Athletics Page 54 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Party rolls on with Gerrit Cole, John Stockton, and Mark Davis
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Countdown begins with Stephen A. Smith, Adam Silver, Johnny Damon, and more luminaries
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...

The first surprise of the NIL era has arrived, and it’s Deion Sanders poaching No. 1 football recruit Travis Hunter
Deion Sanders has caused a shift of tectonic plates in the college football world. Since March 2020, Travis Hunter, the No. 1 overall football recruit in America, has been committed to Florida State. Hunter reiterated his commitment to the university in both September and October. The Tampa Times wr...

New NIL program gives Texas O-linemen big paydays
The saying goes “Everything is bigger in Texas.” Well, with a new NIL program set up by Texas nonprofit organization, Horns with Heart, some of the biggest people in Texas will be doing much better financially....

Uh-Oh! Coach K’s grandson and Duke star Paolo Banchero are facing drunk driving charges
Isn’t this what Uber is for?...

NCAA shows it can still play God — the smiting part, at least
The NCAA is making a statement, that’s for sure — that being “don’t cooperate with us. It will only end badly for you, your players, and your school.”...

Do your worst, Jeremy Pruitt, because no one cares about violations or the NCAA anymore
Complaining about college athletics being crooked is as pointless as bitching about New York streets being dirty. So when yet another “bombshell” is rumored — say former University of Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt threatening to expose the athletic program in a lawsuit that “could ensnare the p...

Ed Orgeron’s departure is a prime example of the cultural problem with college athletics
The Ed Orgeron tenure at LSU will be officially over at the end of the 2021 season....

Another Oakland A’s window is closing without much to show for it
Considering the constraints (some of them self-imposed, admittedly), it’s kind of amazing how often the A’s can reinvent themselves and put together a window of contention. The problem is those windows don’t tend to lead anywhere....

The Triple A’s love feeding the AL East MVP candidates
Long live the Oakland Triple-A’s!...

Leagues are all-in on sports gambling — is that <em>really</em> a good idea?
On Monday, the NFL announced that it was partnering with four sports-betting outlets in addition to the three sports gambling related partnerships already on the… books....

Down the stretch they come: Here’s what to watch out for as the MLB season hits final run
We have less than a month and a half before the MLB postseason starts on October 5. We know most of the teams that will be involved. The White Sox are pretty much locked in as either the two- or three-seed in the American League. The Brewers could potentially make a run at the top seed in the Nation...

Big Ten… ACC… Pac-12… wyd
You remember that episode of The Office where Jim and Dwight create an “alliance” to combat other alliances around the office? That’s what this feels like. Less than a month after Texas and Oklahoma announced they’d be moving to the SEC, three of the four remaining Power 5 conferences announced they...

Hey, NCAA: Let J.R. Smith play college golf already!
J.R. Smith never played college basketball. He jumped straight from high school to the NBA. Now that his NBA career is over, he’s making an effort to get a college degree. Smith will be attending North Carolina A&T — the largest HBCU in the nation, with just over 12,700 students — which consistently...

Baylor should thank its stars the NCAA is an even worse operation than it is
Baylor University, synonymous with gang rape and sexual assault on college campuses lo these past several years, has been handed a penalty by the NCAA that will include “four years of probation, recruiting restrictions, a vacation of records,” following an NCAA investigation into Baylor’s handling o...

Deadspin fixes: The Olympics
After the semifinals of the men’s 110-meter hurdles in Tokyo, eventual silver medalist Grant Holloway talked in an NBC interview about the challenge of sitting around the Olympic Village, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for his chance to take his spot on the grandest stage in athletics....

NIL cash already in the millions for Bryce Young, who has only taken a handful of snaps
Since the new NIL rules have gone into place, which allows college athletes to profit from their own likenesses, the new starting quarterback for Alabama has already made a whole pile of money. Bryce Young, the sophomore former-five star recruit, has only 22 pass attempts in college football....

NIL is a long time coming, but still more work to do
College athletes finally being able to make money from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) obviously is a huge step forward after decades of outright exploitation under the guise of the NCAA maintaining a standard of amateurism. There still are more steps to take, given the amount of money that un...

NWO at 25 gives us cause to remember other great heel trios of sports
Twenty-five years ago today, the New World Order was formed at WCW’s Bash at the Beach....

Dabo Swinney once said he’d quit if players got paid — where’s that resignation letter, coach?
People may change, but the internet lives forever. And in June of 2014, Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney said one of the dumbest and most hypocritical things in sports history. ...