Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

You don’t necessarily need to buy a new mattress to get a better night’s sleep: Sometimes, a mattress pad will do, and a great one is on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box.

Martina Navratilova, long heralded as one of the greatest tennis champions of all time, appeared as a commentator for the BBC’s Wimbledon programming last year. But according to Navratilova, she made at least 10 times less for those appearances than male counterpart John McEnroe, a slight she says is in line with the…Read more...

It always ends in a loss. But for the previous 135 16-seeds in the 64-team era of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament before Friday night, that loss came in the first round. The UMBC Retrievers, fresh off a dismantling of the so-called “top” team in the country, made the most of their reprieve in staying within one…Read more...

Just two days after Nevada’s Caleb Martin lost his damn mind in overtime to beat Texas, teammate Josh Hall floated a ball over the head of Cincinnati’s Kyle Washington to give the Wolf Pack their first and only lead of the game and send them on to the Sweet 16.

Michigan State, a team that lost exactly four games all season before the NCAA tournament, is now on its way home thanks to the fact Tom Izzo could not maneuver past a zone. That it was the zone of a team that barely squeaked into the tournament makes it embarrassing; that the zone belongs to Syracuse just makes it…Read more...

The Raptors are great. They’re virtually a lock to finish the regular season with the best record in the Eastern Conference, and they’re the only team in the NBA’s top five in both offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency, and they’d come into Sunday having won 11 in a row, and 18 of 19, and with a league-best…Read more...

Texas A&M is headed to the Spokane regional after the fourth-seeded Aggies beat five-seed DePaul on a Chennedy Carter three-pointer that came with three seconds remaining in the game.Read more...

Michigan State took a three-point lead into the half against Syracuse thanks to Matt McQuaid fielding his own rejected field goal attempt and heaving up a banked three at the buzzer.Read more...

The Boilermakers overcame the absence of Isaac Haas due to an elbow fracture to hang on against 10th-seed Butler Sunday afternoon, utilizing 7-foot-3 backup big man Matt Haarms as a fill-in starter. And Haarms, you may have noticed, has quite the ‘do, and it requires quite a lot of attention, even during a tournament…Read more...

During pool play at Final Round 2018 yesterday, one Pokkén Tournament player took the opportunity to take the mic and deliver some choice words for his next opponent.Read more...

Michigan is moving on to the Sweet 16 after freshman Jordan Poole drilled a buzzer-beating three to end Houston’s season and seal his place in Wolverines lore. Brad Nessler’s call was perfectly fine for the moment, but we thought we’d share with you how it sounded to radio listeners back in Ann Arbor on the Michigan…Read more...

Rory McIlroy is sitting third headed into the final round of this weekend’s Arnold Palmer Invitational in sunny Orlando. During his third-round 67 on Saturday, McIlroy was irritated once again by rowdy fan behavior, and he’s got an idea for a solution, per ESPN:Read more...

Look at this hightailin’ geezer! CORRECTION: While Orville is, in fact, a hightailin’ geezer, and certainly the man in green is also a hightailin’ geezer—perhaps the hightailin’-est geezer in the history of geezers—it turns out Orville is in white, in lane 2. It’s an impressive run, and he did indeed set a new world…Read more...

Before Jordan Poole sank his amazing buzzer-beating three to bring Michigan from behind to beat Houston, Cougars senior Devin Davis was at the line with four seconds on the clock and his team up two points. A make would’ve meant Michigan could do no better than force overtime; two makes would’ve iced the game and…Read more...

Grandpas! They’re old! And cranky! And they eat lots of weird shit! Sometimes they just walk around in their tighty whities and don’t give a fuck! Yes, grandpas are truly the most precious of national resources, especially this one:Read more...

The Dallas Fuel and Houston Outlaws both had matches to play last night. Both teams needed a win, and neither found one. It was a tough evening for Texas fans that highlighted both teams’ ongoing issues in the second stage of the Overwatch League.Read more...

Thursday night, after his Clippers lost to the Rockets in Houston, Doc Rivers described the officiating as “a complete joke” and all but chalked up the five-point loss to a 23-8 free throw disparity between the two teams. For this act of public criticism, Rivers was fined $15,000 by the league.Read more...

Read more...

Declan Farmer’s goal with 38 seconds left in regulation forced overtime and his goal three minutes into sudden death delivered the United States its third Paralympic Games sled hockey gold medal in a row, downing Canada in Pyeongchang 2-1.Read more...

It’s been quite a weekend for cursing on live tv, so here’s sports car racing team owner Wayne Taylor responding to his team’s performance at today’s 12 hours of Sebring with joyous profanity.Read more...

Kyle Snyder added a third national championship to his two world championships and an Olympic gold medal as the Ohio State heavyweight beat Michigan rival Adam Coon with a two-point takedown that came with just 30 seconds left in their national title match, cementing the wrestler’s place among the all-time greatest in…Read more...

[Keep up with its progression, and if the Fox Sports Radio host keeps the tweet up, here. Track your own Twitter Triple Crown candidates here.]Read more...

For exclusive videos, pictures, and more, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Send us your confidential tips at tips@deadspin.com, call our confidential tips hotline at (347) 746-8471, contact our writers directly, or use our anonymous SecureDrop system.Read more...

Two days after Donte Ingram drilled a three-pointer in the final second to beat Miami, Clayton Custer delivered a field goal with the clock winding down as the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers overcame a late collapse to come back and beat Tennessee 63-62 and advance to the Atlanta regional. Here’s how the final play sounded…Read more...

Nevada head coach Eric Musselman—the man TBS cameras caught being extremely fucking jacked about his team’s first-round win—might just be the most honest coach in this entire tournament.

In their two first-round games of their respective NCAA tournaments, the Buffalo Bulls men’s and women’s basketball teams have both just completely destroyed heavily favored competition, by a combined total of 191-147. First, the men took out four-seed Arizona on Thursday, then today, the women crushed sixth-seeded…Read more...

The 86-72 final score in Quinnipiac’s first-round victory over Miami (FL) belies what was actually a tense, back-and-forth game that didn’t get out-of-hand until a huge fourth quarter Quinnipac run. If you could distill all of its fun unpredictability into one possession, it would be this lead-taking Paula Strautmane…Read more...

On Friday, Purdue issued a statement saying senior center Isaac Haas would miss the rest of the tournament with a fractured elbow. Less than 24 hours later, a report is out claiming Haas still might play for the Boilermakers.

Employing a merciless onslaught of Mikal Bridges three-pointers and suffocating defense, Villanova turned a five-point halftime lead into a 25-point advantage in just six minutes of second half play, sending Alabama home in pieces in the process.Read more...

If a mercy rule is ever created for college basketball, it should be called the Geno Auriemma rule. Auriemma’s UConn Huskies dynasty hit new heights this afternoon, beating St. Francis, a 16 seed from Pennsylvania, 140-52 in their opening game of the NCAA Tournament. Somehow, that 88-point victory doesn’t do justice…Read more...

We’re still recovering from the disbelief of last night’s historic 16-over-1 upset of Virginia at the hands of Maryland-Baltimore County. As is tradition, here is your gallery of sad Virginia fans.Read more...

In an 82-game season, one night shouldn’t do much to define a team’s year. But if a single dropped point has the power to crush a franchise, it showed in the Dallas Stars’ Wednesday night loss to the Maple Leafs.Read more...

Glen “Big Baby” Davis, arguably the most entertaining player on the Celtics 2010 Finals roster, was arrested in February on seven counts of marijuana possession and distribution.

In Elite 10 curling action on Friday night, two opposing stones ended up so close to the center of the rings that the teams needed increasingly sophisticated technology to measure any difference in distance—and even then, it couldn’t solve their problem. And if what Canada’s Sportsnet calls “the most bizarre curling…Read more...

If the impossible was ever going to become possible, it was going to happen against a team like Virginia. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County didn’t pull off the greatest upset in college basketball history just by playing the most perfect game a 16-seed has ever played against a one-seed (though they did…Read more...

Schlepping to the beach or into the garden with everything you need to actually enjoy yourself is a pain in the ass. Pile up to 150 pounds into this Timber Ridge wagon and bring everything with you all at once. Plus, when you’re heading back in, you can shake the sand or soil out and easily fold it up to store.

Yes, the UMBC Retrievers made history last night by crushing the top-ranked team in the country to become the first 16-seed to win in the men’s round of 64. Not to belittle that achievement, but we’re going with the UMBC athletics Twitter account (which started with 5,000 followers and now has septupled that) as last…Read more...

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County Retrievers of the America East conference made history tonight, leveraging lights-out shooting and aggressive rebounding to become the first 16-seed to ever upset a #1 in the NCAA men’s tournament in annihilating Virginia 74-54.

The men’s tournament isn’t the only source of drama as South Dakota State’s Madison Guebert drilled an off-balance three-pointer to force overtime against Villanova in the Jackrabbits’ first-round matchup tonight at Notre Dame.Read more...

Nevada came back from a 14-point deficit to send Shaka Smart’s Texas squad packing, with guard Caleb Martin providing the final boost the Wolf Pack needed to advance to the second round.Read more...

Eric Musselman’s energetic outburst after his Nevada team dispatched Texas tonight in overtime was ripped from the headlines. Our headlines, specifically, as the CBA-turned-NBA-turned-college coach dropped repeated profane ejaculations. Hey, I’d feel good too.Read more...

Purdue center Isaac Haas will miss the remainder of the NCAA tournament with a fractured right elbow.

Personal seat licenses are a racket, and a common feature in NFL stadiums. PSLs were instituted across much of the league when the new stadium boom took off around the dawn of this century. They allow teams to offset construction and financing costs by forcing fans into paying a fee just for the right to purchase…Read more...

David “dpei” Pei, head coach for the LA Gladiators Overwatch League team, bumped into two Houston Outlaws players backstage last night and issued a real head-scratcher of an apology for it:

We’ve made the case time and again for why VAR, soccer’s video replay system, sucks ass. Apparently our cries for sanity have fallen on deaf ears, because reports say the chuckleheads at FIFA have just agreed to inflict VAR upon the upcoming World Cup in Russia.Read more...

If a ball goes through a hoop but gets stuck in the bottom of net, and everyone’s around to see it, is it really a made basket? Apparently, it isn’t.Read more...

Robert Williams and seven-seed Texas A&M kicked Providence and its ghoulish, always-lurking mascot out of the NCAA tournament in the most glorious fashion possible.Read more...

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Within five minutes of sitting down to watch Gael Monfils, you realize that this one practice session—practice!—has given fans more joy than entire swathes of the Indian Wells Masters main draw. They’d trade this one session for a dull quarter of the men’s singles tournament, maybe more.Read more...

Kirk Cousins is now on the Vikings, right? Which means that Washington will go as far as Alex Smith will take them, right? That’ll be tricky since Dan Snyder’s hell franchise is such a snakepit, right? Good thing he’s up for the challenge, right?

Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict, who is constantly getting suspended for being a dirty player, has been suspended once again. This time, however, he’s managed to earn a ban without trying to intentionally injure anyone.