Locker Page 48 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Death, taxes, and Kirk Ferentz
Speculation about Kirk Ferentz retiring from coaching has been going on since the Obama Administration, when Iowa inked its longtime head man to an extension through 2025. Even with the caveat that it was “a few years off,” we’ve seen ideas tossed out for who might eventually take the helm in Iowa C...

Baseball season won’t start on time, and it’ll be mostly ruined when it does
It flew under the radar, which should be something the owners should notice, but MLB actually did make a proposal to the MLBPA yesterday, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers. It was their first negotiation about the core issues of this lockout now six weeks in, which shows you just how ...

This is what happens when you get the aristocracy’s attention
A good portion of fans, most I would say, fail to recognize just how long the NBA season is. Goes for the NHL and MLB ones, too. It’s always hard to explain to a lot of them that there are nights in the middle, or maybe on the second of a back-to-back or the last of a four games in six nights, when ...

It was a very NHL day in the NHL
No one does “all over the map” quite like the NHL. And almost all of it is by accident, because there isn’t a guiding light to the league as to what it wants to be, or how it would get there if it did. Stuff just happens every day in this league, most of it makes you slap your forehead. Though somet...

A joy Alabama will never know
I heard a story from a Cubs fan in New York in November of 2016. I can’t remember who or where exactly. If you heard it too, feel free to remind me on Twitter. Anyway, the guy was parading around Manhattan the day after the Cubs won the World Series in his Cubs hat, as you do. He happened to cross p...

See? Americans love ties!
You could feel the collective frustration of every sports fan outside of Pittsburgh last night. It was as if we all punched the couch at the same time. You could hear it in the wind, a spiritual “THUNK.”...
![Fire when ready, Broncos [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/06ce103a532ef6cdcee8875d9e305d70.jpg)
Fire when ready, Broncos [Updated]
Generally, when there’s talk about interest in hiring you as a coordinator before you’re even fired as a head coach, it’s a sign that you’re seen as a good football mind. It might even be a sign that the team you’re about to be fired from ought to rethink things. Clearly you’re in demand, and maybe ...

Unvaccinated man can’t come to work, co-workers suffer
Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of Kyrie Irving’s own actions....

It was nice they tried
I was never as down on The Athletic as some. I suppose I appreciated their aim, or stated aim, of creating an online sports section, as I was one of the few of my generation, or the ones to come after, to still grow up on sports sections. I was raised on Bob Verdi and Bernie Lincicome (pre-crank) in...

SEE IT: Cale Makar turned the ’Hawks into sock puppets
There are a bunch of caveats I could throw at Cale Makar’s goal in OT against the ’Hawks to give the Avs a 4-3 win. I’ve never been a fan of 3-on-3 overtime, as it’s a forced gimmick. It’s an artificial stage meant to generate highlights like this without the usual context. Makar wouldn’t have had t...

Rob Manfred wants his Pravda
The thing about work stoppages in sports, and really anywhere involving a very well-known company, is that P.R. is a part of it. Rob Manfred is, somehow, the first commissioner to get most of the public to back the players’ side, as he did during the pandemic when the owners and players were trying ...

Aaaand we’re back to the start
This is my last Mourning After of 2021, and in some ways it feels like the first. Not that we’ve been running in place, so much as we sprinted around the track and ended up back where we started. Which is how Jerry Seinfeld described horse racing, I guess. “We were just here! What was the rush?!”...

The IIHF thinks women are more contagious than men
In theory, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) isn’t a for-profit agency. Much like FIFA. This is a laughable farce, of course. But there is relief that the facade of shepherding the game and promoting its growth crashed to the sidewalk long ago. They’re barely trying to hide it anymore....

It’s the lack of answers that's so frustrating
I see the sentiment a lot the past couple days that it’s March 2020 all over again. But it isn’t. We are armed with so much more information than we were then, and there are vaccines. The one thing…well, I won’t say “miss” about March 2020 and beyond, because it sucked, but perhaps the biggest diffe...

You ever watch two teams try to lose?
It used to be, long ago, when things made slightly more sense and RC Cola was a thing, that Monday Night Football was the premier game of the week. Which made it a great mystery why ABC would subject the nation to Dan Dierdorf blabbering about something at best tangentially connected to what went on...

If going for two is your thing, then make it your thing
The going-for-two discussion will likely become the most annoying debate in sports, usurping reliever usage and Hall-of-Fame credentials. Poor execution is different than a poor decision, and the play-call for the Baltimore Ravens in their 31-30 loss to the Packers was pretty piss-poor. Two weeks ag...

Buck Showalter is the right guy in Queens
If it feels a bit like the end times lately, that feeling probably isn’t helped by the New York Mets — yes, the New York Mets — conducting themselves as a competent organization with a legitimate plan and hopes. ...

Do we really need school sports right now?
The news that an 18-year-old high school student in upstate New York died of COVID-19 earlier this week should be a big red flag when it comes to the current state of the pandemic. It’s not just that the kid was unvaccinated, but that he died after it proved impossible to get him transferred from th...

YouTube TV cuts off game feed on Lakers
Cord-cutting Lakers fans enjoyed one of their better moments of the season Friday night as YouTube TV cut off ESPN and all the other Disney-owned channels at midnight Eastern amid that bane of streamers and cable customers alike, a carriage dispute....

This isn’t that hard, Fox
Fox has had NFL games for 28 years now, if you can believe that. Seems like only yesterday they killed Angela Lansbury with the news they had usurped CBS to grab the NFC package, which they haven’t let go of since (I was shocked to find out Lansbury, the renown actress of stage and screen is actuall...