Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 24 LSU.

A foam roller can work wonders for your sore muscles after a workout, and this unique model from TriggerPoint can flex around the contours of your body for more comfortable and efficient rolling. Get it for $25 today on Amazon, the best price ever.Read more...

If you ever had any illusions about how easy it would be for you to catch a punt, please watch Patriots rookie lineman Isaiah Wynn, a large man but an athlete nonetheless, struggle to bring one in at the end of a team practice:

Jalopnik Harley-Davidson Aims to Save Its Bacon With These New Motorcycles | io9 In the New Venom Trailer, Eddie Brock Meets the Beast Within | Kotaku Nintendo’s Best Selling Switch And 3DS Games To Date | Lifehacker Get Free Guac at Chipotle Today | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress: What can I do about these jerks…Read more...

Today’s best deals kick off with a rare discount on Apple’s AirPods, a portable projector, an HP Omen gaming laptop sale, and more.Read more...

Top of the sixth, tie game, men on second and third, and the lights went out in Phoenix:

Good morning! It’s just about seven hours until the trade deadline, and Bryce Harper could be on the block.

For a long time, Apple’s AirPods were hard to find in stock. Now, Amazon not only has them available with Prime shipping, they’re actually about $15 off today. Needless to say, these don’t go on sale often, so if they’ve been on your wishlist, you should pull the trigger. I’ve had mine since they launched, and they’re…Read more...

Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle, whose teammate is one of three prominent baseball players recently found to have a history of homophobic and/or racist Twitter behavior, spent a portion of his Monday off constructing a thoughtful series of tweets on casual bigotry, baseball, and social media:

To the profound disappointment of exactly zero 76ers fans, Jerry Colangelo will be stepping away from the organization at the end of this calendar year, according to a report from Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post:Read more...

Milwaukee’s new NBA arena will open later this summer, and will host Bucks home games starting with opening night in October. Last week the Bucks and banking software company Fiserv announced a 25-year agreement to name the new arena Fiserv Forum, but this otherwise standard piece of stadium business has an especially…Read more...

If you saw a baby being pushed in a stroller near the San Antonio aquarium on Saturday afternoon, guess what, it might have been a shark. According to Leon Valley police chief Joseph Salvaggio, three enterprising shark thieves made off with a three-foot long horn shark around 2:15 p.m. on Saturday after grabbing it…Read more...

Earther The Quietest Place in America Is Becoming a Warzone | Kotaku The Internet Reacts To DJ Khaled’s Underwhelming Overwatch League Concert | Jalopnik Temporary ‘Air Dam Shipping Covers’ Are the Hottest Mod For Dodge Challengers and Chargers | Lifehacker What Is Shadow Banning on Twitter? | The Takeout The story of…Read more...

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

Lots of wrestlers cosplayed as commies during the Cold War. Nikolai Volkoff, who died over the weekend, was way closer to the real thing, and took his act far more seriously, than all the rest. He was 70 years old.

A 90th-minute Megan Rapinoe corner kick led to a dramatic Lindsey Horan goal for the USWNT on Sunday night, forcing a 1-1 draw with Australia and keeping America unbeaten through the first two games of the Tournament of Nations—which are just some friendlies but nonetheless hold real importance as World Cup tune-ups…Read more...

A good tweet from our deceased former colleague Cerebral Commie Aisle about the perils of leaving a game too early—Read more...

Last week, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his son Stephen boasted about the team’s expectations that every player stand for the pregame national anthem, or otherwise find himself out of a job. Dallas-based sportscaster Dale Hansen of ABC affiliate WFAA called out Jones for his intimidation tactics, as well as his…Read more...

Dwight Howard—team-killer, corny joke maker, toxic locker-room presence, and general oaf—signed with the Washington Wizards a few weeks ago, his fourth team in four seasons. The market for him in free agency was quite small, and yet he somehow landed on the team with players who aren’t all fond of each other. Maybe…Read more...

College football season is nearly upon us, and with it comes the return of America’s favorite milk freak, Jim Harbaugh. The Michigan coach and cow enthusiast scored a key transfer this offseason when he got former Ole Miss QB Shea Patterson to head up to Ann Arbor, and Bleacher Report’s Matt Hayes took a long look at…Read more...

Less than 100 miles into the 2018 Tour de France, disaster struck American rider Lawson Craddock. TV cameras didn’t capture precisely what happened, but with around 80 kilometers left in Stage 1, Craddock emerged behind the peloton bloodied and bruised after hitting a water bottle and falling during the feed zone. He…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Cleveland Browns. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cleveland Browns. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group.

The body shot to the liver is basically the boogey man of all combat sports. One perfectly placed punch to the gut can set off a cascade of unimaginable pain that shuts down a fighter’s entire body. There’s really no coming back from it, as José Aldo proved during this weekend’s fight against Jeremy Stephens:

The NFL’s new rule on helmet contact is going to force players on both sides of the ball to make some major adjustments this season, but how exactly referees will enforce the rule is a question that’ll likely take at least a few weeks to answer. The rule, which applies to everyone from tacklers to linemen to ball…Read more...

The Washington Valor won the ArenaBowl on Saturday night, beating the Baltimore Brigade, 69-55, to capture the 31st title of the Arena Football League. Arvell Nelson led the way for the Valor with five rushing touchdowns and three TDs through the air.Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 25 Oklahoma…Read more...

The bad old tweets are an increasingly permanent component of the news cycle: An athlete does something good—has a good run of appearances, or gets drafted, or, say, loses a no-hitter with two strikes to go—and someone looks up his very old (and very public) tweets, which are racist and/or homophobic and/or offensive…Read more...

io9 Wonder Woman 1984 Adds More Radical Stars, Supergirl Picks Up a Bodyguard, and More | Lifehacker What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of July 30, 2018 | Kotaku Civilization IV’s Theme Was On America’s Got Talent, And It Was Excellent | Jalopnik Here Is How Ducati’s Desmodromic Valves Work | The A.V. Club …Read more...

As far as I’m concerned, an enameled dutch oven is right up there with a good knife and great spatula in the hierarchy of must-own kitchen gear, and a couple of Cuisinart’s iconic models are on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box, along with a 12" chicken fryer.

HBO is set to air LeBron James’s ballyhooed unscripted show The Shop next month. A preview released this week showed, among other things, LeBron telling a group of famous friends that he regrets giving his eldest son, LeBron James Jr., his name, out of concern that carrying his famous father’s name would put undue …Read more...

Oh, this was brutal. Braves second-year lefty Sean Newcomb—who’d never pitched a complete game, and who’d never pitched more than seven innings in a start, and who’d never thrown more than 111 pitches—gave up his first hit Sunday afternoon on a 2-2 single with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning.Read more...

It will mean absolutely nothing for you to learn that Jackie Bradley made another insane catch on Sunday to rob an extra-base hit, but this one is really something else. At no point prior to the moment when it landed in his glove did this ball look remotely catchable:Read more...

The thrilling news out of Colts training camp this weekend was that quarterback Andrew Luck, whose throwing shoulder has been crabmeat for several hundred years now, completed three (3) days of practice without his arm falling off:Read more...

There’s a point in every typical Mets season when their astonishingly dependable ineptitude tips over from being a source of amusement to being a source of genuinely unpleasant secondhand embarrassment. Probably for Mets fans that moment reliably passes before the first day of summer; for the rest of us, it takes a…Read more...

Truly it is a sad day when Pete Rose bitching semi-coherently about juiced baseballs and lost fundamentals represents a pivot towards sanity in the discourse of ornery former ballplayers. Alas.Read more...

Braves announcers and crusty old fuddy-duddies Joe Simpson and Chip Caray threw the saddest little mid-game tantrum Saturday night, during a Braves loss to the Dodgers. Braves hitters combined for three total hits and eight strikeouts on the night, and Braves starter Max Fried took the loss despite giving up just two…Read more...

Otterbox, the brand you know well for creating indestructible phone cases, has expanded to include YETI-competitive coolers, tumblers, and accessories. And today, you can get one of their insanely cool Venture coolers on sale. Choose from their 45-qt cooler for $150, or a more manageable 25-qt for $115.Read more...

Wayne Rooney scored his first MLS goal Saturday night, in his fourth match with DC United. The goal came in the 33rd minute of United’s match at home against Colorado—after the ball sort of chaotically pinged around in the midfield, United triggered a quick attacking move and Rooney finished it off by going between…Read more...

It’s not often you can find quality leather shoes for an affordable price, but here we are. Amazon is discounting four styles, and a bunch of colors, of men’s leather shoes from Lethato Footwear. If you need a good pair of boots, or dress shoes that are affordable and look good, this Gold Box is for you.Read more...

Simone Biles won four gold medals and a bronze at the 2016 Olympics, solidifying her position as the greatest female gymnast of all time. Those wins came at the end of an Olympic cycle that saw Biles completely dominate the sport by winning three consecutive world all-around titles, four straight national titles, and…Read more...

Jimmer Fredette made his presence felt early and often against the Fort Wayne Champs in The Basketball Tournament Friday night, playing for, I kid you not, Team Fredette. The 10th pick in the 2010 NBA Draft exploded for 41 points and wreaked havoc from beyond the arc, shooting 6-for-11 from downtown. This eye-popping…Read more...

Several great-grandparents were deeply scandalized this month by the revelation that 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo had dinner with porn actress Kiara Mia, despite it being 2018 and there just being nothing lamer than wringing your hands over the social life of a fucking football player.Read more...

The legal proceedings by which three of late Saints and Pelicans owner Tom Benson’s closest family members were removed from his businesses and will were ugly, and marked by profane outbursts from an enfeebled Benson, according to a report from the New Orleans Advocate.Read more...

Even though the Patriots have distanced themselves from Alex Guerrero, Tom Brady’s TB12 body coach and business partner’s name is still circling around New England. This time, though, it’s in connection with Julian Edelman’s four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing drug policy.

The position-player-as-pitcher trend continues piling up numbers at a record pace. Three more position players took the mound Friday night; the total across MLB is now up to 45, by far the most ever for a full season, and it’s still July. One of the recent unfortunate fellows was Rays outfielder Carlos Gomez, who…Read more...

The Rockets have won their contract standoff with restricted free agent center Clint Capela. Four weeks after he balked at Houston’s five-year, $90 million offer at the start of free agency, Capela made the decision to not sign the meager one-year qualifying offer, and inked a long-term deal in Houston. The terms?Read more...

Towards the upper end of a sliding scale measuring sports fanaticism—past painting your chest with your team’s logo on the day of the big game; in the range of meticulously pre-arranging the particulars of your burial, to serve as a final and eternal tribute to your team—there’s committing felony identity theft so…Read more...

Someone on Major League Baseball’s social media crew tweeted and then quickly deleted a joke Friday night comparing an image of Ichiro and Shohei Ohtani greeting each other to a meme showing two cartoon Spider-Men pointing at each other in mutual recognition and surprise:Read more...

Update: Get your orders in this weekend! This sale ends on Monday.Read more...