fandom Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

People are still out there wishing death on high schoolers for their college choices
We learned a lot in 2020, most of it sad and depressing. In the moments when we weren’t terrified, mourning, angry, or all of the above, some of us might have turned on sporting events once the UFC got back to broadcasting events and the NBA concluded the 2019-20 season in The Bubble. Sports looked ...

Caleb Love was the villain Coach K and Duke deserved
A scythe has stalked Coach K’s career since he announced his plan to retire last July. On Saturday night, Duke’s final Final Four of the Mike Krzyzewski era came to a grisly end. UNC’s 81-77 victory over their arch-rival also featured a familiar slayer in Caleb Love....

Sports have a Gen Z problem, and it could take some experimenting to fix
In 2020, a survey of several Gen Z Americans revealed that only 53 percent considered themselves sports fans, and only 21 percent considered themselves to be “avid” sports fans. Both these figures are the lowest of any age demographic. Gen Z has shown a general disinterest toward professional sports...

Yes, You Can Refer To Your Favorite Team As “We”
Today, we’re talking about why baseball has no left-handed shortstops, flossing, Worcestershire sauce, toenails for teeth, and more....

Phillies Fans Are Currently Feuding With The Guy Who Hit A Walkoff Home Run Last Night
Last night, in the bottom of the 11th inning, Sean Rodriguez hit an 0-2 pitch into the left field stands to win his team the game. That was when the problems started....

Calm Down About Spoilers
Spoiler culture—the capital-D Discourse surrounding how much of the plot you should know before heading into a piece of media—reached its apotheosis with the releases of Avengers: Endgame and the Game of Thrones episode “The Long Night.” The furor around spoilers is such that it is entirely believab...

Don’t Force Your Sports Fandom Onto Other People’s Kids, You Asshole<em></em>
Today, we’re talking about French fries, cocaine, college football, and more....

Rhea Butcher's Podcast Is For Baseball's Overlooked Fans<em></em>
Before the 2014 postseason, Rhea Butcher had barely watched baseball in the 21st century. It was the 1997 World Series that did it: Butcher was 15 when the Cleveland Indians, division champions for the third consecutive year, squandered an early Game 7 lead and lost to the Marlins in extra innings. ...

Mark Hamill Was A Wolves Fan, But Now He’s Also A Wolves Fan
Mark Hamill is fairly active on Twitter, and the other day someone asked him if he liked Wolves. He faved the tweet. A fan podcast hosted by fans of Wolverhampton FC, the soccer club in question nicknamed Wolves, noted that interaction and wondered if Hamill was indeed a fan of the team....

Justin Bieber Is An Equal Opportunity Sports Fan, Loves High-Level Sports Games
Love is infinite. One can deeply, earnestly love and appreciate many things at once; the personal love of one friend or Chinese takeout place or sports club need not lessen or prohibit the love of another. You know who understands this? Justin Bieber, who loves sports so genuinely and fully that he ...

Oilers Eliminate Women's Bathrooms To Improve Experience Of Male Fans
It is entirely possible that there are simply not enough toilets at the Edmonton Oilers’ arena to accommodate playoff-sized crowds. Bathroom lines are an unfortunate, although not outrageous, side effect of popular sporting events, or really any large gathering of people downing beers. But the Oile...

How Does One Guy Keep Winning The Eagles' Free Ticket Giveaway?
The Eagles’ #FanFriday promotion is fairly straightforward: A few days before each home game, the team posts on Twitter a random location in and around the city (and sometimes in Jersey, which I would mock except that I’m from there) where team mascot Swoop will soon be waiting. Be the first to high...

Paul Ryan Is Really Bad At Pandering To Sports Fans<em></em>
Pandering in politics is a matter of course; politics is pandering, which is probably something some political scientist said 70 years ago. But sports are good, real, and serious business, which makes Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s sports pandering extremely offensive. ...

Don't Be Inspired By This Cubs Tattoo
I don’t begrudge this Cubs fan his enthusiasm or his desire to express it, even in a way that feels like the visual equivalent of using plural first person pronouns when recounting the accomplishments of more athletic strangers. I just think he made some choices that shouldn’t be emulated. Let’s loo...

Kobe's Sad Farewell Tour Can Turn Even Haters Into Pitying Fans
Nike released a new video to commemorate the imminent burial of basketball corpse Kobe Bryant, digging deeper into their branding strategy that casts him as both hero and villain, because dualities are extremely profound. So from a slew of athletes we hear both bland admiration and what at times fee...

Confessions Of A Sports Bigamist
We're doing a season-long NFL roundtable with our friends at Slate. Check back here each week as a rotating cast of football watchers discusses the weekend's key plays, coaching decisions, and traumatic brain injuries....

This Is What It's Like To Sit Near Big Yankees Fan Michael LaPayower In The Bronx
When Jake Bertanza went to last night's Yankees game, he might have expected that CC Sabathia would pitch a lovely game, but he certainly could not have known he'd end up sitting a few seats away from Michael "Big Yankees Fan" LaPayower and his videographer brother....

The Girl With The OKC Thunder Tattoo Wants To Bear Kendrick Perkins's Babies
Here, Priscilla and Ashley discuss, or at least make reference to, the Mavericks/Thunder series, manners, personal space(s), sweat flavor, stalking Awful Joey Crawford and whether inking prevents pregnancy, while Priscilla or Ashley gets "Thunder Up!" and "Rise Together" tattoos added to her inner...

Well Hello There Stinky Britches!
Okay, so I'm this internet creature known as Cajun Boy and I'm guest-editing this here site today. Perhaps you've seen me around on Gawker, Animal, my dumb blog, my dumb Twitter, etc. Also, I got my first tattoo last night!...

The Nathan's 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest Is America
Is there anything more distinctly American than celebrating our independence by holding a contest to see who could consume the most processed meat? Photographer Erin Siegal and I ventured out to Coney Island to take it all in....