conference Page 39 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Why Is Everyone Eulogizing The Big East Tournament? It's Not Going Anywhere.
Here we go again. This week's Big East tournament, we're being told, will be the last of its kind. The league is being torn asunder in this new, mutable world of college athletics in which money, suddenly, is a priority. It's a shame and a sin, the eulogies say, with the wistful, shattered air of a ...

Fan Makes Layup, Free Throw, Half-Court Shot, <em>Forgets To Take Three-Pointer</em>, Does Not Win $50,000
At halftime of Sunday's Missouri Valley Conference final, a 24-year-old student made the shot of his life. Alex Permann needed to hit, in order, a layup, a foul shot, a three, and one from center court, all within 24 seconds, in order to win $50,000. After he sank his half-courter, he thrust his arm...

“Are You A Nerd?” And Other Questions We Asked Our Fellow Nerds At The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
Last weekend, I went to the sixth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Attendance has gone up every year, and it gets harder and harder to get a feel for who actually goes to this thing: Why were they there? Were they still all sabermetrics geeks? High-powered businessmen? To find out, I di...

Four Things You Can Learn About The NBA By Skimming Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Research Papers
The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is under way in Boston and, though we sent no intrepid reporters to Dorkapalooza this year, the conference happily made its research paper finalists publicly available on its website. Let's blearily page through and see if we can't learn a few things. (We're foc...

Doug Collins Has Hit A Wall In Philadelphia, Like We All Knew He Would
It's getting harder and harder to remember that the Philadelphia 76ers, who just polished off a six-game losing streak and sit in the dregs of the Eastern Conference at 22-33, were full of hope coming into this season. It was less than a year ago that a plucky Sixers team scrapped its way into the ...

Don't Look Now, But The NHL's Best Hockey Is Out West
You could be forgiven for feeling a twinge of nostalgia for the Western Conference yesterday, after news emerged that the NHL is nearing an agreement on radical realignment. The new setup is better almost every way: less travel, more geographic rivalries, the chance for every team to host every othe...

How The NCAA Causes Gigantism: The Story Of The Small Regional Conference That Swallowed Up The Continent
Starting in the 2013-2014 season, University of Maine at Presque Isle and Mills College in Oakland, Calif., will play in the same athletic conference. These now-Division III schools are over 3,000 miles apart. How did this happen?...
![This Jim Harbaugh Freakout Is Priceless, The Ray Lewis Freakout Is Just Weird: Your NFL Conference Championships GIFs Roundup [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/18c4ee9sjqtxkgif.gif)
This Jim Harbaugh Freakout Is Priceless, The Ray Lewis Freakout Is Just Weird: Your NFL Conference Championships GIFs Roundup [Updated]
We're going to be putting our GIFs from the respective Conference Championship games right here. So if you're looking for Julio Jones's touchdown scoring, a security guard eliminating prowess, here's your spot, or weeping Ray Lewis, this here's the place. ...

Your NFL Conference Championship Viewing Guide
This is the last week of multiple football games. What an incredible bummer. In a few weeks it will all be over and it will just be, ugh, February. Terrible. But anyway, let's enjoy the final real weekend of the year and worry about February in February....

Boise State Is Boning The Big East Before Their First Date
Never mind that it's located some 2,700 miles from the league office in Providence, R.I.: Boise State decided last year that it was all set to join the Big East for football next year. The move lacked geographic sense, but it made perfect football sense because it gave the upstart Broncos a place at...

It Looks Like The Big East's Non-Football Schools Are Jumping Ship
ESPN is reporting that the Big East's seven non-football schools are planning to leave the conference, with an announcement coming within the next two days. The presidents of Georgetown, Marquette, Villanova, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall, and DePaul met in New York on Sunday and had a teleconf...

By Adding Tulane And East Carolina, The Big East's Takeover Of Conference USA Is Almost Complete
Oh, look: The Big East is adding teams again, because why not? West Virginia already bolted, Pitt and Syracuse will be gone next year, and Rutgers the year after that (if not sooner). What better solution, then, than to add Tulane for all sports and East Carolina for football?...

Kenyan Orphanage Reenacts Larry Bird's Steal Against The Pistons
A group of Kenyan schoolchildren had already recreated Boston's misery, but they make up for it with this one, from Game 5 of the 1987 NBA Eastern Conference finals. Except for Bill Walton's dopey high-five, it's all here—Isiah Thomas's pass, Larry Bird's steal, Dennis Johnson's layup, the hugs, t...

"There Is No Such Thing As Flop!": Watch Les Miles Angrily, Then Happily, Then Jokingly, Praise His Team After A Narrow Victory
Les Miles goes through an emotional spectrum here that surpasses even the most skilled practioners of the dramatic arts—it's forceful, angry, instructive, happy, endearing, eloquent, then a little angry again, then back to happy—some of these feelings are just plain unidentifiable. They are feelin...

A Philadelphia Team Is In The Big East West
Sorry, it was physically not possible to make that headline any less confusing while remaining factually accurate. The Big East, in the midst of major realignment, is going to look a lot different next year. Commissioner Mike Aresco announced today that the 12-team conference will be split into two ...

Report: OKC Has Traded James Harden To Houston
Everyone's favorite out-of-town NBA team just got approximately 40 percent less cool if Y! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski's reporting is accurate:...


Pac-12 Very Excited About Airing College Football Games On New Network Most People Can't Watch
The college football season starts today, and the Pac-12's new series of networks (seven of them, they're proud to explain) will be under the microscope as critics wait to see if the fledgling net can find the same success the Big Ten did when they launched their own cable channel five years ago....

Big East Conference Drops Last Pretense, Hires TV Executive As Commissioner
The Big East hired Mike Aresco to be its commissioner yesterday. Here are actual quotes from the presidents of two of the league's member schools, from the statement announcing the decision:...

Rajon Rondo Was Surly And Surgical Last Night
Last night the Celtics tied the Heat at 2-2 in the Eastern Conference finals, which is good news if you want to watch a competitive series. It's even better news if you want to watch Rajon Rondo play incredible basketball....