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

Sports Video Gaming Must Face Its Own Era Of Excess
Wednesday was supposed to be a day of no news in Major League Baseball. There are no league games in January, of course; pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 29 days. And exit polling had long foreseen the shutout ballot, for the first time since 1996, that the Baseball Writers Associa...

Of Course Penn State Is Leading EA Sports's <em>NCAA Football 14</em> Cover Vote
Ostensibly put up to a series of fan-voted Facebook polls, NCAA Football 14's cover also will be influenced by other, as yet unexplained, social media forces. A field of all 126 Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision teams was supposed to have been thinned to 32 candidates after Monday, but we don't...

Four Stories To Follow In A Pivotal New Year For Sports Video Gaming
2K Sports hasn't said specifically when its infamous exclusive pact with Major League Baseball ends, but it's a good bet that day comes on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. ...

The Sports Video Games Of The Year
Rarely considered for overall video-game-of-the-year honors, the uncommon diversity of sports video games, and the unique demands placed on them to recreate both a real-world sport and the real-life experiences associated with it, support their own class of awards more than any other genre. These ar...

Call This Number If You Think You Can Beat Some Guy In <em>R.B.I. Baseball</em>
Your morning roundup for Dec. 6, the day we learned the word "vivisepulture." Photo via Kotaku. Got any stories or photos for us? Tip your editors....

My Workout Partner is a Role-Playing Game
Two hundred bucks. My health insurance company will give me $200 if I just go to the gym, 50 times in a six-month span. That's about two times a week. Coming into May, I only needed seven more visits to… [Kotaku] ...

A Walk-On Who Made the Team Wants You to Know What It Really Means
Alex Howell was the only freshman in the tunnel that Saturday, his chinstrap so tight it fused his jaw shut, 89,000 people packed into to the last row at Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium. Earlier in the week the graduate assistant… [Kotaku] ...

When Will the One-Year Career Come to an End?
It really doesn't matter how many times My Player is an NBA All-Star, nor how durable he is on the Road to the Show, or to Glory, or to the Masters. Every one of them will suffer a career-ending injury:… [Kotaku] ...

Addicted To What The Sticks Did
Golf, in real life, never took root in me. I had friends who played, and invited me along. As a young sports writer I covered a couple of exciting tournaments. In college, I enrolled in a golf class my senior… [Kotaku] ...

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters is an Experience Unlike Any Other
My first visit to Augusta National broke the club's dress code with almost criminal negligence: I was wearing basketball shorts, a T-shirt, and was unshaven to boot. Sure, I was on my couch, but I told myself I was stepping… [Kotaku] ...

Ten Days of Grace Brings Golf's Church to the Masses
Most golf fans, if they're lucky, will get to spend four days in early April at the venerated Augusta National Golf Course, scene of The Masters Tournament. Shannon Yates was on the course, sunup to sundown, for 10 straight library-quiet… [Kotaku] ...

That <em>Tiger Woods PGA: The Masters</em> Ad is Fabulous — and It's Real
Well it did. These Green Jacket moments had no green screen. "James from San Jose" really did blast out of the sand on No. 10. "Thomas," the guy representing "you" on No. 18 really did drain that eight foot… [Kotaku] ...

Taking a Punch Like a Man — Just Not From One
Felice Herrig has taken a punch from a man before. Many. She's also hit back. Hard. She's a mixed martial arts fighter, in a comparatively small population of women professionals, and, like it or not, in many gyms her only… [Kotaku] ...

The Waiver-Wire Prospects of <em>MLB 2K11</em>
I'm thinking of a famous, very touching monologue by Earl Weaver, the Hall of Fame manager of the Baltimore Orioles, talking about cutting players during spring training.… [Kotaku] ...

Casey the Bully-Breaking "Zangief Kid" Gets the <em>Street Fighter</em> Remix He Deserves
Casey Heynes, now immortalized—overmortalized?—in this video that mixes back in all the sound and visual effects we all heard in our mind when we first watched Casey piledrive his bully into the schoolyard concrete. [Kotaku]...

<em>MLB 11 The Show</em> is Still The Finest in the Field
I've seen the big leagues, son. I've squinted at the lights at Fenway as the sun makes a cotton candy sky behind the Citgo sign in left. But I ain't there right now. I'm down here chewing on grass, pitching… [Kotaku] ...

A Longtime Holdout Joins <em>Madden</em> This Year
Soldier Field, one of the more storied venues of the National Football League, has never appeared in the Madden NFL series, or any other NFL series. It's always been a generic venue under the name "Chicago Stadium," or "Chicago… [Kotaku] ...

Nickels, Dimes, Pennants, Pennies or Points, Sports Gamers Still Get Value
Typically, these were unlockable items - prototypes of avatar awards, you might say. You earned them by accumulating points in gameplay, or found a cheat code that handed over all of it. Either way, there was some means of getting… [Kotaku] ...

Imminent NFL Lockout Does Not Threaten <em>Madden 12</em>'s Release
Though the NFL's ownership is expected to lock players out, following a breakdown in negotiations with the players' union, EA Sports repeated reassurances that will have no impact on Madden NFL 12's release or its rosters.… [Kotaku] ...

This SportsCenter Anchor is Dedicated to a Different Show
To get their playing styles correct, Berthiaume matches certain stats from that player's year with ones similar to players in the current roster, then uses the latter's ratings in building out the player. For example, to derive Ott's contact rating… [Kotaku] ...