ball Page 96 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It shouldn’t be horrible for the next American to suit up with Chelsea
How American soccer players are treated in the Premier League has always been an interesting conundrum. Unless you’re a goalkeeper or somehow wind up at Fulham, heightened levels of scrutiny are at your doorstep that don’t appear in other top leagues around the world. There have been a few other saf...

Who’s up for a non-NBA pro athlete slam dunk contest?
Everyone loves a good slam dunk contest. It doesn’t matter if it involves NBA players, college athletes, or dudes from the neighborhood. If those involved are talented, creative highflyers, folks will gather around to enjoy the festivities. Obviously, the NBA owns the crown when it comes to spectacu...

The Bengals had better hope Joe Burrow doesn’t have one of those NBA strains
Super Bowl Championship expectations are rare for the Cincinnati Bengals. Before Ja’Marr Chase was drafted they hadn’t won a playoff game since Bo Jackson played football. In 2023, the sports books have the Bengals as one of the top-five favorites to win the Super Bowl. However, they are currently d...

The Phillies are riding a good wave
The good vibes are starting to spill out of South Philly again. The Phillies might not catch Atlanta, but then they proved last season they don’t really care about that sort of thing. Last night, Michael Lorenzen threw a no-hitter in his second start for the Fightins, and his first at home. It is th...

Whoa! The Premier League starts this weekend!
Most of the attention of the soccer world is fixed on the Women’s World Cup. And whatever’s left over is on Lionel Messi’s daily brace. But the world of soccer never stops, and in that fashion, the Premier League returns this weekend (so does La Liga but we can hold off on yet another discussion of ...

Nikola Jokić might be the most boring top-rated player ever in <em>NBA 2K24</em>
The player most deserving of the highest rating in NBA 2K24 is Nikola Jokić. Whether he is actually the best player in the NBA is irrelevant to him earning that distinction. The way that he bulldozed his opposition while leading the Denver Nuggets to their first NBA Championship, no other player sho...

Johnny Manziel: Now known as Johnny No Film
Johnny Manziel. Aka, Johnny Football....

Stanford is the most vulnerable school in college athletics because of conference realignment
The domino effect of Oklahoma and Texas leaving the Big 12 for the SEC (leading to the dismantling of the Pac-12 two years later) is a turn of events that would’ve been nearly impossible to predict. The catalyst for the Power Five’s west coast entry point being almost no more wasn’t UCLA and USC tra...

Holdover Northwestern football coaches play the victim with regrettable T-shirts
The reasons phrases turn into cliches is because they’re true and also widely applicable. Take “the root of the problem” for example. It’s a way of saying an issue is deeper than the surface level, and that the only way to solve it is by a complete excavation. A real world illustration of this is th...

It doesn’t get any more pathetic than watching the LLWS
It’s mostly accurate that youth sports are the last true, untainted brand of competition. Children are too naive to grasp the concept of money, and too preoccupied with having fun to care about the result, so they just run around and chase a ball for all the character-building reasons, but largely t...

The Tampa Bay Rays are running out of dudes, and ESPN somehow becomes more of a farce
The Rays might be the best developmental organization in baseball, staying on top of an AL East where they’re constantly outspent by factors of three by their competitors by consistently bringing dudes through their system and onto the MLB roster. Or they toast other organizations in trades and turn...

Ron Rivera loves tattling on his coworkers — from the allowance of racial slurs to player complaints about Eric Bieniemy
If snitches get stitches, then Ron Rivera should be a bloody mess....

Trask and Mayfield for the Bucs could be this generation’s Jackson and Germaine for Ohio State
The names Stanley Jackson and Joe Germaine mean nothing to many of you football fans out there. For those who fall into that category, you all missed out on a glorious time in the sport when Ohio State was a national championship contender and started two quarterbacks. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers may n...

No, ESPN, Trent Dilfer isn't, and won't be, a coaching genius
Do you enjoy football? Are you looking to play it in college? How do you feel about buzz phrases like “Take the cheese”? Well, the University of Alabama Birmingham is looking for highly motivated high school football players willing to work for free, and learn the intricacies of the modern game unde...

World Cup Day 19: Colombia is now the lone hope for the Cinderellas
The bottom-right side of the World Cup knockout-round bracket was always a double-edged sword. More upsets happened in Groups F and H than any other, with powerhouses Brazil and Germany watching the final 16 play instead of competing among them. The quarterfinals are now composed of seven heavy hitt...

Mike Vrabel has something better than the Rooney Rule: allowing Black assistants to coach preseason games
The 2023 NFL season is around the corner. That means that the never-ending and exhausting conversation around the lack of Black head coaches in the league will soon be a hot topic — again. And since idiotic owners would rather keep choosing the Nathaniel Hacketts of the world instead of guys like Er...

Everyone agrees Patrick Mahomes figured out that two-high safety look
Unfortunately, most of us didn’t get to watch the NFL top 100 program this year. The NFL’s two minute warning that the season is about to begin was shown only on NFL+, which is still not a strong enough reason to add $79.99 to my yearly expenses. The result of the paywall restricted program this yea...
![John Angelos and the Orioles spend the night getting ethered throughout baseball [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/93cd9fe109537462db2f123de2faf69c.jpg)
John Angelos and the Orioles spend the night getting ethered throughout baseball [Update]
Update (8/8/23, 1 p.m. ET): Kevin Brown will be returning to the Orioles booth on Friday, according to The Baltimore Banner, in a development that seems conspicuously timed following the widespread and unanimous criticism aimed at the organization. It remains clear, though, that John Angelos is a to...

Zay Flowers might already be the best wide receiver in Ravens history
The Baltimore Ravens have been one of the NFL’s most consistent franchises since their relocation to the mid-Atlantic in 1996. They have made the playoffs 14 times, secured six division championships, and won two Super Bowls. A superb 27-season run by any metric, and they have been able to maintain ...
