after Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
A Conversation With The Coach From <em>Undefeated</em>, The Oscar-Winning Football Documentary
Undefeated, Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin's documentary about the 2009 Manassas (Memphis) Tigers season, won the Oscar for best documentary feature on Sunday. It's like that Friday Night Lights series you treasured so much recently, but it's real, and grittier. Perhaps it's even better: the Tigers'...
There Is A Cricket-Themed Horror Movie Called <em>I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer</em>, And It's Awful
I Know What You Did Last Summer. Fine pulpy film, from 1997, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt sharing the screen in their primes. I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer, the 2008 Australian film following up on the original, about a former cricket player bullied by his teamma...
Jeremy Who? The Best Days For Harvard Basketball Were Back In 1946
People say good things about this Harvard College. Notable folks graduate from there. Big minds. Henry Kissinger. Ted Kaczynski. And Jeremy Lin. The Linsanity sweeping New York and the nation right now would seem to suggest that Harvard is not much of a basketball school, and that's a fair read. But...
Fax Machine Follies On Signing Day
We don't talk about national signing day much around these parts, unless there are pert coed rumps involved. Because the rest of it is pretty much all about fax machines. And no one likes or cares about fax machines, except office workers and rapt college football fans. Listen to Josh Levin, on this...
<em>Dead Angler</em> And More: A Look Inside Real, Bizarre Fly-Fishing-Themed Mystery Novels
It's hard to find the time to read books these days, what with the fragmentation of media, the rapid decline of western economies, and the popularity of fly-fishing. One imagines everyone who enjoys fly-fishing—let's be serious, who doesn't enjoy fly-fishing?—would rather fly-fish than read. Unless:...
The US Women Won Two Games 27-0, And It Did Not Impress Brandi Chastain, So Hope Solo Fought Back
The US shredded its opponents in CONCACAF women's soccer Olympic qualifiers this week—14-0 over the Dominicans, 13-0 over Guatemala, and 4-0 over Mexico—but Brandi Chastain, the lady who's famous for this, was not impressed. She called the games for Universal Sports Network (it's not the one formerl...
The Sad State Of The Modern Baseball Blooper
At Hang Up and Listen Comes Alive! here in New York last week, regular panelist Mike Pesca devoted his Afterball to a very important issue: the continued deterioration of This Week in Baseball, the Fox program that airs on Saturday afternoons during the MLB season. Once upon a time it was Bowie Ku...
Anthony Mason Is Now Wisconsin's Second-Worst Tax Offender, And Latrell Sprewell Is Off The List
Over the summer, we learned that former NBA player Latrell Sprewell was officially Wisconsin's worst tax scofflaw, thanks to the state's public list of the top 100 delinquent taxpayers. Back then, Sprewell owed more than $3.5 million—but as of this week, he's no longer on the list. Anthony Mason, wh...
Is This Guy The Most Hated Coach In Pro Football History?
Remember the 1961 Houston Oilers? No? Well, as Mike Pesca explains in our weekly excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, they had the fifth-highest point differential of any team in pro football history. They won the AFL that year. 34-year-old George Blanda threw 36 touchdowns and Heisman w...
Remembering The Glory Days Of The Bacardi Bowl In Havana
There's a good chance you'll stumble (if you haven't already) into one of the awful bowl games with tacky corporate sponsorships—Beef O'Brady's was last night, the Famous Idaho Potato was on Saturday, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia is tonight—over the holiday season. But none of these ...
The Honey Badger's Father Don't Care Either
Though Baylor's Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy this weekend, he probably hasn't been the most captivating player in college football this year. That distinction belongs to LSU's Tyrann "Honey Badger" Mathieu, a sophomore defensive back and returner, who finished fifth in the Heisman votin...
Fantasy Curling Is A Real Thing, And It Is Glorious
Remember how much fun we agreed curling was during the 2010 Winter Olympics in that city that got burned down? We had the choke-tastic American captain, that Canadian lady everyone loved, and everyone wrote about it the same way....
After LSU-Arkansas, An Examination Of Great Moments In Running Up The Score
You can tell, from the above video, and Josh Levin's comment in this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, that Les Miles got under Bobby Petrino's skin last Friday by running up the score. LSU beat Arkansas, 41-17, and scored 17 points in the fourth quarter. (Petrino mouths "fuc...
Why Philip Roth Declined To Blurb Scott Raab's <em>The Whore Of Akron</em>
Philip Roth, American literary titan. He's prolific, evocative, and controversial. LeBron James, American basketball titan. He's prolific, evocative, and controversial. Scott Raab, occasional Deadspin contributor. He hates LeBron James and loves Philip Roth....
Meet Jim Hawthorne, LSU's Lovable Play-By-Play Man Who Gets Every Call Wrong
Many Yankees fans love their clumsy, theatrical announcer John Sterling, even though he whiffs on so many calls. But Sterling errs when calling baseball, of all sports. Think about the football announcer's plight. Not just football, but SEC football—it's fast. So we sympathize with LSU's Jim Hawthor...
Meet Tennessee's Emergency Kicker, Who Was Sitting On A Frat Couch, Possibly Drunk, An Hour Before Kicking In The Game
SEC football's a big thing, but the Tennessee Volunteers really aren't. (Opportunity is nowhere, and all of that.) And the Vols especially aren't a big thing when they're playing out-of-conference, like they were last Saturday, against the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders. Tennessee won, but only...
The Spinning Magic Of Left-Footed Punters
Why did the Saints, Chargers, and Ravens—three teams with above-average punters—all work out free agent punters last week? No, it's not because any of those teams is scapegoating their punter for the whole team's jaw-dropping inconsistency. Rather, they wanted to practice against left-footed punters...
The Monster.com For Locked-Out Basketball Players
Lots of hoopsters will spend the lockout overseas—we told you about six-foot-nine human cannoli Brian Scalabrine, who is wrecking the Italian league, and Nets guard Deron Williams, who'll be hanging in Turkey. But there are others who don't have the immediate name recognition of Scal and Deron, and ...
Remembering The Best Punt Return That Never Officially Happened
Bears wide receiver/returner Devin Hester—as Drew explained Monday—is the human highlight reel that opponents have to kick to. He gave us a splendid return on Sunday night. But perhaps his best play of the season came on a play when he never touched the ball, on a play that never happened, as far ...
Celebrating A Spectacularly Inept Series In College Football History
Georgia defeated Tennessee in a wacky game on Saturday. The highlight was a fourth-quarter Georgia series in which the Bulldogs reached Tennessee's 23-yard line and were promptly penalized four times for 45 yards: Holding, holding, holding, personal foul. In between, the Bulldogs managed to run the ...