ac Page 615 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

A Day At The Belmont Stakes
ELMONT, N.Y.—From just about 20 feet back from the track at the Belmont Stakes, watching three year-old thoroughbred Justify and his jockey, Mike Smith, make history mostly looked like outstretched arms holding aloft cellphones with the cameras rolling. A normal-sized woman could look up and see, on...

CM Punk's Second UFC Fight Was A Bizarre Joke
Until he stepped into the octagon, CM Punk was having a great week. His three-year legal battle against former WWE physician Dr. Chris Amann had finally ended with a Cook County court ruling in his favor. Punk no longer has a potential $8 million decision hanging over him, and he can focus on his ne...

Mat Latos Sparked A Wild Can-Am League Brawl
Former MLBer Mat Latos hasn’t pitched in the bigs since getting released by the Blue Jays in May of last year. He’s now with the New Jersey Jackals of the independent Can-Am league, and on Saturday he was right in the middle of a bench-clearing brawl. That’s Latos in the GIF above, hoisting an oppon...

Did Justify Have Another Horse Blocking For Him In His Belmont Stakes Win?
On Saturday, Justify became the 13th horse in history to win the Triple Crown (and the second in the last four years, which explains the general lack of excitement—these Belmont Stakes drew the lowest ratings for a Triple Crown bid since NBC began broadcasting the race in 2001). Justify is obviously...

USC Wins National Championship On Wild 4x400 Comeback As Announcers Declare Them Dead
Coming into the 4x400 meter relay at tonight’s NCAA track and field championships, the USC women had to win to clinch a national title; otherwise, Georgia would win and pull off a rare sweep of the men’s and women’s titles. When USC mangled the handoff on the final exchange (about 2:48 into the vide...

Justify Wins Belmont, Ruins Mystique Of Triple Crown For A Generation
Justify clocked a 2:28 in the mile-and-a-half of the Belmont Stakes today, earning the first Triple Crown since, uh, three years ago, and driving a stake through the heart of mystery that surrounded the feat for millions....

Cool Dads Stephen Colbert And Patrick Wilson Deliver Surprisingly Earnest National Anthem Performance
You will be forgiven if you look at the seemingly random pairing of Stephen Colbert and Patrick Wilson lining up to perform the national anthem at a Mets game and think “whuh?” Because, like, whuh? A comedian talk show host and the Insidious guy? Turns out, these nerds can fuckin’ sing!...

Rai Benjamin Runs 47.02 400m Hurdles, Tied For Second-Fastest In Human History
USC’s Rai Benjamin claimed the national championship in the 400 meter hurdles today in a mind-blowing 47.02, tying Edwin Moses’s former world record for the second-fastest time in human history in the event....

Kyrie Irving: "I’m Not Against Anyone That Thinks The Earth Is Round"<em></em>
“I mean, history has shown even back then, our biggest scholars did think the Earth was flat.”...

Steeplechase Leader Loses National Championship After Falling On Last Lap
Houston’s Brian Barraza accumulated a massive lead on his opponents on the final lap of tonight’s NCAA national steeplechase final, only for disaster to strike in such a way that he ended up finishing outside the top eight....

College Runner Who Almost Burned To Death Reaches NCAA Final Two Years Later<em></em>
Probably the easiest sports story to write is one about a meteoric improvement. The Wow This Person Got A Lot Better At Sports story is one that works in every sport, honestly, but it tends to be most common in ones like running or swimming. (Stories about rapid improvements in those sports generall...

Are These The Names Of Real Race Horses Or Just Nonsense Phrases?<em></em>
If you’re a millionaire race horse owner who reads Deadspin, please consider yourself welcome to use any of these fake names for your next foal—with credit, of course. ...

Who Is The Most Adam Sandler Director?
Most friendships have a sort of intrinsic half-life. Each passing year tends to draw you further from the people you care about or at least reduce the number of people you stay in touch with, but this is usually a good thing. I’d say the best number of friends is somewhere around MySpace’s platonic...

Backstrom To Ovechkin Has Never Been Bigger Or Prettier
It’s 2-1 Washington as I write this, but the goals are coming fast and furious so let’s not spend too much time on this before the score changes. (No shit, Vegas made it 2-2 before I finished writing that sentence.) But the Caps have been scoring some of the prettiest goals of the playoffs—especiall...

Officials Ruin Steeplechase Competition By Setting A Barrier Six Inches Too High
Wild shit happens in the steeplechase. Emma Coburn won last year’s world championship in part because one of the favorites ran around the first water jump instead of over it; a runner at the 2009 U.S. women’s championship broke her foot after one barrier was accidentally set at the men’s height; in ...

Ugly Schoolboy Football Feud Leaves Baltimore Powerhouse With Zero Opponents For 2018
If you can’t beat ‘em, blackball ‘em. That’s among the morals of the story of the dissolution of Baltimore’s prep football scene, which is now complete: St. Frances Academy, a historically non-athletic and financially strapped institution which is suddenly among the best football schools in the coun...

Kevin Durant Lightly Restrained After Hearing Very Funny Or Very Boring Heckle<em></em>
Last night, it was not “KD you suck” that got Kevin Durant’s attention and made him walk slowly in the direction of the heckler, but rather that classic barb that gets under everyone’s skin: “KD! You cheesebutt!”...

Hue Jackson Tries To Motivate Browns By Inadvertently Making Their Helmets Look Cooler
Anyone paying attention to Browns training camp—so, nobody beyond a group of irascible, underpaid beat writers—may have noticed that the players’ equipment looks a little different. The brown and white stripes that go across the middle of the helmet are missing. In a surprising deviation from everyt...

The Athletes Hit A Slump This Week On <i>The Bachelorette</i>, But Lil Jon Showed Up
Okay, team. This week was a rambunctious one, full of so many twists and turns that none of us could really follow the playbook. As the season goes on, the chaff will be cut and the roster will really start to gel. But in the meantime, as your stern but loving coach, I’m here to make clear what real...

The Time Barack Obama Tracked Down Dave McKenna At A Coffee Shop
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....