Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

On the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, former NBA superstar Bill Walton made his way into the broadcast booth of NBC Sports Chicago to be the color commentator for a White Sox-Angels game. Walton was his usual self whenever he spoke, taking quantum leaps from topic to topic as he transitioned between the planes of this…Read more...

The Philadelphia Phillies were down to the Chicago Cubs entering the bottom of the ninth inning Thursday night. The Cubs have had a dicey bullpen all season long, so this was by no means a sure thing, but that doesn’t make what happened any less nad-rocking, for all but the most committed Bryce Harper truthers.Read more...

Mike Glennon threw a 53-yard touchdown pass to [checks notes] Rico Gafford in the first quarter of Thursday night’s Raiders-Cardinals preseason game on ESPN. Immediately afterward, with the poor, addled fans in attendance still buzzing over the hookup, Oakland’s field goal unit took a delay of game penalty while lined…Read more...

Ronald Acuña Jr. has been an absolute stud for the Braves as of late, and even when his team hasn’t been performing to the best of their abilities, he still finds a way to remind the folks at home just how much better he is compared to the bums around him. The latest exemplar of this talent separation happened …Read more...

Things were already going poorly for the Dodgers going into the bottom of the fifth on Thursday, as the team had only just broken up a no-hitter against the Marlins(!) and had allowed the National League bottom-feeder to build a 6-1 lead. But things soon got decidedly worse when Miami’s Lewis Brinson hit a liner to…Read more...

Retired NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his family were taken to a hospital for evaluation today after their plane crashed at an airport in Tennessee. Earnhardt Jr.’s sister Kelley confirmed the news and added that everyone on board was “safe.”

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It’s safe to say Jay-Z, to some extent, takes cues from Colin Kaepernick. Jay-Z has expressed his admiration of the former quarterback before, once calling him an “iconic figure.” In the aftermath of Kaepernick’s black-balling from the NFL for his peaceful protest of police killing unarmed black men, Jay-Z rejected…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

If karma exists, DeMarcus Cousins did some ethereal being mighty wrong. If this is just bad luck, Cousins not only has his own but several other people’s as well.Read more...

Training camp fights are a relatively common occurrence, but few are as eventful as the scrap that took place on Wednesday between Bears offensive lineman Kyle Long and defensive lineman Jalen Dalton. Here is a description of the fight that is just packed with evocative imagery:

After suffering in obscurity on the worst team in pro sports for seven years, getting free from the mess in Sacramento only to tear his Achilles midway through a career season on a playoff-bound squad with another star, and seeing his chance at a ring go up in smoke thanks to a string of brutal injuries, DeMarcus…Read more...

If you can get away with it, you should bail on work right now and head to your local beach, blasting this beach-forward Deadcast on your stereo or in your headphones as you do so. What’s your boss going to do about it? Fire you? Quite possibly, but that’s not happening until you get back from the damn beach!Read more...

British triathletes Jess Learmonth and Georgia Taylor-Brown took the top two spots of the podium at a heat-shortened triathlon in Tokyo on Thursday, raising their hands together as they snapped the finishing tape. Their shared victory did not last long, however, as the haters over at the International Triathlon Union…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Tennessee Titans. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tennessee Titans. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

One of the worst-received aspects of the Women’s World Cup this summer was the VAR-induced penalty kick debacle. The choice to subject goalkeepers’ feet locations to exacting scrutiny with video review, and to let penalty takers try their kicks again should VAR detect that a keeper drifted a centimeter too far off her…Read more...

Team USA still needs to winnow its pool of 15 finalists down to 12 before the FIBA World Cup begins on September 1. No one else is getting added to this team, but perhaps they should burn down the roster and start all over.Read more...

Conor McGregor still hasn’t decided on his next fight, but in the meantime he’s won an exhibition bout against an old guy who was just trying to have a pint.

Congratulations, St. Louis! According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the city has successfully thrown enough money around and greased the right wheels to win economic promotion to MLS!Read more...

NASCAR currently decides on a champion at its top level through a process that’s somehow both complicated and arbitrary. The result is more about entertainment than staying true to what motorsports is, which is why, as “commissioner” of NASCAR for a day, I’ll try to make it all a little better. Lend me all the luck…Read more...

Clayton Kershaw looks like a completely different pitcher than he did several years and hundreds of innings ago, but the results are pretty much the same. With a two-hitter win against the Marlins on Wednesday, the Dodgers starter improved to 12-2 on the year with a 2.63 ERA, efficiently striking out 10 Miami hitters…Read more...

The Mets have somehow gotten themselves into playoff contention, which is both good news and bad news for them. The good news, obviously, is that they may yet have a successful season after a very lame first half. The bad news is that now people are actually paying attention to the Mets, and that means any…Read more...

There are over 8,400,000 posts on Instagram tagged with the hashtag #boymom. It sits under baby bump photos (“we’re one month away from little dude’s due date!”), banal portraits of chubby-cheeked babies (“my baby boy teaches me something every day”), and photos of little boys doing stereotypically #boy things like…Read more...

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Nick Kyrgios melted down spectacularly Wednesday night at the Cincinnati Masters, in a second-round loss to eighth seed Karen Khachanov, 6–7, 7–6, 6–2. Kyrgios completed a stirring comeback in the first set but started coming unglued in the second set, after chair umpire Fergus Murphy hit him with a time violation…Read more...

Igor Zinoviev’s mixed martial arts career ended unceremoniously in 1998 when he was wiped out in 22 seconds by Frank Shamrock at UFC 16. That brief seven-match career in sanctioned MMA ultimately will not go down as Zinoviev’s claim to fame—the Russian strongman spent years in the employ of recently deceased …Read more...

Colt McCoy was the presumptive favorite to earn the not-especially-coveted starting quarterback job in Washington during training camp. That race appears to be up in the air today, after head coach Jay Gruden announced Wednesday that McCoy will miss Thursday night’s exhibition against the Bengals, which would’ve been…Read more...

The long-anticipated mediation talks between U.S. Soccer and the USWNT have already ended, as of Wednesday afternoon. You are likely just learning about this week’s meetings for two reasons; first, because the participants agreed to maintain “the strictest secrecy” about their details, including time and location; and…Read more...

Former Wonderteen Christian Pulisic has been a very good soccer player at close to the highest level in the world for three-and-a-half seasons, playing admirably in huge games against Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, and other top-tier clubs. He is no longer a prospect, and he hasn’t been one for years.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit bewildered at Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter’s decision to partner with the NFL.Read more...

Wouldn’t you know it! Alexi Lalas, the guy who said, “Damn right, I’m gonna stand,” and implied that players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial inequality would be the same as a player wearing a MAGA hat during the national anthem, has more half-baked political takes.Read more...

A Fresno man named Dana Hutchings died on Tuesday night after collapsing during a taco-eating contest at a Fresno Grizzlies game, according to a report from the Fresno Bee.Read more...

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Of all the NCAA’s heavy-handed mechanisms of controlling players, the transfer portal is among the most confusing. The 2018 opening of the portal theoretically makes it easier for athletes to switch schools, though it has done little to actually make things smoother for transferring players, which makes sense since…Read more...

It was easy to miss between the next chapter in the Seth Rollins chronicles and Sasha Banks’s triumphant return, but Monday night’s episode of RAW featured a blast from the past: WWE is bringing back the King of the Ring tournament. Or, more precisely, WWE is bringing back a tournament with King of the Ring branding…Read more...

After the NBA draft lottery, dread seeped into my bones and I predicted the Knicks’ pipe dreams of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Zion Williamson would turn into Bobby Portis, Terry Rozier, and DeMarcus Cousins. The Knicks did strike out in spectacular fashion, although that specific forecast went just 1-of-3. (The…Read more...

NASCAR has a problem. Not the attendance struggles or the fight to stay enticing in a world of ball sports with elimination playoffs, or the fact that the one woman running top-level Cup Series races lost her ride and subsequently retired. No, this problem is one NASCAR created all on its own, and whether the…Read more...

Here’s a question: What would happen if you combined the vapidity of ubiquitous trend pieces about athletes eating and drinking things with the cravenness of brand subservience? You’d probably end up with something like this article from The Athletic.

Some people are fans of the Minnesota Vikings. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Minnesota Vikings. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Antonio Brown is the most prolific wide receiver in football over the last eight seasons (or so), even while being a smaller and less imposing physical specimen than nearly every “No. 1” receiver in the NFL. How does he do it?Read more...

Look upon Titan, your new sovereign. Titan began his reign at last night’s Rockies game, leading a legion of hounds into the ballpark and laid claim to all lands within it.Read more...

A Nebula Projector exclusive, Home Depot grills and smokers, Land’s End sale, and a Thermapen IR thermometer lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Maybe it’s time to let our robot umpire overlords reign supreme. At the very least, Cubs fans would be well within their rights in calling for the technology that will, in theory if not yet in practice, remove human error from strikes and balls, after Chicago was on the wrong end of one of the worst strike three calls…Read more...

George Andrie, an original member of the Dallas Cowboys’ famed Doomsday Defense, had Stage 4 chronic traumatic encephalopathy at the time of his death last August at the age of 78, according to researchers at Boston University who posthumously examined his brain. Andrie’s diagnosis was confirmed by his daughter, Mary…Read more...

It was all going just fine for the Angels. They had scored the opening four runs through the first two innings of their game on Tuesday against the Pirates, and, as far as anyone knew, their gloves and arms were all functioning properly, as they should on a professional baseball team. That all changed with a Josh Bell…Read more...

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It says something about the state of baseball that the least interesting thing about this play, from the top of the ninth inning of an 11–6 Mariners win over the Tigers, is that it was Kyle Seager’s third dinger of the night. Multi-homer games are so common now that they’re becoming passé—for crying out loud, Gleyber…Read more...

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones talked to Jon Machota of The Athletic Tuesday at Cowboys training camp, where the conversation naturally made its way around to the uncertain contract statuses of quarterback Dak Prescott, wide receiver Amari Cooper, and holdout running back Ezekiel Elliott. Suffice to say, Jones isn’t real…Read more...

In the top of the second inning of Tuesday night’s Reds-Nationals game, Reds rookie sensation Aristides Aquino took a mighty cut at a high Joe Ross fastball and scalded it straight back into the backstop net. The net caught the ball, of course, which was good news for a Nationals fan seated in the third row behind the…Read more...

The saga of Andrew Luck’s strained calf has reached the point where it’s time to worry whether anyone knows just what the hell is going on. Colts owner Jim Irsay identified a “small little bone” in Luck’s left leg as the source of the quarterback’s ongoing pain and discomfort, which leads to all sorts of questions…Read more...