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I remember the first time I played an NCAA tournament pool. I was 8. I picked UCLA to win it all, probably because even then I was a huge dork and knew they had won a lot of games, historically. Or maybe I liked their colors.

A few weeks after Major League Baseball announced a series of surface-level rule changes aimed at improving pace of play, Minor League Baseball has announced that it’ll start experimenting with something more significant. During extra-inning games this season, a runner will automatically be placed on second base to…Read more...

If you want to stream all of the March Madness games at home (or at your desk) without a real cable subscription, DirecTV Now looks to be your cheapest option at the moment.

Former ESPN president John Skipper cited a substance abuse problem as the cause for his resignation when he left the network last December. There have since been no details revealed about the nature or severity of that problem, but in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published today Skipper reveals two things:…Read more...

It’s a good thing nobody really gives a shit about the NIT tournament or has any capacity to feel sympathy for people who go to Harvard, otherwise we might have a real college basketball scandal on our hands.

There’s no sense in getting attached to a pair of socks, they will always leave you. Replace your mismatched or hole-ridden ones on the cheap with this Amazon Gold Box. You’ll be able to get 20 pairs of either no-show or quarter socks for just $20. But this deal is today only, so if you need new footwear, this is your…Read more...

Credit goes to the Maple Leafs announcers on TSN for bringing this to my attention tonight, even though it was decided on at the start of the season, but here is a fun idea to mix up the playoffs from the Southern Professional Hockey League:Read more...

After marching to the Arizona State Capitol today to demand gun reform, a group of student protestors headed over to Gov. Doug Ducey’s office to deliver him a signed letter with their requests. The governor’s staff told the students that Ducey was unavailable and could not meet with them, but the protestors stuck…Read more...

We’ll probably never know whether or not Lionel Messi really could do it on cold, wet nights in Stoke, but today we’ve been given even more evidence that he is pretty good at doing it on early spring nights in and against teams from elsewhere around England.Read more...

“Eat my ass!” a teenage boy yelled at the U.S. Capitol rotunda on Wednesday morning.

Kelvin Sampson has been in the basketball business for some time, and if you pay attention to the game his name will ring some bells. Maybe you remember him coaching Washington State, or Oklahoma, or Indiana; maybe you saw him looming over a huddle as a NBA assistant. Given that he’s got the University of Houston…Read more...

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

Joe Thomas retired today. After 11 seasons as the Cleveland Browns’ starting left tackle, a career that included an astonishing streak of 10,363 consecutive snaps played, Thomas will now do whatever he wants. In five years, he will become eligible for what looks like a surefire Hall of Fame induction.

Former Houston Astros prospect Danry Vasquez has been released by his current Atlantic League club after video of a domestic violence incident became public this week. The video shows the player hitting his girlfriend multiple times after a practice with the Corpus Christi Hooks, the Astros’ Double-A affiliate, in…Read more...

The first round of March Madness starts Thursday, and that means there are brackets to be filled. Let’s see yours.

Students at some 2,500 schools across the country walked out of school at 10 a.m. today to protest inaction on guns. The walkouts culminated in 17 minutes of silence—one for each life lost at Parkland. It was a staggering, powerfully symbolic action planned by students who, by and large, aren’t eligible to vote. But…Read more...

The Jets wanted to land Kirk Cousins, and they reportedly offered even more than the Vikings did to get him. After that fell through, they immediately turned to Plan B, which involved re-signing Josh McCown and adding Teddy Bridgewater. At first glance, it looked like the Jets spent $15 million for some half-assed…Read more...

The Library of America’s newest sports anthology, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, is out and deserves a place on the shelf of any self-respecting hoops fan. We recently sat down with the book’s editor, longtime SI scribe Alex Wolff, and talked about why basketball, despite its reputation, might inspire…Read more...

This is what is currently airing on ESPN. The network decided that today would be a good day to dedicate what I assume is 19 hours of programming to a show in which roughly 37 people sit around some folding tables and talk football while waiting for NFL free agency to officially begin at 4 p.m.Read more...

Real Madrid farm team Tottenham Hotspur have an important question to ask their fans: Is a woman’s place in the home???

Former Overwatch pro and coach Thomas “Morte” Kerbusch has partnered with sports labor attorney Ellen Zavian to push towards unionizing, according to a report from Liz Mullen in Sports Business Journal. Meanwhile, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro scene is also forming a players association, thanks to the…Read more...

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Naomi Osaka is enjoying an excellent run at Indian Wells. She unseated Maria Sharapova in her very first match, then cleared out the trickiest veteran Aga Radwanska and two more foes to earn a spot across from fifth-seeded Katerina Pliskova in the quarterfinal. The No. 44, 20-year-old Osaka…Read more...

Someone asked Shaq, an occasional cop, what to do about school shootings. His take? Just build the school out of cops. Sure!

The massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, one month ago today, left seventeen children and school staff dead. It was the third highest-casualty mass shooting at an educational institution in American history (after Virginia Tech—32 dead—and Sandy Hook—27) and the ninth highest-casualty…Read more...

Here is Sports Illustrated writer and tape-eater extraordinaire Andy Benoit crafting a lead that is the columnist’s version of inviting you into his office just as he finishes off a set of 500 pushups:

On Monday night, during this week’s edition of Monday Night Raw, WWE made an announcement that was half expected and half a surprise. The part that everyone expected was the news that WWE’s female talent would be getting their own counterpart to the annual Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania. What…Read more...

Yesterday’s Manchester United-Sevilla Champions League match was the best game of the knockout rounds thus far. Not because these are two particularly great teams competing—they both are pretty bad—nor because they played especially well—the game was largely awful. No, this match was great for pretty much one reason…Read more...

Find discounted Reebok gear, ratchet belts, your choice of Anker phone mounts, and the rest of today’s best deals.Read more...

After video emerged of ex-Liverpool star Jamie Carragher hocking a loogie at the car of a taunting driver and his daughter last weekend, Sky Sports announced that it had suspended Carragher—now one of its pundits—indefinitely while the company investigated the incident. Today, Sky has handed down its official…Read more...

Last night’s game between the Nuggets and Lakers came with no shortage of subplots, thanks in large part to Nuggets guard Jamal Murray’s history of trolling and shit-talking in previous matchups. In December, he riled up Lonzo Ball and his teammates by rudely dribbling around Ball as the clock ran out. Last Friday, he…Read more...

No matter how you prefer to mount your phone in your car, there’s probably an Anker deal for you today. Three different smartphone mounts are on sale, including one that transforms your fallow CD slot into something useful again.

Consider the above screenshot. DeAndre Jordan has just missed his second of two free throws. The Bulls—all five of them—are sticking around under the basket. The Clippers—all five of them—are either already heading down the court or getting ready to do so. Who gets the rebound 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...

Unless you have a strong love of beefy minor-league catchers and/or guys who spent six years in the Phillies’ farm system without making it to Double-A, there’s no good reason for you to have heard of Willians Astudillo. Or, at least, there wasn’t until yesterday—when he pulled off this beautifully sneaky pickoff…Read more...

This is one of my favorite sequences from the NHL season so far.Read more...

I’m a newly minted old person in a high-density city, so I don’t get in cars much anymore. But one of the quaint pleasantries of cruising around town was holding your hand out the window and letting the air guide it up and down like a chill, cool wave.Read more...

Madison Square Garden security has been secretly using facial recognition software to scan spectators’ faces, the New York Times reports. This would make MSG the latest space to be using face-scanning tech on an unknowing public.Read more...

Ed Glazer, whose family owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United, will host an exclusive fundraiser for Donald Trump tonight at his house in Beverly Hills. The President’s schedule and plans in Southern California are shrouded in secrecy, but he’ll spend the evening at Glazer’s $22.7 million home trying to…Read more...

The surprise isn’t that Kirk Cousins is getting lots of money. As the biggest name in a big market for free-agent quarterbacks, Cousins was bound to get paid this offseason. What’s notable is how he and the Vikings reportedly agreed to structure the deal, which cannot be signed until 4 p.m. (EDT) on Wednesday. The…Read more...

The idiot who lost the popular vote has a brand new idea: the Space Force. Like the army, but for space.Read more...

Kentucky head coach John Calipari had his annual behind-the-scenes profile published today, this time in GQ; this one follows Calipari around his family’s beach house and his church, and the coach even let reporter Reid Forgrave attend mass with him. This somehow led to Calipari being referred to as “the devil”…Read more...

USA Swimming is—once again—being taken to task for its role in failing to prevent and even covering up sexual abuse within the sport. Sexual abuse in swimming was the subject of a 20/20 investigation in 2010, a devastating Outside magazine piece in 2014, then an Orange County Register investigation last month. As was…Read more...

Quarterback Kirk Cousins and the Skins had been at a contract impasse for quite some time, but that ended today with Cousins signing with the Vikings for a reported three years and $84 million. Former Washington QB Joe Theismann went on D.C. sports radio to discuss why the team let Cousins walk, and appeared to mix…Read more...

Last time we checked in on the status of No. 1 overall draft pick Markelle Fultz’s shot, he had discovered the magic of the three-pointer. Today, Fultz shot some free throws, an exercise which revealed an alarming hitch two months ago. Let’s see how much he’s improved.

This seems like it should be pretty self-explanatory.Read more...

Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. With Tomb Raider in theaters Friday, Ready Player One screening at SXSW, and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle now on home-viewing platforms, we’re looking back on “video game movies.” The catch: None…Read more...

So… Kirk Cousins. It is extremely difficult—impossible, even—to evaluate Kirk Cousins solely as a quarterback when, for the past six seasons, he has plied his trade in the middle of Dan Snyder’s never-ending diarrhea rodeo. He was drafted by Mike Shanahan in the fourth round as an insurance policy for the quarterback…Read more...

Sam Bradford had a great first week of the 2017 NFL season as he threw for 346 yards and three TDs in the Vikings’ 29-19 victory over the Saints. Then he bruised his knee, missed the next three weeks, returned, re-injured his knee in Week 5, had knee surgery in November, and didn’t play again.Read more...

Very similar to the best-selling Takeya cold brew coffee maker, this Zell carafe makes 1 quart of highly-concentrated, cold brew coffee without the acidity. It’s just $14 today, which means this thing will pay for itself very quickly if you’re used to buying cold brew at coffee shops.

Pete Stauber is the Republican candidate in the upcoming election for Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District. His policy positions are pretty standard fare for a Republican: He voiced support for the rock-dumb tax bill and is pro-mining and anti-environmentalist to the point that he unironically wrote, “Even protest…Read more...