Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

ESPN reports tonight that FBI wiretaps of conversations between Sean Miller and sports agent runner Christian Dawkins caught the Arizona head coach discussing a $100,000 payment to lock up then-recruit Deandre Ayton, now a star freshman for the Wildcats.Read more...

Over the past few months, Vice has been subject of a series of damning claims, with current and former women employees saying the company’s workplace culture has frequently been toxic for them, and accusing specific executives—including president Andrew Creighton, chief digital officer Mike Germano, and Jason Mojica,…Read more...

Amy Van Dyken has six Olympic gold medals in swimming, so who better than her to finally settle the debate that has stymied mankind since life first tetrapod-paddled up onto dry land. Which swimming stroke is the best??Read more...

Press play on this video and close your eyes:Read more...

Earlier this week, Kara Haupt of The New Yorker sent out an edition of her email newsletter under the subject line “Sleeping with Men,” focusing on the fact that many adult men apparently do not use a top sheet. Just a fitted sheet and a comforter and nothing in between, making for a situation that strikes me as…Read more...

WWE announcer Corey Graves and Booker T, who just left his spot alongside Graves on Monday Night Raw, created a minor online kerfuffle a few weeks ago when they got into it with some barbs back and forth. These barbs got fairly big and notably sharp by the end, as Booker claimed that Graves got him canned from Raw…Read more...

Just because the mercury has dropped below freezing and appears stuck there until spring, it’s no reason not to explore the outdoors. Let’s talk about how you, the fearful and apartment-bound city dweller, can get outside and embrace the cold.

Los Angeles prep school Harvard-Westlake closed both its campuses this afternoon after former NFL offensive lineman and Harvard-Westlake alum Jonathan Martin tagged the school in an Instagram post, in which he made threats against those he said bullied him. The photo included a gun and shells on a bed, along with the…Read more...

If you saw the trailer for Annihilation and got hyped to watch Natalie Portman spend the movie kicking ass with a machine gun, mowing down monsters while dispensing action-movie cliches, you won’t get what you want. If you read Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, on which the movie is based, and expected a faithful adaptation…Read more...

By the time January rolled around, I had been begging to drive a giant, 12,000-pound Monster Jam truck for six months. When someone finally gave that idea the go-ahead, it was surreal. As if the reality of my longstanding request hadn’t hit me before then, I realized that I actually had to drive one of these things.

Nothing goes together quite like camping and alcohol. Pick up this Stanley Adventure Flask Gift Set for just $22 today in classic Hammertone Green. That’s within about $1 of the lowest price it’s ever been and a good $8 discount from its typical price.Read more...

Of all the parties involved in the U.S. women’s figure skating collapse yesterday, Mirai Nagasu had perhaps the most baffling performance. Nagasu was considered a dark horse candidate to sneak in for bronze after delivering a big free skate performance in the team event, but she didn’t even attempt her signature…Read more...

Remember this kid? If you do at all, maybe it’s because you saw him last August, thriving in New York’s late summer humidity: dressed in all-black, whaling away with an unruly forehand, and placing his foot on the throat of every Federer acolyte—making them believe God might actually die in the first-round of the U.S.…Read more...

MLB Photo Day has once again come and gone. A non-scientific survey of the resulting images suggests there’s an increase in bespectacled pitchers, which is great because they look that much funnier giving up a long home run. Here are some of the best photos to hit the wires in recent days.Read more...

Those who stuck around after the medal ceremony for men’s 1,000m speed skating today were treated to the sight of a rather portly man, clad in a very short pink tutu and a monkey-shaped pouch that held his dick, running on the ice to perform a little dance.Read more...

Oahu’s Pipeline is one of the most famous surf spots in the world, and the North Shore beach’s notoriously big and dangerous waves play host to the World Surf League’s biggest event of the year. Pipeline Masters, or Pipe Masters, has taken place at Pipeline since 1971, and it’s traditionally served as the final event…Read more...

A medal for the U.S. women in the ladies single figure skating was always going to be a long shot at best. With Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedevia of Russia all but assured the gold and silver medal in whatever order the judges decided, every other top skater would be left scrambling for the bronze. The list of…Read more...

The Florida Mayhem are known for, among other things, their elaborate entrances each week of the Overwatch League. After the shooting in Parkland last week, the team chose to make a different kind of entrance for their first match of stage two—a tribute to the victims, survivors, and community in Florida.Read more...

Kotaku Blizzard Let Zenyatta Walk And It Was A Mistake | io9 More Updates From What Could’ve Been in Joss Whedon’s Batgirl Movie | Jalopnik Genesis Has Beaten The Germans—And Everyone Else—In Consumer Reports | Offspring Use Excel to Keep Your Family Organized |Read more...

Here is a shot that Steph Curry made last night. These are the things about it that made me laugh:Read more...

Nadezhda Sergeeva, the pilot for the Russian women’s bobsled team, has tested positive for a banned heart medication. The kicker to this story: Earlier this month, she showed off her “I Don’t Do Doping” sweatshirt.Read more...

The Ottawa Senators were a lost cause long before last night, but I think this play from Thursday was the official end, in which Victor Hedman faces only the mildest of resistance as he skates to the net for a goal that would give his Lightning a lead they’d never relinquish. It pretty well summed up the bored,…Read more...

Doesn’t some language have a word for feeling joy at others’ failure?

Let’s be clear on exactly what’s happening here. Yahoo! Sports is pushing out a press release for the FBI, which is acting as the enforcement arm of the NCAA. That all feels like a bigger scandal than a spreadsheet that shows, among other things, a basketball recruit’s mom receiving “hundreds of dollars in advances”…Read more...

We may have just come as close as ever to seeing the end of the Arsène Wenger era at Arsenal as the Gunners just barely squeaked into the next round of the Europa League. So ... hooray?Read more...

The Tampa Bay Rays, whose offseason has rivaled that of the Marlins in terms of self-immolation, were dealt a blow yesterday that was not self-inflicted.Read more...

With less than two seconds remaining in tonight’s Thunder-Kings game, Sacramento got what seemed like it should be the killer play it needed to seal a trip to overtime: Vince Carter from waywayway back, and Justin Jackson redeeming him with a put-back that tied the game.Read more...

Russian 15-year-old Alina Zagitova gave a stunning performance in her free skate to win gold in women’s figure skating, retaining the tiny edge that she earned over fellow Russian and two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva in the short program.Read more...

Drexel fell behind 5-0 at the start of tonight’s game against Delaware, and for quite a while, it didn’t look like they’d be able to crawl out of that hole. With a few minutes remaining in the first half, they were down by 34, and by the break, they’d only managed to cut that to 27 points. But in the second half, they…Read more...

The Florida Panthers are playing their first home game since the mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. The Panthers are the only major league team in Broward County, and just a short drive down the Sawgrass Expressway separates them from Parkland. Before the game,…Read more...

USA Swimming Safe Sport Director Susan Woessner announced her resignation today, citing an instance when she kissed former Olympic swim coach Sean Hutchison in 2007. Woessner led Safe Sport, the program tasked with investigating and addressing potential sexual and physical misconduct in the sport. Earlier this month,…Read more...

Arizona guard Allonzo Trier has been declared ineligible by the NCAA following a second failed drug test, after he missed 19 games last season due to testing positive for PEDs in 2016. The university is appealing the decision.Read more...

Citing the failure of its social video efforts, Vox Media laid off about 50 people yesterday, mostly from Racked, Curbed, SB Nation, and the video team. At SB Nation, that meant terminating several full-time employees as well as at least 12 part-time employees who staffed the copy-editing desk and the news desk.…Read more...

Eugenie Bouchard, currently ranked No. 116 in the world, was a top-five tennis player once upon a time. Rewind back to her 2014 season, when she reached the Australian Open and French Open semifinals, then the Wimbledon final, and surged to a career-high No. 5. Her success slowed in 2015, but in September, she found…Read more...

NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch talks a tough game when she’s describing how gun-totin’ Americans need to fight for freedom with the “clenched fist of truth.” But on Twitter, she’s talked about crapping her “pannies.” And eating “strawberries and cream cheese.” And her struggles going up and down stairs. When you put all…Read more...

Marshall defensive tackle Larry Aaron died today, nearly two months after he was shot in the spine at a New Year’s Eve party. He was 19.Read more...

As Senator Marco Rubio was grilled by teens last night, scores of actual professional journalists asked themselves some variation of this question:

First reported by WISTV’s Caroline Hecker, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley filed a defemation of character lawsuit against Missouri athletic director Jim Sterk on Thursday.Read more...

Reporters have quickly learned that it’s worth asking Warriors head coach Steve Kerr about politics, because he’s usually got something to say, and when he does it’s almost always worth hearing. Last week Kerr was blunt in blaming the government for inactivity on gun control that inevitably leads to massacre after…Read more...

Spartak Moscow traveled to Bilbao to play Athletic in the Europa League’s Round of 32, and as is typially the case whenever large groups of Russian soccer hooligans travel to European games, some shit went down.Read more...

It seems not even basketball court jester is a job that’s safe from from the rise of the machines. Students from Georgia Tech built a giant Rube Goldberg contraption that’s capable of reproducing many of the Harlem Globetrotter’s most crowd-pleasing tricks; from spinning a ball on a finger, to simply sinking baskets.Read more...

Ah, the Winter Olympics, when the world’s best athletes compete on a seemingly level playing field for the glory of an Olympic medal. But while the medals given out are surely the same, the events themselves actually aren’t quite as equal as they may seem when it comes to gender.Read more...

As they so often do in South American soccer, things turned violent yesterday during a U20 Copa Libertadores match between Independiente del Valle and River Plate. Rather than get whaled on like another South American soccer teen we’ve seen recently, one Independiente player ran over to the corner flag, picked it up,…Read more...

The Holland House is the place to be for the Pyeongchang Olympics if you’re Dutch. It has concerts, drunken revelry, appearances by medal-winning Dutch athletes, and possible minor head injuries. Speedskating quartet Sven Kramer, Jan Blokhuijsen, Patrick Roest, and Koen Verweij attended a party at the house last night…Read more...

A California teen had the fantastic idea to spend two weeks terrorizing her dad with a confetti gun. We hope he enjoys his fame while it lasts, because Ellen DeGeneres is definitely going to fire a giant confetti cannon at him and give him a heart attack live on her show.Read more...

“We are called the laziest generation, but we’re here! Are you listening?”Read more...

On Sept. 2, 2017, several of the most dangerous men in the Chechen Republic attended a UFC Fight Night event in Rotterdam. They arrived in a fleet of Mercedes Benz vehicles, which were then parked in haphazard fashion in the back lot of the Ahoy Rotterdam convention center. From the cars emerged an entourage of no…Read more...

Over the past five years, Mondrea Hasty has had officers come to his house multiple times to arrest him, had his mugshot taken, and been handcuffed during a routine traffic stop. His 10-year-old daughter now cries when she sees a person in a police uniform, fearing they could be coming for her father.

Pick up deals on networking and storage gear from Amazon’s one day sale, a robotic vacuum for pet owners, our readers’ favorite pillows, and more.Read more...