afterball Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
What Do The Frozen Four And Hepatitis B Have In Common?
This year's Frozen Four has a lot going for it. For the first time ever, it's being held in the South: Tampa, to be exact. And one side of the bracket features two untraditional hockey powers: Ferris State and Union College. Do you even know what state those schools are in? In this week's excerpt ...
Inside The Messy World Of Minor-League Show Basketball
You know the Harlem Globetrotters. You probably don't know the Harlem Wizards or the Harlem Ambassadors. They, like the Globetrotters, are barnstorming show-basketball teams, appearing in every corner of this weird nation. Unlike the Globetrotters, they play in tiny gyms. But, as Stefan Fatsis exp...
The NCAA Tournament, As Narrated By Weird Tweets That Got Past Its Filters And Appeared On The Bottom Of The Screen
Tweets stream below March Madness Live online in something called the Coke Zero Social Arena. Apparently, all you need to get into the Coke Zero Social Arena is a hashtag. You can't be profane, but that's about the only rule. So Josh Levin, on this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen po...
Tragically, The Best Mascot In March Madness Has Been Eliminated
On this week's video excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, Mike Pesca of NPR tells you everything you might want to know about WuShock, the wheaty Wichita State Shockers mascot. The real Shockers fell to VCU, 62-59, last night, but WuShock lives on with all of us....
There Is A Rich History Of Fans Shining Laser Pointers In Athletes' Eyes, Especially Cristiano Ronaldo's
Perhaps you heard about the latest hockey dad behavior, in which a maybe-well-meaning father shined a laser pointer in the eyes of the other team's goalie. But you probably hadn't heard that there's a long, fine tradition of shining lasers in pro athletes' eyes. Cristiano Ronaldo, naturally, gets ...
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...