Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team just published the first part of a six-part series on the life of former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who died by suicide last spring in a Massachusetts prison. It’s a heartbreaking story that digs deeper into the foundational early years of Hernandez’s short, painful life,…Read more...

As first reported by PhillyVoice reporter Kyle Neubeck, the Philadelphia 76ers issued an apology on Saturday afternoon for some gross tweets made by Mike Muscala’s father Bob. The elder Muscala has apparently operated the anonymous account @MuskieBobber for years alongside his professional account, @ChemicalHealth,…Read more...

History was made at the Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium in the Armenian capital on Saturday as Gibraltar won its first ever competitive match, beating Armenia 1-0. The self-governing territory was first officially recognized by UEFA in 2013 and had lost 22 competitive matches since, including all of their Euro 2016…Read more...

Florida stormed back from a 21-3 deficit against Vanderbilt on Saturday to escape the Commodores home field with a 37-27 win. But that was far from the most important highlight of the game. Late in the first half, Gators linebacker James Houston IV laid this monstrous hit on Vanderbilt’s Dare Odeyingbo during a punt …Read more...

USA Gymnastics announced the appointment of Mary Bono as interim CEO and president of USA yesterday. Bono previously worked at Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting in Washington, DC. Before that, she was a congresswoman from California. She was first elected in 1998 to replace her husband Sonny Bono, who died in a skiing…Read more...

The Joakim Noah era in New York will finally come to an end after the Knicks announced they were waiving the 33-year-old on Saturday. The New York Daily News reports that Noah did not take a buyout deal, which would have reduced his earnings, as well as the cap hit on the Knicks, and was waived outright. The team will…Read more...

The latest bit evidence to support bringing the relegation system into college football comes from the incredibly under-anticipated matchup between Rutgers and Maryland. Near the end of the first quarter, the Scarlet Knights failed to complete one of the simplest tasks someone could be asked to do on a football field:…Read more...

Heat president Pat Riley released a statement on Friday denying that he ever called Tom Thibodeau a motherfucker during negotiations with the Timberwolves coach and president for disgruntled superstar Jimmy Butler.

Mike Kimbel is only 21 years old and already he’s become a history-maker at Bellator. The bantamweight needed just six seconds to knockout his opponent, Alex Potts, during his undercard bout at Bellator 207 on Friday, tying him for the fastest knockout in the promotion’s history.Read more...

The San Francisco 49ers released a photo gallery on Friday commemorating the franchise’s 68-year history of games against the Green Bay Packers in the lead up to their matchup on Monday Night Football. The gallery included photos of nearly every notable player to put on a San Francisco jersey from Hall of Famers like…Read more...

Halloween is just over two weeks away, and if you haven’t bought costumes yet for your children or your fur children, Amazon’s running a big costume sale for both today. Dress up your dog in a modified version of that inflatable T-Rex costume, or let your kids pick their favorite Star Wars character; they probably…Read more...

Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff took over for Gio Gonzalez in the third inning of tonight’s NLCS opener, presumably to get through the Dodgers lineup a few times. He aced the third inning, and the promptly sent a Clayton Kershaw fastball 407 feet out to center field for a towering donger.

The Crew have been saved after all.Read more...

French newspaper L’Équipe has a report today that says the recent Champions League match between Paris Saint-Germain and Red Star Belgrade is currently being investigated by UEFA and the French authorities for possibly being fixed.Read more...

Football is loud. The players crashing into each other, the whistles, the referees throwing yet another flag, the crowds complaining about those flags, the flyovers by government jet fighters: It’s all loud.Read more...

There are no circumstances under which you should feel bad for Chris Christie, but here’s the one that seems closest. Heading into the primary campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Christie had a brand that worked for him. He wasn’t a great or even terribly good governor of New Jersey—he was…Read more...

Kittens are cute. So cute, in fact, that it can seem unimaginable they would be capable of hatching diabolical plots like stealing food off the counter, clawing your foot if the foot moves under a blanket, peeing repeatedly on your favorite rug, or fashioning itself into a cat cannonball and launching through an empty…Read more...

As a fan of anything that you pay a lot of attention to, you accept a certain amount of, let’s call it, imperfection. That’s too polite, of course, for pro wrestling, given the amount of sexism, homophobia, and racial caricature baked into wrestling’s past. But you hope and at times agitate for things to improve. The…Read more...

Jimmy Butler does not want to play for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He’s made this desire perfectly clear, first by demanding a trade and then by staging a media circus built on the one-two punch of humiliating his teammates in practice and then going on TV immediately afterwards to continue shitting on them. Now would…Read more...

Maybe you’ve seen the story about the lifelong Buffalo Bills fan who passed away last weekend, and in his obituary requested six Bills players to serve as pallbearers “so they can let him down one last time.”

The start of this NFL season has been marked, over and over again, the softest possible roughing the passer penalties. Defenders are not allowed to land on top of quarterbacks, which means that they must somehow levitate or something after completing a sack. The rule was tweaked to emphasize protecting quarterbacks…Read more...

It’s 11 a.m. deep in the Mojave Desert, the sun already laser-boring into everything it touches, and Bob is driving the stagecoach a hair too fast, speeding down Fury Road while tidily dispatching his not-first Bud Light of the morning. The whiskey still fixed to the stagecoach’s roof rattles as the scenery whips by:…Read more...

The Giants are the worst sort of bad team: one whose braintrust clearly believed was a contender for a playoff spot in the offseason, only to be revealed as a total moribund disaster once the regular season began. Most of this is because Eli Manning is a husk of himself and presently either unable or unwilling to…Read more...

If you aren’t yet a Uniqlo HEATTECH convert, $10 tees, turtlenecks, leggings, and more, for both men and women, may do the trick. They will keep you warm throughout the winter and looking like more like an adult who knows how to dress for the weather, rather than Ralphie’s brother in A Christmas Story.

Yesterday, USA Gymnastics hosted its selection camp to help choose the five-person team for the upcoming world championships in Doha. I say “help choose” because the results from this competition—or any competition for that matter—aren’t truly determinative of who will be named or not. Final team composition will be…Read more...

I can hear it already: the intolerant left strikes again! I do not care. If I’m never forced to hear, read, or otherwise consume another utterance from Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, it will be too soon.

OxyLED is best known for its battery-powered light strips, but this discounted kit plugs into an AC outlet, and is designed specifically for under-cabinet installation.Read more...

The Penguins finally showed some defensive fortitude last night, beating the Golden Knights 4-2 after giving up 11 goals in their first two games. But much more fun than Casey DeSmith’s 35 saves in his season debut were the first three Penguins goals, which came in natural hat trick form courtesy of the very good dog…Read more...

Usain Bolt’s conversion from track star to soccer player continues apace. In August, Bolt got his first taste of the footy when he came off the bench for Australian team Central Coast Mariners in a friendly match and actually acquitted himself fairly decently. He built on that performance today, making his first start…Read more...

Here’s a fun thing to think about: Has an offense with the quality of skill players that the New York Giants possess ever looked this bad? This is a team that lines up one of the best wide receivers in football, a rookie running back who treats defenders like bad guys in a Kung Fu movie, and a big, fast tight end who…Read more...

io9 The First Teaser for Disney’s Live-Action Aladdin Is Pure Magic | Jalopnik At $31,000, Could This Low Production 1991 Chevy Camaro Z28 Raise Any Interest? | Kotaku The World Ends With You: Final Remix: The Kotaku Review | Lifehacker The One Hit Wonders Nostalgia Playlist | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress: Can I…Read more...

Predators-Jets is the best sort of rivalry: one born almost solely from the fact that both teams are very good and each stands in the other’s way of the Central title, the West, and, perhaps ultimately, a Cup. And even though we’re months and months away from what we all hope is a playoff rematch of last year’s…Read more...

This is all patently absurd:

Any time you have to rinse something before or after you chop it, reach for Joseph Joseph’s appropriately named Rinse & Chop Plus cutting board, which incorporates a folding design and a colander to let you easily perform both common kitchen actions, without dirtying an extra dish. It’s rarely discounted from its…Read more...

Amazon’s been on a fitness kick lately, but instead of protein powder, today’s one-day sale is focused on protein bars. Inside, you’ll find deals on Vega bars, Best Bar Evers, Gronk bars (yes, Gronk bars), Garden of Life bars, and my favorite name of all:

The Giants are getting flattened by the Eagles Thursday night. It’s a dismal show, bad enough that almost anyone could be forgiven for bailing on it early. But not everyone! Some people should stick around. Like, for example, Odell Beckham Jr., who was spotted marching angrily to the locker room with the offense on…Read more...

The fresh and interesting Americans—also Michael Bradley was there—responded to Colombia’s first-half onslaught with a couple of goals early in the second half to take a by-God lead! And that was all that happened!Read more...

It’s no secret that Timberwolves coach and president of basketball operations Tom Thibodeau does not want to trade the disgruntled Jimmy Butler, since sacrificing short-term success for long-term planning is not in his own best interests. But thanks to ESPN’s Jorge Sedano, we have a really good story about broken-down…Read more...

Four days after it aired, and five days after he apologized for it, and more than a week after it was filmed, Jay Glazer reported Thursday night that the New York Giants have fined Odell Beckham Jr. for remarks he made during a surreal interview that aired during Sunday NFL Countdown last weekend.

A squad of Team USA kids who are mostly less interesting than the American soccer boys who are currently injured—and also this guy who looks just like Michael Bradley oh God wait that’s actually somehow Michael Bradley—is getting wildly overmatched by a World Cup-caliber Colombian team in a Tampa friendly. Thirty-six…Read more...

Connor McDavid got an assist on each of the Oilers’ goals in their 5-2 season-opening loss to the Devils, but heading into Edmonton’s second game—against the Bruins tonight—it had still been 196 horrible, awful days since hockey’s beautiful young stud had graced us with a goal.Read more...

Loudoun County Public Schools and the Leesburg Police Department are investigating an allegation that football players at Tuscarora High School in Leesburg, Virginia, held down and sexually assaulted a teammate during a post-practice hazing ritual earlier this month. Per a Loudoun Times-Mirror report:Read more...

Are you tired yet? Let me help.Read more...

Have you seen some cryptic and not-so-cryptic tweets and subtweets from some sports bloggers about who invented the special and not-at-all generic idea of comparing NBA teams to TV shows and movies? Are you wondering who first came up with this innovative and original idea that nobody else could have thought of? Would…Read more...

By picking running back Saquon Barkley second overall in what was a quarterback-rich draft class, the Giants let it be known they were all-in this year on Eli Manning, who will turn 38 in January. It’s been seven years since the Giants last won a Super Bowl, and they’ve made the playoffs just once in that span, a…Read more...

This week’s edition of WWE’s Monday Night Raw flagship made official a major development that had been expected for weeks: After eight and a half years of retirement, Shawn Michaels really is returning to the ring in a few weeks, at WWE’s Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia. Michaels had been steadfast for years about…Read more...

It’s almost time for the tip-off of the new basketball season, and you know what that means: It’s time to point out that not only does the NBA exist, but that other things also exist. A few outlets have already beaten us to the punch here, imagining NBA teams as rom-coms or TV shows or fake movies, but nobody has yet…Read more...

According to internal documents obtained by Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel, a Pac-12 executive who is not a trained official put his thumb on the scale and personally overruled what should have been a targeting penalty. On the final play of the third quarter of Washington State’s Sep. 21 loss to USC, WSU linebacker Logan…Read more...

We at the Deadcast are not in the business of telling you not to care about things. We are more or less in the business of being wrong and flippant about things, but you can and should absolutely do what you want. If you’re excited about the fact that the NBA regular season begins comparatively soon, that’s totally…Read more...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Email Drew here. Buy his book here.Read more...