Athletics Page 55 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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. ...

The biggest snubs so far in first round of MLB All-Star voting
Yesterday, MLB released its first All-Star voting update after the polls first opened on June 3. However, phase one of All-Star voting does not finish until June 27. When that day comes, only the top-three vote-getters (nine for outfield) at each position will advance to phase two of voting which wi...

On heels of first NCAA hoops bid, Hartford student-athletes outraged over decision to downgrade from DI to DIII
The University of Hartford men’s basketball team set a new standard for the university in 2021, earning the program’s first ever March Madness tournament bid. Despite losing to eventual tournament champion Baylor in the first round, the ground-breaking achievement was celebrated by the entire Hartfo...

DK Metcalf to participate in USA track meet this weekend with eye on Tokyo Olympics
Just give Budda Baker a three second head start and DK will catch him and win the race — I guarantee it....

It's 4:20 on 4/20, let's fire one up for the sports heroes who smoke weed
With every 4/20 that goes by, sports leagues seem to care less and less about weed. As they should....

SEE IT! HS punter picks up botched snap, ruins defenders, cruises for 55-yard TD
Yes, special teams players are people too. Except this one looks like he should be playing in the backfield. So it’s no surprise that Nicho Domine, the high school punter featured in this video, lists himself as a defensive back and wide receiver on his Twitter page. The kid also says he’ll try to w...

AL West Preview: Now without the noise, what are the Astros?
There are many who thought the Astros got off light before even hitting spring training last year. While the response was always “immunity,” only a couple managers and a GM suffered with the loss of their jobs. ...

Tom Izzo, Michigan State cross advertising rubicon in a banner week for the NCAA
In the same week that the NCAA disclosed that they don’t really have a plan if anything goes sideways at their Indiana NCAA Tournament, and Les Miles and Jeff Long showed what kind of people are really in charge, Michigan State may have taken the cake. That is, if the cake were sponsored by Betty Cr...

It looks like a bunch of confused former college athletes signed an NCAA brief supporting the opposite of their beliefs on paying current college athletes
Hilariously, some former college athletes decided to chime in to say that current college athletes shouldn’t get paid, but also apparently didn’t really know what they were signing. In a “friend-of-the-court” brief filed last month to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the ongoing saga of NCAA amateur...

Dabo did it again: A timeline of the dumbest things the Clemson dunce has done
Foot meet mouth. Dabo meet karma....
![NCAA athletes can keep scholarships with opt-out [UPDATED]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/hsz0cxtejjxmepdlx1x3.jpg)
NCAA athletes can keep scholarships with opt-out [UPDATED]
The NCAA will allow students to opt-out of the season due to concerns over COVID-19 and still honor athletic scholarships, it was reported Wednesday....

High School Pole Vaulter Annihilates Pro Field, Breaks A Bunch Of Records
Mondo Duplantis is not only the best-named high school athlete in the country, he’s also one of the best. Last weekend, Duplantis was competing in pole vault at the Texas Relays in the men’s elite division. Duplantis is a junior at Lafayette High School in Louisiana, yet he smoked a field that conta...