba Rope” for sale on Facebook marketplace.

Hey, remember back in 1990 when you were super-stoked to watch American John Harkes be a non-factor for non-factor Sheffield Wednesday? He was the first American to play in the English Premier League and we were all amazed. Don’t pretend you weren’t.

The country is slowly turning over a new leaf, one that will hopefully lead to a racially conscious society that uncovers stories like Black Wall Street and the Rosewood Massacre, that depict the sad fate many Black Americans experienced simply for creating their own wealth. It remains important that these stories be…Read more...

NASCAR president Steve Phelps spoke to the media for the second time in just three days to address the issue that has taken all the air out of the announcement that the racing giant was banning the Confederate flag from NASCAR property: The noose found on NASCAR property.Read more...

I was around 6 years old when my parents bought me my first basketball magazine.

We all realize all this is completely insane, right?

Now might be a good time to think about the future of the Hall of Fame game.Read more...

Much like the football Hall of Fame, just about anyone gets into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Play in the league long enough, be kind to the writers, and gain any sort of rep for grit or toughness, and you’ll probably get in. Which cheapens the entry of those who are truly generational players. Those who deserve the…Read more...

NASCAR thinks Black people are stupid.

“Ugh. Not cool, dude.”Read more...

Looks like it’s back to the shadows for Daniel Kinahan.

At a time when evangelical Christians have no problem standing behind a president who violates every tenet the church supposedly stands for, holding up a rapist like Ben Roethlisberger as a symbol of redemption wouldn’t take much more effort than a sneeze. Throw in as part of your “recovery story” the customary…Read more...

On September 10, with both of my kids in school for the full day for the first time, I went to South Beach on Staten Island to run, really run, for the first time in years. I’d tried to take up running a few times before — in college, in my 20s, earlier in my 30s — but always gave up pretty quickly, due to a mix of…Read more...

After a tumultuous couple of days, Bubba Wallace made the media rounds Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, after the FBI reported that the noose found in his garage stall Sunday had been there for as far back as October and therefore was not a hate crime directed at the only Black driver in NASCAR’s top tier.Read more...

Another bubble is about to burst in the sports world and no, this one’s not in Florida.

Here’s hoping that you enjoyed that 35 minutes of feeling good about baseball on Tuesday night.

One of the classic lines from “Rounders,” the definitive poker movie, is “If you can’t spot the sucker at the table in the first half-hour, then you are the sucker.”

Good news everyone! The noose found in Bubba Wallace’s garage stall at Talladega Raceway had been there for months, not days!