Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

We’re minutes into football Sunday and normalcy has returned to America. The NFC East is a complete joke, again.Read more...

The idea of leadership has consumed us this year.Read more...

Sports fans know the joke about players needing to “get their golf clubs out” as they’re eliminated from the playoffs. So it’s fitting that Donald Trump was at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia when he got eliminated by Joe Biden on Saturday.

Over/Under: 52Read more...

As you might have guessed, upon returning to Los Angeles from Dallas after winning the World Series, the Dodgers organization is borderline-riven with COVID-19. Nine members of the organization have tested positive, along with a family member.Read more...

As the Trump era begins to wind down in America, there’s still plenty of embarrassment available for everyone involved, as was shown Saturday morning when the outgoing president tweeted that his team would be holding a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.Read more...

Notre Dame-Clemson happened. It was a good game, with the top-ranked Tigers, with Trevor Lawrence sidelined by COVID-19, rallying from 13 points down to take the lead late in the fourth quarter, only for the No. 4 Fighting Irish to drive 91 yards for a score to force overtime, where Notre Dame pulled out a 47-40 win.

I write the Sunday Scaries at the end of each week. Every time I write, I wonder if that inevitable positive test or team outbreak will lead to a canceled game (and one you should avoid betting).Read more...

Joe Biden is the next President of the United States. Kamala Harris is the next Vice President of the United States. Donald Trump will no longer be President of the United States.

With no March Madness this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, there was no “One Shining Moment,” the annual montage of NCAA Tournament highlights on CBS.Read more...

Shedeur Sanders’ Friday announcement to change his commitment from Florida Atlantic University to Jackson State caught people by surprise.Read more...

Wisconsin has played one game this season, beating Illinois, 45-7, back on Oct. 23. Then the Badgers got coronavirus, had their game last week at Nebraska canceled, and once again won’t play this week, when they were supposed to face Purdue at Camp Randall Stadium.Read more...

When I opened Twitter this morning and started scrolling, I have to be honest; I was shocked.Read more...

Herschel Walker, the 1980 Heisman Trophy winner and reason for the 1990s Cowboys dynasty after Dallas traded him to Minnesota for a massive haul, has an idea. It’s not a good idea, or a remotely plausible idea, but it’s an idea.

The Daniel Negreanu-Doug Polk duel got off to a surprising start on Wednesday, as Negreanu, roughly a 4-1 underdog in the betting markets, booked a $116,500 win in the match’s 200-hand live portion at the Aria in Las Vegas.Read more...

The Friday news dump is a time honored tradition, but baseball really went all in on it this time, not only with it being Friday, but with the drama of the American election continuing to unfold.

When most professional athletes retire from sports, it’s almost a lock that they will go into something else in the world of athletics, most often media. Their expertise is used as commentators, analysts, and sometimes hosts. A match made in heaven, right?

Just pump the brakes on handing Tom Brady the Humanitarian of the Year award.

This is going to be hard to take for many, but we’re gonna have to give Atlanta and Philly folks a break.Read more...

For as much as the Pats get shit for it, mostly because they were the most successful, every football team loves to find ways to flout the rules. It’s what they do. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’ as the saying goes. You have to be willing to do what the other guy won’t. That’s the defining moral imperative of…Read more...

With MLB now in the overture of its musical, entitled “Winter of Discontent,” they’re still making it clear just how desperate they want people to think things are. My colleague has written about Cleveland’s desperate “need” to move Francisco Lindor before they have to pay him anything close to what he’s worth. There…Read more...

Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported on Thursday that Cleveland is looking to trade star shortstop Francisco Lindor, and there are a couple of issues with the reporting that are apparent even though it was only a single tweet.

Every week the college football stands seem to be fuller and fuller as fans enter the stadium with coverings over their faces, but by halftime, things look very different. No face masks, people screaming and saliva latching on to ride the breeze. Just an all-around dangerous environment when we’re in the midst of a…Read more...

We don’t know the result of this year’s presidential election… yet. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Americans are in favor of legalizing sports betting (and weed, but that’s for another time).Read more...

For the second straight day, COVID-19 has infiltrated an NFL team facility. Today, it’s the Houston Texans.Read more...

Late Thursday, NBA players are supposed to vote on a schedule and format for the upcoming season.

We knew when the NFL decided to go ahead with the season as scheduled, it had very little flexibility. This isn’t baseball that can pile on double-headers or fill up off-days. The NFL only has teams’ bye weeks to bounce around and that’s what they’ve done, on a limited basis. Which is why there’s no threshold to when…Read more...

The 2020 presidential election is arguably the most important election in the history of our country.Read more...

It’s kind of adorable, the way Brett Favre thinks he’s helping. It’s always been adorable. The way that Favre took the “ol’ backcountry gunslinger” label to heart and really thought he was the nameless stranger riding in, pulling his jacket collar up, to save the town from the black-hatted sheriff. What we know is…Read more...

There’s a new state flag in Mississippi and it doesn’t have an emblem that honors American traitors like the last one.

After a whirlwind of a month, Trent Brown was released from the hospital Monday. He had an adverse reaction after air seeped into his bloodstream while an I.V. was being administered before the Raiders Sunday game against Cleveland.

In September, a Deadspin analysis of Charles Johnson’s political donations showed that the owner of the San Francisco Giants had given $1.7 million to Republican causes in 2020 alone, including donations to 46 individual candidates.

Once again, the NFL is an embarrassment to society.Read more...

Poker archrivals Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk, who have been beefing on Twitter for years, will meet on the felt in a classic HU4ROLLZ challenge starting 8 p.m. EST tonight at the Aria, which will be televised for free on PokerGo.com. The two will play $200/$400, with the first 200 hands being played live, a…Read more...

I know what happens every time you say something like that. I know there’s a lot of good people south of the Mason Dixon, or even south of I-80. At least that’s what they keep saying. And hey, a lot of dangerous jagoffs have been elected from the North. Except they come from places that want to be in the South. Places…Read more...

Let’s talk about Diego Maradona.Read more...

Clayton Kershaw did it. A superstar athlete with a tendency to fade in postseason play has won a championship.

We soccer fans like to think that every goal is unique and different, but every so often you do get to see something rare. I’m a total sucker for indirect freekicks from inside the penalty box, which happens once every comet. An illegal back-pass to the keeper is almost never called, and that’s just about the only way…Read more...

As you make your way to the polls, so do athletes.Read more...

We all know bad the NFC East is this season. They are the butt of all the jokes.Read more...

The Gold Glove awards this year are entirely based on a statistical formula, much to the chagrin of Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, who felt that voters would have judged him on his reputation and given him a 10th victory, even though he didn’t rate out among the top three defensive catchers in his own division this…Read more...

It’s a Trash Talking Tuesday and today I’m trashing Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh.Read more...

A dominant Lakers team, led by a charismatic, 6-foot-9 generational talent and a uniquely gifted big man, captured the NBA title. The Dodgers win a World Series featuring one of the most amazing game-endings ever seen. It’s a presidential election year featuring a Republican candidate appealing to his base by playing…Read more...

On a day in which a lot of white people are definitely going to do and say a lot of stupid, ignorant, racist, and unnecessary things, Keith Olbermann decided he wanted to get the party started early on Election Day.

After six Premier League games, being six points off the relegation zone while nine points off the top is not where Manchester United are supposed to be. But it feels like that gets said a lot about United the past couple years. “Not where they’re supposed to be.”Read more...

2020 has seen much loss, and the sports world was not spared.Read more...

Today is Election Day, and in a few hours (or days) we, hopefully, we will know the results of the most important Presidential Election in modern times.

On Sunday, for the first time in my life, I saw Americans gassed on their way to vote.Read more...

The urge is to compare today to some ultimate or galactic Game 7. The gnawing pit in the stomach, the visions of doom in your head, because no sports fan ever allows themselves to think about victory, at least for any more than a fleeting second, in such a thing. You spend the whole day or days steeling yourself for…Read more...

The NFL jumped into the flying-by-their-ass pool Monday by reportedly discussing expanding this year’s playoffs to 16 teams. This coming after they expanded it to 14 already, and they may just jump over that this January without ever trying it.