Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

When discussing small-market superstars, there are a few things we can be brutally honest about. First, free agency is not an option. Fellow All-Star-caliber players are not signing up to play in Oklahoma City or Dallas. History proves this. What superstars have ever left their small market to join another…Read more...

There are few things more overwhelming than the tornado that forms when two pugilists circle each other for months, and even years, before finally engaging each other in the ring. Right now, between King Vasiliy Lomachenko, Teófimo López, Devin Haney, Shakur Stevenson, Ryan Garcia, and Gervonta Davis, the lightweight…Read more...

Minnesota Vikings star wide receiver Justin Jefferson is calling his shot by saying he’ll be the best at his position by the end of the 2022 NFL season. Jefferson’s bold proclamation has been the talk of Twitter, but he might not be far off. The third-year wideout offered up his thoughts in a recent interview with…Read more...

Aaron Judge is a big dude, in every meaning of the word. He’s tall, strong, got lots of money and influence, and he even plays in the Big Apple. However, being a mammoth of a man comes with its downfalls: short door frames are a thing, getting into cars becomes much more of a hassle, it becomes much more difficult to…Read more...

I’ve seen LeBron James play in-person three times, all with the Heat in 2014. One was a loss to the Nuggets, and the other two were W’s, including a 38-point performance versus the Knicks and his career-high 61 points, dropped on the then-Bobcats. He hit a deep, no-business-attempting-let-alone-going-in three to seal…Read more...

On Tuesday, Juan Soto will be manning the Dodger Stadium outfield as a member of the National League All-Star team.

Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto is a 23-year-old superstar. In just four and a half years in the bigs, he has established himself as one of the best pure hitters in the game. He’s a perennial MVP candidate, a master of plate discipline — and now he’s on the trade block.

College football season is approaching quickly (not as quickly as I would like, of course, but patience is a virtue,) and amongst all of the conference realignment announcements, the unprecedented coaching carousel, and the discussions surrounding NIL guidelines, it’s been a pretty dramatic offseason, to say the least.

The quadrennial UEFA European Football Championships had to wait five years for its most recent edition, with three years separating the delayed 2020 event to its regularly scheduled 2024 showcase because of the coronavirus pandemic. As the Euros got underway after a 365-day delay, it was a celebration to have such a…Read more...

The Home Run Derby is meant to be one of the most exciting displays of raw power in baseball. Dingers here, dingers there, dingers everywhere! And ever since the competition’s rebrand in 2015, it’s been an incredible spectacle watching some of the biggest bats in MLB do their darndest to hit mammoth tanks every time…Read more...

Short guards are notorious for aging poorly in the NBA. When quickness is your best asset, losing a step can be fatal. Only the craftiest players — think Jason Kidd, or Chris Paul — can remain effective. Whether it’s changing their playing style, using so many defensive tricks it borders on dirty play, developing a…Read more...

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The 30 women who planned to make claims against the Houston Texans for their alleged role in the sexual misconduct allegations against the team’s former quarterback, Deshaun Watson, have reached settlements with the team, the attorney for all 30 women, Tony Buzbee, said in a statement Friday.

Negotiations between Dodger Stadium employees and their employer Compass Group/Levy Restaurants have gone well since the former announced they were planning a strike of the MLB All-Star Game and its festivities this upcoming weekend. They’ve gone so well in fact that the employees have decided to rescind their strike…Read more...

The more I hear Mike Gundy speak from Wednesday’s session at Big 12 Media Days, I become increasingly convinced his assertion about Texas and Oklahoma wasn’t a joke. Oklahoma State’s longtime head coach can parlay that he “jokingly” suggested the Longhorns and Sooners shouldn’t be involved in the league’s…Read more...

Intramural teams around the country, you’d better start training! The NFL has just joined the effort to get flag football officially recognized as an Olympic sport for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

Rudy Gobert being the biggest name to change teams during free agency made this iteration feel like an overhyped, under-delivered trade deadline. While there’s still quite a bit of time left in the offseason, all but a star is running it back with last year’s team. Unless the Brooklyn Nets find a trade partner willing…Read more...

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It’s starting to feel like 2023 and beyond will see a pretty definitive shift in baseball, with an amount and degree of rules changes that are at least an attempt to change how the game is played instead of pawing at the edges. A pitch clock seems a near certainty. An automated strike zone won’t be joining us, but it…Read more...

Before I get started, whatever controversy came out of the trailer for Friday’s episode of The Shop is proof of how disingenuous and dumb Americans can be. First, it’s a trailer. No one has any context of what LeBron James said about Brittney Griner, or the actual full statement except the people in the room and…Read more...

There’s been a new development in the Brett Favre welfare payment scandal from 2020. Nancy New, a defendant in the welfare fraud case that involves millions of dollars worth of Mississippi state welfare funds being embezzled and misdirected, said that the former governor of the state, Phil Bryant, directed her to give…Read more...

Since the dawn of time, mankind has had but one goal: “I. MUST. GO. FAST.” Whether it be speedrunning Super Mario 64 on Twitch, Joey Chestnut wolfing down 70-plus hot dogs in 5 minutes (You could never!), or Lightning McQueen going for the Piston Cup, speed has always dazzled onlookers and made for an exhilarating…Read more...

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The Deebo Samuel trade talk that was a hot topic earlier this offseason has cooled over the past month. The further away we’ve gotten from the draft, it feels like the less we hear about Samuel being anywhere besides the Bay Area this fall. That is until former Dallas Cowboys scout Bryan Broaddus weighed in on the…Read more...

My adult life has been littered with the word privilege. When I was growing up, it was first discussed when my parents explained why my Sega Genesis was off limits as well as the living room television. Privileges can be held over a child, and if that child goes above and beyond acceptable behavior, then special…Read more...

With COVID now an American institution along the lines of hot dogs and baseball, stories about rising case counts, new variants, and unvaccinated athletes tend to go unnoticed. If you’re waiting for masks to go away before you go on vacation, you’re never going to leave your house. Anti-vaxxers bristle about being…Read more...

I know that booking for WWE is its own complicated process with unique factors that no other company would ever have to worry about. I also know that even with those factors, the guy who does it is bad at it and evil. I also know that it doesn’t matter, because it’s simply too big to fail. But those factors, like…Read more...

Who could have ever seen this coming from a family like the Ricketts?

If you were up and at ‘em at 2:00 a.m. this morning for the Open Championship tee-off, props to you. I was sound asleep, of course — I love golf, but not that much. As we groggily tune in to the later tee time groups today, it will be fun to see how everyone does on the 17th hole on the Old Course at St. Andrews —…Read more...

It feels like Albert Pujols has received more attention this season than he did during his entire stint with the Angels. He was named an All-Star for the first time since 2015 under MLB’s new special selection designation. The Cardinals let him pitch during the ninth inning of a blowout. His peers advocated for a…Read more...

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The distasteful actions/inactions of cops in Texas when it comes to dealing with kids are in the news again. Where have you heard this before?Read more...

Former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has never been one to mince words. If he doesn’t like you, he’ll say it to your face. While that “I don’t give a toot” attitude is admirable in some circumstances, it often lands Guillen in hot water with baseball fans — and especially the media.Read more...

Veteran NFL running back Le’Veon Bell recently announced his intention to skip the 2022 season to focus on his boxing career. Bell will make his ring debut on July 30 against Adrian Peterson in a battle of the backs. You have to wonder about Bell’s decision to forgo this NFL season. Is it because he’s focused on…Read more...

If you’re from the East Coast, it probably isn’t all that hard to find Calgary a tough place to live. It’s in a different country, you have to hear about the Tragically Hip all the goddamn time (or whatever country band they like in Alberta, probably the Tragically Hip’s illiterate cousins), it’s way far from the…Read more...

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At least the price was right for the Chicago Bears to acquire N’Keal Harry.

Zach Wilson is not going to win the MVP award this year. I know, wild prediction. That’s probably the hottest take I’ve ever put forth. Am I a hero for making such a bold statement? I wouldn’t call myself that, but I’m sure other people would. Don’t tell Vegas that I’m making that statement though. Ever since the news…Read more...

Former Bears linebacker and Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher (to the younger generation: The guy whose hair grew back on all those billboards outside O’Hare Airport) has decided to gatekeep chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease better known as CTE, saying in a podcast appearance this week that…Read more...

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Even a veteran Hollywood screenwriter couldn’t have scripted the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 2021 campaign to be more tumultuous.Read more...

The NBA is skewing more European these days in more ways than just players. After the 2021 Olympics, the league adopted some of the leniency those refs showed in regards to seeking out fouls. There were a few objections early in the season, but the complaints pivoted toward inconsistency like they usually do.Read more...

There’s always one transfer story that never dies every summer. It starts in June, and usually takes until somewhere around the window closing at the end of August to come to a conclusion one way or the other, though it feels like years have passed when it does. Even by the time teams return for preseason training in…Read more...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. That’s an evergreen statement to plenty of things in life but there isn’t a better example in America of it than our psychotic gun culture. The second known shooting in the last three months near a Little League baseball…Read more...

An organization can do everything right during a rebuild: Hire a good, young coach, make shrewd, smart personnel decisions, lead the NFL in rushing, make the playoffs. Those are all signs of a team trending upward.

July is a tough month for sports talk radio. The veterans don’t report to NFL training camp until the end of the month, NBA free agency talk cools after the first week, and this month is the most sluggish and steaming month of the MLB schedule. It’s the only one of the three major American sports leagues in action.…Read more...

I could stop a train with no brakes with Davey Jones in the engine room, I tells ya.

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Chicago White Sox manager Tony La Russa is known for making some head-scratching decisions.

Last week, USC and UCLA confirmed reports that they were making a move to the Big Ten Conference.Read more...