Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

This is clearly a Wayne Brady reference, but someone should still try to get Rece Davis to safety just in case.

Today is apparently the official start of the college football season. As someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in a team with any sort of non-lethal relevance, it’s very easy for this day to come and go without much fanfare. However, if you’re a fan of the University of Miami, there was almost no chance that you…Read more...

Prior to Team USA’s game against Australia on Friday, Kemba Walker told an Australian reporter that there was a lot of room for growth within the team, and that their previous performance was perhaps not as great as some players thought it was. The quote was the kind of thing a veteran player says to maintain a team’s…Read more...

Because it has been true for longer than I have been alive that the NBA is more fun when the Lakers are interesting, the news that Dwight Howard will be joining LeBron James and Anthony Davis on a Lakers team that is very serious about contending for championships is extremely welcome. This is not likely to make the…Read more...

It’s Friday afternoon, that time when every American sports league dumps the news it would rather you not see. Today, that meant the NBA announced the results of the league’s investigation into sexual assault allegations against Sacramento Kings coach Luke Walton.Read more...

There is a version of the story of this company in which idealistic journalists, unconcerned with profit, are posed against ruthless business-doers, concerned about profit above all else. That would be a convenient story, pitching me and my colleagues and friends as people who just care too much about The Truth to…Read more...

The week’s all but blogged out. We’re down below in the comments, hanging out and waiting for your questions. Ask us stuff, and we will answer it! Update: We’re done!Read more...

The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card earned Co-Op Diamond Elite Lifetime Status by winning this week’s hotel-branded credit card reader poll.

If I had the choice, which in fact at some time in the past I might have, I don’t know that I would choose to remember the things that I remember. There are moments from my life, real nights and days I lived in a younger version of my body, that I can feel fading into something more indistinct. Great and challenging…Read more...

Yesterday, Philadelphia’s Morris Animal Refuge posted photos of a big cat. A really big cat. It went viral.Read more...

Abject failure of an NFL head coach Hue Jackson got the Greg Bishop treatment over at Sports Illustrated this week. Bishop has made a lane for himself working up sappy redemption narratives for sad-sacks who don’t really deserve it. Jackson, a grating figure who got shit-canned by the Browns after going 3–36–1 in…Read more...

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

It has been a while since Fernando Torres was something other than a melancholic presence on the soccer field. The man nicknamed El Niño—who played for Atlético Madrid, Liverpool, Chelsea, AC Milan, and Atlético again before retiring on Thursday at Japanese club Sagan Tosu—saw the arc of his career bend away from The…Read more...

So it turns out that professional football teams can do all the things they need to do on any given day with 20 percent less field. All they have to do is not give much of a damn about it.

Goal Zero Labor Day Deals | Goal ZeroRead more...

It is happening again.

REI’s Labor Day Sale, a refurb Ninja Coffee Bar, and Sunday Scaries CBD products lead off Friday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Check out Tom Brady’s stupid hat! He wore it last night after the Patriots’ 10-3 preseason win over the Panthers. It’s a nice big hat, one that might protect you from the sun’s harmful rays. Unfortunately for Tom, he wore the hat indoors at 10:30 at night. Tom Brady’s sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North…Read more...

David Koch is dead.Read more...

One day after Dolphins receiver Kenny Stills called out the NFL’s superficial-seeming social-justice partnership with Jay-Z and Roc Nation, head coach Brian Flores loaded up the practice playlist with a bunch of Shawn Carter’s songs. This appeared to be a strangely antagonistic move from Flores, but after Thursday’s…Read more...

The International Ice Hockey Federation announced today that Washington Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov will be suspended from international hockey for four years after testing positive for cocaine in late May. The statement says:Read more...

Folks, I’ve got a problem.

An idiot ran out onto the field during the second inning of Thursday night’s Rockies-Cardinals game in St. Louis. An army of security personnel briefly chased the goof around the outfield and then the infield. The crowd ate it up; the batter had a chuckle; even several Cardinals players appeared to enjoy the moment.…Read more...

Thursday night’s Packers-Raiders game is being played in Winnipeg, at the home of the Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. Suited though the stadium may be for Canadian gridiron football, it turns out the field is not up to the job of hosting an NFL game, not without screwing around with the game’s…Read more...

Conor McGregor is many objectionable things. He’s a massive shithead, an outspoken bigot, a rich showy asshole, a violent rage-monster, a destroyer of other people’s personal property, and a puncher of helpless old men. He was accused of sexual assault in December. He’s also a man whose livelihood depends upon…Read more...

Thank you for you continued support of Deadspin. Onward.Read more...

The long-anticipated ACC Network launches tonight. The network, which includes a linear TV channel and a digital streaming platform, will be owned by ESPN with revenues and cost split by ESPN and the ACC, but the specifics of that arrangement—who bears what costs and who gets what percentage of the revenue—are…Read more...

On the first day of May in 2013, in the start that ran his season record to 6-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.01, Clay Buchholz limited the Toronto Blue Jays to five baserunners and no runs over seven innings. It was as good as Buchholz got in a season in which he was better than he’d been before or has been since. He was…Read more...

Team USA is down to 13 players, who are all in contention for the final 12-man roster. With the FIBA World Cup just 10 days away, the squad played the first of a two-game exhibition against Australia on Thursday, and won comfortably, 102-86. During the first quarter, Donovan Mitchell skied for an impressive chase-down…Read more...

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

The first Clásico of the season isn’t until the end of October, but Real Madrid and Barcelona are currently in the throes of a battle with much higher stakes than any one match. After a summer’s worth of rumors and reports linking Paris Saint-Germain’s star forward Neymar to a return to Barcelona, Real Madrid have…Read more...

Will the first-round U.S. Open meeting between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova be a good match in terms of play quality? Probably not. Does it promise rich entertainment value anyway? Hell yes.Read more...

Everyone loves “The Freeze,” the masked sprinter who makes a living humiliating amateur athletes at Braves games, but there is a similar hero plying his trade at Gwinnett Stripers games, and he is quite the specimen.

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

A Detroit Free Press reporter was barred from the Houston Astros’ postgame press conference last night because Justin Verlander said he would refuse to speak with media if the reporter was present.Read more...

Browsing the internet generally feels exhausting for me. Mostly, it’s because everything is bad. The websites I once visited for “fun” are now saturated with reminders of society’s collapse, brands making painful jokes, lies, outrage, and actual Nazis. I only visit these websites out of habit and poor impulse control.Read more...

Yes, yes, we’ve all seen various versions of a video showing a baseball fan grabbing a foul ball in a way that is funny or charming. But have you ever seen a young baseball fan get his hands on a foul ball and respond like he just gained possession of the One Ring?

If you want the simplest, hardest piece of news from Kalyn Kahler’s fantastic writeup for Sports Illustrated of the Chicago Bears’ offseason kicking saga, it’s that the decision to cut Cody Parkey was made immediately upon the second doink. If you want the most important and still-relevant piece of news, which emerges…Read more...

Premium Linen and Comforter Gold Box | AmazonRead more...

Carlos Vela is MLS’s top goal scorer this season, and is tied for second in assists, and a person doesn’t get to those positions in a professional league without being either a FIFA 19 creation or just comprehensively superior to 99 percent of the other people in the league. The numbers tell the latter story on the…Read more...

The Mets, not too long ago baseball’s hottest team, gave back a little of their late-summer mojo in a recent series loss to the Braves, and find themselves still tantalizingly outside of the second NL Wild Card spot. They’re still whole worlds better than they were in the first half, and as a result of their recent…Read more...

Professional athletes are known to enter some strange head-spaces in order to stay focused and conquer doubt and all the rest of it. Still, it must be said, Cubs outfielder Nick Castellanos is truly smelling the psychosphere these days. He was asked Tuesday night why he greets manager Joe Maddon with “Happy Opening…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. We’ll be around.Read more...

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

Everything is fine in Toronto, because training camp doesn’t even start for another few weeks. But ... is it really? The negotiations between the Maple Leafs and their wunderkind RFA winger Mitch Marner have, perhaps unsurprisingly, plodded through the offseason with minimal progress, or at least with minimal progress…Read more...

SARASOTA, FLORIDA — The sun hadn’t yet risen over the Sarasota Kennel Club, and Deb Linn was wrist deep in 100 pounds of bloody meat. She had been been up since 4:30 a.m., when she made the 45-minute commute south from Ellenton, a small town where the rent is more affordable than in the wealthy beach city of Sarasota.…Read more...

An article over at CNN today formally advances a claim dropped casually by commentators, coaches, fans, and any crank with a taste for caricaturing a whole generation. Here goes: Smartphones are hampering tennis’s young players, which is why they can’t stop the Big Three in the men’s game, who enjoyed the advantage…Read more...

Baseball players are too damn horny. So says MLB, which had to send out a memo to its players on Monday telling them to stop using over-the-counter “sexual-enhancement pills.” The risk, beyond engorged wooden bats, is that these pills have substances in them that might get flagged on a drug test.

The second, flaghumpinger incarnation of the XFL is, it appears, truly actually happening next spring. Landry Jones is in and the league has real teams and everything! Unfortunately, these are those teams.Read more...

Big Blanket Co. specializes in—wait for it—big blankets. And now, they’re finally coming out with a really big weighted blanket.Read more...