da Page 927 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Your Division Series Open Thread
Ai! Somehow this disappeared, no? There were comments, there was yakking—I'm very sorry. Won't happen again. As I said before—it's the A's in Detroit to face Verlander (who has already given up a run) and then Cueto vs. Cain in San Francisco at 9:37 p.m. We'll link back. Enjoy the games!...

Peyton Manning Will Buy A Stake In The Memphis Grizzlies
Like LeBron James with his stake in Liverpool, Peyton Manning has decided merely being at (or near) the top of one sport is not enough: he'd also like to own part of a team in another. Chris Vernon had the scoop on Thursday, and as he noted then, Peyton Manning joins a strangely star-studded ownersh...

The NBA Releases A Video Demonstrating The Seven Illegal Flops That Will Get Players Fined This Season
The NBA released a video yesterday of all the flops that they officially consider flops now that the NBA is officially considering flops. It has a weird narrator who uses unnecessarily colorful language, which is great. We get a "grossly embellished fall to the floor" from Reggie Evans, an "over-e...

"pEnis peniS Penis vagiNa": Your Roundup Of The Best Signs Behind The College Gameday Crew
They could have just done "pEnis peniS Penis peNis," but I guess they get points for being inclusive. Surprise of the day? Gameday is in Columbia, yet none of these incorporate the whole "Gamecocks" thing all that much. Maybe the ESPN cameramen were on the lookout for those....

<em>USA Today</em> Just Couldn't Wait To Troll Braves Fans And Everyone Else About That Call Last Night
Like the call that handed the Seahawks the win over the Packers two Mondays ago, the ruling in the Braves-Cardinals death match was complex enough to trip up the layman. The call on Golden Tate's "touchdown" could, if you squinted, have been justified based on a slippery understanding of the concept...

USC's Robert Woods Couldn't Keep His Balance After A Helmet-To-Helmet Hit, Missed One Play
Above, the uncanny floundering of USC wide receiver and All-American Robert Woods after he got spun around on a helmet-to-helmet hit. The spin itself might have made him dizzy—Woods does a full 180 after the hit—but as Jesse Palmer noted during the aftermath, it was pretty obvious Woods had his "b...

Michael Wilbon Is A Gutless, Starfucking Crybaby Troll
For the past three decades, Mike Wilbon has earned a living barely disguising his contempt for you, the filthy peasant sports fan. Whether boasting to the world how unsurprised he was about Sean Taylor being murdered, or chastising you for looking to him for gossip from his White House partygoing, o...

If Only For A Moment, Lane Kiffin Was Panicked
While USC cruised to a 38-28 win over Utah in Salt Lake City last night—scoring 28 unanswered points along the way—things did not start out smoothly for the Trojans. Back-to-back turnovers on the first two drives set the Utes up for easy scores, and Utah jumped out to a 14-0 lead before a rowdy, if...

Who Is Using Nets.com To Fuel The Mark Cuban-Mikhail Prokhorov Feud?
Somehow, the New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets never owned the Nets.com web domain. (It's surprising, in this era, but it happens.) Until recently, if you tried to go to nets.com, you were redirected to CyberMesa.com, the website for "a telecommunications company with headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico." F...

How The Crazy-Ass AL Division Races Unfolded: Visualizing Momentum
The Athletics and the Yankees clinched their respective division titles on the same day, but the paths they took to get there were very different. The A's budget freight train slammed through a Rangers squad that had sat atop the AL West for over 170 consecutive days, while the Yankees barely edged ...

Michael Wilbon Just Can't Decide How Much He Hates DC Sports Fans
Michael Wilbon has a problem. There's been all this winning and fun times going on with DC sports this year, so some major magazines are starting to tout DC's merits as a Great Sports Town. Problem is, when ESPN The Magazine rolled out its DC lovefest this week, we learned that Wilbon supplies the ...

The Oakland A's Now Have Their Own Folksy Theme Song
Any good championship run needs a catchy theme song. Unfortunately, it often derives from some iteration of "Don't Stop Believin'," either the original form (see: White Sox, Chicago, 2005) or some customized version, like the San Francisco Giants adopted in 2010....

A's Pitcher Pat Neshek's Newborn Son Has Died
On Monday, the Oakland Athletics clinched a playoff spot, and just a few hours later pitcher Pat Neshek's wife went into labor. Neshek flew to Florida and was with his wife when she gave birth to a baby boy....

Daily Screencap Classic: J-E-S-T JEST JEST JEST
The 2-2 Jets, mired in a trench of poor quarterback play and idiots screaming for Tebow, added to that the reeling feeling of learning Santonio Holmes would be missing the rest of the season....

Holy Shit, The Athletics Just Won The AL West
In April, Baseball Prospectus picked the Oakland A's to finish 73-89. In June, we called the team "hopeless," and said they were playing out the string. Today, they beat the Rangers, 12-5, to finish 94-68, one game better than Texas. In first place. The Oakland A's. They won the AL West. Holy shit. ...

The Oakland A’s Cap Off An Incredible Late-Season Comeback And Win The AL West
"The Oakland A's have shocked the Rangers and the baseball world!" That's one way to put it mildly. As Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net reminded us all, the A's had less than a 1 percent chance of even making the playoffs back on June 15. That's just completely insane....

Former WWE Wrestler Shawn Daivari Choked Out A Belligerent, Racist Train Passenger Until He Pissed Himself
Former WWE heel Shawn Daivari was able to play the part of a hero last week when he found himself on a train in Minneapolis with an unruly passenger. The passenger was reportedly yelling racist garbage and threatening others on the train, so Daivari decided to intervene. How did he intervene? By cho...

Dan Snyder Used To Stay In The Owner's Box Until 4 a.m. "Pounding Drinks" And Stuffing His Face With Fast Food
ESPN the Magazine has a fun story out today about Dan Snyder and our old friend Dave McKenna. It presents a slightly friendlier portrait of Snyder than you might find on, say, Deadspin—where we've called Snyder a "prick" and a "churlish little shitbag vulgarian" but never once accused him of fellati...

"What Do You Want Me To Do—Tell You How Bad My Life Is, How Shitty It Is?": Adam Greenberg's Journey Back To The Majors
In 2005, Adam Greenberg was struck in the head with a fastball in his first major-league at-bat. He's spent the last seven years trying to get back to the majors. Last week, he signed a one-day contract with the Marlins and got his second career at-bat to a standing ovation in Miami last night. He s...

Damien Echols Of The West Memphis Three Is Here To Answer Your Questions
Earlier today, we ran an excerpt from Damien Echols's new book, Life After Death, about his time on death row following his wrongful conviction in the murder of three 8-year-old boys. If you haven't yet, be sure to give it a read. The book is available on Amazon....