champions Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

UFC's Dana White admits publicly hitting wife on NYE
The best way to avoid apologizing for hitting a woman is to never do it in the first place. Guess that never went through UFC President Dana White’s brain on New Year’s Eve, when he was seen getting into a physical altercation with his wife, Anna, at a nightclub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Eyewitness...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2022: The complete rankings
Happy new year and welcome to the grand finale of Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR festivities — here’s hoping 2023 will be better. It probably won’t....

Stay away, Gronk
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport is reporting that Rob Gronkowski is considering a return to the NFL. Gronkowski tweeted “I’m kinda bored,” on Dec. 21. According to Rapaport, a handful of teams reached out to him to see if he was serious. ...

One and done: NFL head coaches who only lasted a season or less at the helm
Not surprisingly, the Denver Broncos fired head coach Nathaniel Hackett after the team was embarrassed — AGAIN — in primetime. The Los Angeles Rams beat them 51-14, and Russell Wilson was once again dog shit. ...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR: The standings so far
Merry Christmas and welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR party! As we gear up for the unveiling of our top 10 next week, here are the first 40 dummies on our list. Enjoy....

Under the Coaching Tree: Ranking the Top 10 Coaching Trees in NFL history
Ho ho ho, folks! Christmas is here, and good ol’ jolly St. Nick is heading down the chimney with exactly what you asked for. If you’re an NFL head coach though, that probably means he’s headed down the chimney with a talented assistant to put on your staff to make you look even better. Until they le...

Everybody Hurts sometimes
With three weeks left in the regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles have all but locked up the top seed in the NFC, needing just one win or a loss from both the Minnesota Vikings and San Francisco 49ers in order to secure home-field advantage through the NFC Championship and a first-round bye. With...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR: Ten more for the worst of 2022
Oh, the hell with it, you know the drill by now. Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR continues on, as does the meaningless treadmill of existence. All is for naught and free will is an illusion!...

IDIOT OF THE YEAR: The countdown begins as we look back ruefully on 2022
Dearest reader! We meet again. It is that time of the year again… uh, namely, the end of the year, when we at Deadspin are proud to present our globally acclaimed celebration of stupidity, IDIOT OF THE YEAR! We’ll be with you over the next few weeks as we count down the haughtiest, most hypocritical...

I fear I may never know joy and happiness like Andrés Cantor
Maybe years ago, like a couple decades, Andrés Cantor was something of a cartoon to non-soccer fans with his outsized “GOOOOOOOOOOOOL!” calls making the rounds on various highlight shows as evidence of how silly soccer was to the agnostics and why it should never be bothered with....

The best soccer players of all time to never win a World Cup
It’s the pinnacle of soccer. The World Cup is a spectacle unlike any other in sport. And to truly be considered the greatest to ever lace up your cleats, you need to have lifted the trophy. Why can’t Dan Marino be in the discussion for the greatest quarterback of all time? He never won a Super Bowl....

HBCU football runs through the Carolinas — not Jackson State (Deion Sanders)
Putting the cart before the horse never works — especially for a coach that has a history of coming up short....

Week 15 NFL Takeaways: Gut punch losses made the playoff picture more clear
The last four weeks of the NFL regular season have a different meaning to different teams and fanbases. However, the one commonality that all teams share is that the end is nigh. Soon, 18 of the NFL’s 32 franchises will be in team-building mode until post-Labor Day 2023....

Taking a moment for Messi
It seems like something of a missed opportunity that my favorite Lionel Messi moment came 11 years ago. There’s been so much since. It just happened to be on my 30th birthday, on a day where pretty much everything went wrong (a fine introduction to one’s 30s, it could be easily argued). Barcelona th...

Bowl games are now more like the preseason than the postseason
Everything they’ve done all season has led up to this game: The [insert sponsor] Bowl. These teams worked all season long so that they could get six wins and the opportunity to play in the postseason. At least that’s what bowl games are supposed to be: The culmination of the season. But if anything ...

Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: Day Argentina
Sometimes those who cover the game have to fistfuck a narrative into fitting. And then sometimes Lionel Messi does that. ...

Maybe Neymar is just unlucky
While this World Cup has had its share of great stories, the overarching one that started well before the tournament was Lionel Messi. This is his tournament, whatever Argentina does. Either it’s the last great failure of him (it’s never by him when it comes to Argentina). It’s always that the rest ...

There is a lot more than a championship on the line with Jimmy G’s injury situation
It’s Wednesday, Dec. 7, and there is still no clear picture of the timeline for Jimmy Garoppolo’s return to the field. ...

The NBA’s newest award is a better fit for MLB teams
It’s bad enough that there have been 16 NBA playoff spots since 1984. At that time there were only 23 teams in the league. It’s 2022, and still more than half of the league gets into the playoffs, and that’s not even counting the highly entertaining Play-in Tournament. Sure the New Orleans Pelicans ...

Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: Day 16
Brazil finally become all they can be, and Croatia do their thing of refusing to end a match in 90 minutes. They must really like each other! Let’s spin it right round!...