Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

The Philadelphia Fusion, the Comcast-owned Overwatch League team, just pulled out of their pre-season matches, citing “player logistics issues.” The Fusion had been scheduled to play the debut match of the OWL pre-season against the Florida Mayhem tomorrow.

Now that the Giants have fired Ben McAdoo, someone else has to be the spiritual successor to Jim Tomsula, a former doormat salesman whose figurative and literal hunger earned him exactly one season leading the 49ers, but oh, what a season it was. Jaguars coach Doug Marrone already seems like a viable candidate to fill…Read more...

Youtheory Racing’s No. 55 truck sent a wheel flying across a desert when their truck landed nose-first into the dirt while trying to qualify for the Pahrump Nugget 250 Best in the Desert race. No one was hurt, but it just looks like a ridiculous trucksplosion.

Social media was abuzz this weekend with a video depicting a baby-faced Sunderland fan sitting alongside his fellow supporters at the Stadium of Light, taking in the day’s match while also appearing to take a pleasant shit right there on his seat. The kid, later revealed to be 17-year-old Callum Mawson, has since come…Read more...

According to ESPN, a protective order has been filed against Oklahoma running back Rodney Anderson. The woman who filed the order says that Anderson sexually assaulted her on November 16.

Through the first 810 games of his career, Kevin Durant was ejected just twice. Through the first 18 games of this season, he’s been booted off the floor three times. Last night brought us the latest incident, in which Durant got into it with Boogie Cousins during the final minutes of the game, earning himself a…Read more...

Field Guide 10 Useful Windows 10 Features You Probably Never Use But Should | Lifehacker How to Survive a Plane Crash | Jalopnik All The Craigslist Shitboxes Jalopnik Readers Have Been Tempting Me With Lately (Vol. 2) | Kotaku Manga Confronting Homophobia In Japan Getting Live-Action TV Drama | The A.V. Club MSNBC…Read more...

A grimy football game can be fun, sometimes. Messy, brutal, even a little bit of dirty play can raise the stakes, or at least turn a game into a car wreck that can’t be looked away from. Steelers-Bengals was not fun.

Ah, ugly holiday sweaters. A tradition that never ceases to outdo itself. If you have one (or more) of these parties coming up, Amazon has a Gold Box full of some really great options. Truly, these are the pinnacle of ironic ugliness and they’re on sale, today only.

Pizza stones help you quickly achieve crispier crusts (or crispier anything) in the oven, and the best one you can buy has a rare discount today, just for our readers.

Tonight’s Steelers-Bengals game was brutal—football that can charitably be described as “old-school” and accurately, necessarily described as “sickening.” The hits came and kept coming, with the injury count ticking upward. The night’s worst injury, though, happened only minutes after kick-off, when Ryan Shazier was…Read more...

The Grizzlies snapped their 11-game losing streak tonight with a 95-92 win over the Timberwolves, and Marc Gasol was pretty pumped about it. Enough to clearly drop a “fuck it” in his televised postgame comments.Read more...

Stephen Curry left the court during the final minute of tonight’s Warriors-Pelicans game after rolling his ankle—able to walk off on his own, but not comfortably:

Common as extreme blowouts are in high school basketball, a true shutout is still extremely rare. The state of Montana had its first one in any level of recorded organized basketball last weekend, and man, is it a bummer: Froid-Medicine Lake High 102, Brockton High 0.Read more...

The Pittsburgh Steelers will finish tonight’s Monday night game against the Bengals without their leading tackler after Ryan Shazier suffered what appears to be a head or neck injury while attempting to make a tackle early in the game.Read more...

Warriors guard Shaun Livingston and referee Courtney Kirkland have each been suspended for their little altercation from yesterday—Livingston for one game and Kirkland for one week. Livingston was assessed a technical and ejected at the time; Kirkland was only found partially responsible after a league review of the…Read more...

Exciting hot stove news: Cleveland has signed Michael Martinez to a minor-league contract. Again. This will be his sixth stint with the team. (Fittingly enough, Martinez also has six career home runs.) All those moves in one handy place for those scoring at home, as compiled by MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian:Read more...

Sunil Gulati, the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president for the last 12 years and the man who presided over the worst debacle in American soccer history, has told ESPN that he will not seek to retain his position in February’s election. This is good news!Read more...

Saints rookie running back Alvin Kamara has turned into an absolute force this season as he’s made tacklers miss left and right. Chances are your friend won’t shut up about how he’s rescued their fantasy football team. (Great move, you’re the Howie Roseman of your league. Now fuck off.) The 5-foot-10, 215-pound Kamara…Read more...

For a long time, the backup Saints QB has been a cushy gig. Aside from one emergency Luke McCown start in 2015, New Orleans quarterbacks other than Drew Brees have thrown 10 passes this decade. So, third-stringer Taysom Hill’s best chance to actually play is at a position other than quarterback. This weekend, he did…Read more...

On Monday, the New York Giants relieved head coach Ben McAdoo of his McAduties. It was somehow both a long time coming and abrupt—over a little under two seasons as the team’s coach, McAdoo first positioned himself as something like a rising star and then instantly and dramatically biffed everything. His team…Read more...

LaVar Ball has pulled his middle son, LiAngelo Ball, out of his freshman year at UCLA, according to a report from TMZ, which was then confirmed by ESPN.Read more...

With all due respect to the first minute of this weekend’s Alistair Overeem-Francus Ngannou fight at UFC 218, in which the two heavyweights hung out at the fence and just sort of idly touched bellies until the referee intervened, Overeem was essentially unconscious as soon as the fight began. In the first standup…Read more...

Manchester United beat Arsenal this weekend by a 3-1 scoreline that totally belied the action on the field. United didn’t really deserve to win, in the sense people mean when they say teams that impose their will on their opponent by doing lots of good things while preventing the opposition from doing good things…Read more...

Herm Edwards, who hasn’t coached football since 2008, is now in charge of the Arizona State Sun Devils. The school’s athletic director and Edwards’s former agent Ray Anderson is convinced that this will be a successful idea. Try to parse this press release while keeping in mind that it is about a man being hired to…Read more...

PORTLAND, Ore.—Here is a story from Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike, J.B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund’s 1993 book about about the company’s early days. In 1975, Nelson Farris, Nike’s first employee—he still works there, “Chief Storyteller” or some such thing—went to a women’s track meet to sell some shoes. He…Read more...

Touchdown celebrations are cool. Touchdown celebrations that pantomime sex are even cooler.Read more...

Kicker Robbie Gould’s 11-year tenure with the Bears came to an unceremonious end when the team released him a week before the 2016 season started. GM Ryan Pace believed that Connor Barth was better and more affordable than Gould, though Barth was cut last month for Cairo Santos. On Sunday, Gould, the Bears’ all-time…Read more...

Today LeBron James spoke briefly about the grim saga of Derrick Rose, whose desiccated body drifted back to Cleveland this morning. LeBron’s comment was unremarkable in Rose-related insight, which it seemed explicitly crafted to avoid. But it was amusing in its insight on the human condition. In the middle of a…Read more...

Lim “Larva” Hong Gyu proved last night that he can win a StarCraft: Remastered match with his foot. During the finals of the Zotac Cup Masters Showmatch, Larva made quick work of his opponent’s base, and in the game’s final moments, he lifted his bare left foot onto the keyboard to tap in a few final button presses.

Well, another week has passed, and with it, another Jacksonville Jaguars victory game. (Higher score.)Read more...

Rob Gronkowski, a palooka with a new mean streak, somehow avoided an ejection after he crushed Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White well after the play was over. (White had to leave the game and be evaluated for a concussion.)Read more...

One year after losing 19 of its players in a plane crash that killed 71 people, Brazilian club Chapecoense clinched qualification to the Copa Libertadores—the South American Champions League—with a last-second stoppage time winner scored by Túlio de Melo.Read more...

Last week, before a basketball game between Eagle Grove and Forest City in Forest City, Iowa, two local radio broadcasters were heard cheerily expressing their disdain for the “Español people” who played for Eagle Grove High School, before wishing they would “go back to where they came from.”

Ben McAdoo said after yesterday’s loss in Oakland that he’s “going to coach this team as long as my key card works.” The Giants allowed his key card to work just long enough for him to get in the door at team HQ, and then they fired him.

Diving is an impressive sport. Athletes train endlessly so they can nail near-perfect dives, over and over. Even at the high school level, it’s pretty cool.Read more...

Giancarlo Stanton in St. Louis? Giancarlo Stanton in San Francisco? If you’re dreaming about where the defending National League MVP might end up next season, there’s no sense in dreaming any bigger than that. The Stanton sweepstakes are reportedly down to the Cardinals and the Giants, and Stanton will have full and…Read more...

Former NFL player Greg Hardy is trying his hand at MMA, and won his debut fight in 32 seconds on Nov. 4. On Friday, he won his second fight in 96 seconds, and the video footage indicates that it was the dumbest fight in history:

Guard Derrick Rose, who abruptly left the Cavaliers back on Nov. 24 to, like, go sit on a boardwalk and watch happy couples stroll by and stare at his reflection in a rainy window while a mopey Stan Bush track plays in the background, has returned to Cleveland, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowksi:

Why is fast food a pejorative? It carries the perception of mediocrity, as food for people of a lower social standing, and I’ve always found that unfair and classist. Truth is, that a restaurant could expeditiously serve a fried chicken with the consistency and quality of Popeye’s—even if it’s been sitting under a…Read more...

Joe Flacco, last week’s Bad Quarterback of the Week, was actually quite good in yesterday’s 44-20 stomping of the Detroit Lions. Flacco threw for 269 yards and two touchdowns, and was feeling so good after the game that he opened his press conference by clowning Jameis Winston.

Lifehacker Calculate How the GOP Tax Bill Will Impact You | io9 Could the Venom Movie Have a Big Tweak to Eddie Brock’s Backstory? | Kotaku Speedrunner Loses His Shit After Finally Breaking Legendary GoldenEye Record | Black Flag Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing Is The Real Pinnacle Of Racing | The A.V. Club It’s the…Read more...

In the end—or, in the beginning, I suppose, given that it took him all of two days to eliminate 23 teams from the running—Japanese two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani’s criteria for a Major League team had nothing to do with money, and nothing to do with the DH. Instead, the very first cut apparently came down to pure…Read more...

Buying ornaments to hang on your tree or around the house is a tradition, but sometimes those decorations are just...really old. Amazon can help you bring your decor into 2017 with this one-day sale on ornaments, LED lights, candles, and more. Whats a holiday without new decorations that you’ll see for three weeks and…Read more...

If you saw Gizmodo’s recent review for the Tim Cook-approved Nebia Spa Shower, and decided you wanted one as soon as it got a little cheaper, today’s your lucky day.

Patrick Ewing, a walking and dunking sweat fountain during his playing days, was apparently also a big-time germophobe, according to this cool series of stories from former NBA trainer Timmy Walsh, via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News.Read more...

This is just a six-second video, but like any great Vine-length work of art, I’ve already slowed it down and watched it frame by frame multiple times, trying to parse its genius.Read more...

Clemson demolished Miami yesterday in the ACC Championship, in Charlotte. You can imagine, a blowout like that generally leads to unhappy fans of one side or another. This being football we’re talking about, there is a very great chance that unhappy fans will wind up punching and kicking each other in a drunken brawl.…Read more...

Kansas City cornerback Marcus Peters had a meltdown late in a one-possession game after a penalty was called against the Chiefs on a failed New York Jets two-point conversion.Read more...

AC Milan had a 2-1 lead on last place Benevento in the 95th minute today, with Benevento setting up for a free kick deep in Milan territory. You know what that means: the underdogs pulled keeper Alberto Brignoli forward to load up the box. And is there any way I would be showing you this video if Brignoli hadn’t done…Read more...