death Page 18 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Lance Russell, The Greatest Pro Wrestling Announcer Of All Time, Dies At 91
Lance Russell, the professional wrestling announcer best known as the voice of the sport in the territory surrounding Memphis, Tenn. for decades, as well as for his stint in WCW, died Tuesday morning at the age of 91. He had broken his hip in a fall on Friday shortly after his daughter, Valerie, die...

Rick Pitino Releases Statement Right As Louisville Announces His Replacement
In what is almost certainly a coincidence and not at all a product of a notoriously calculated, petty former head coach being calculated and petty, Rick Pitino released a lengthy statement Friday afternoon regarding Louisville’s decision to fire him, minutes before the Cardinals announced his replac...

FBI Docs Show The NCAA's Grisly Sausage Factory At Work In Arizona<em></em>
Paying for a top college basketball recruit can be expensive. Documents from the FBI’s investigation into the shadowy world of college basketball uncover a web of corruption, and no single transaction is more interesting than the general negotiations around how much players get paid and who pays the...

Report: FBI Looking Into Nike's "Grassroots Basketball" Division
According to reports from sports lawyer Darren Heitner and ESPN, the federal prosecutors looking into college basketball corruption have now turned their focus to Nike. The FBI’s New York field office and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York reportedly served a subpoena t...

Alabama Basketball Admin Who Previously Worked In NCAA Enforcement Resigns After FBI Sting
The fallout from the FBI’s NCAA sting has claimed another job: that of Alabama director of basketball operations Kobie Baker, who came to the school from a position with the NCAA as its assistant director of enforcement for basketball development. Yep....

Louisville Has Now Lost Their Two Top Recruits
Only hours after Rick Pitino was effectively fired, basketball recruits are beginning to flee Louisville, and why wouldn’t they? Pitino is finished, and that will likely be just the start the Cardinals’ struggles. Nobody really knows what the full scope of consequences of the FBI’s sting on recruiti...

The NCAA Finally Got The Lawsuit It Deserved, And The One It Wanted
“The schools are, in a way, the victims.”...

The FBI's NCAA Sting Has Already Cost Auburn A Five-Star Recruit
The fallout from the this week’s FBI crackdown on shady college basketball recruiting tactics is only just beginning. Several college coaches, basketball-adjacent businessmen, and Adidas employees were charged with fraud and bribery on Monday, and the hammer has yet to truly drop on many of the prog...

Report: Louisville Fires Rick Pitino After One Too Many Scandals
Louisville fired Rick Pitino Wednesday, according to ESPN, shortly after letting go athletic director Tom Jurich, who reportedly refused to fire Pitino himself. The axing follows yet another scandal for the Cardinals head coach, this one involving payments made to a recruit by Adidas officials in ex...

Raiders Superfan Dr. Death On Giving Up Football
I’ve never lost a team. I don’t and can’t really understand what Raiders fans are going through with the planned departure of the team from Oakland; that’s what I came here to figure out....
![Four College Basketball Coaches Charged With Bribery And Fraud [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/xand70ztbbkc1jwgyznk.jpg)
Four College Basketball Coaches Charged With Bribery And Fraud [Updated]
Four college basketball coaches have been arrested after being charged by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney with various counts of bribery and fraud. The arrests resulted from a nearly two-year investigation that examined the shady links between college basketball coaches and outside businesses, including...

Emails: Ex-Baylor President Says NPR Helped Him Understand Women Who "Make Themselves Victims”
David Garland—interim president at Baylor prior to the university’s hiring of Linda Livingstone—sent an email to a school administrator in which he wrote that a radio segment he listened to recently “added another perspective for me of what is going on in the heads of some women who may seem willing...

NCAA Comes After Texas A&M Cross Country Runner For Promoting His Own Water Bottle Company
The NCAA is threatening the eligibility of 17-year-old Texas A&M freshman Ryan Trahan, a cross country runner with a YouTube channel that promotes the line of water bottles that he developed with a friend in high school. ...

Bobby “The Brain” Heenan Dead At 73
Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, quite possibly the best manager and the best color commentator in American pro wrestling history, has died. The news was broken by Jim Ross. According to WWE, Heenan was 73....

Teen Professional Surfer Killed Riding Monster Waves Powered By Irma
Zander Venezia, a 16-year-old junior pro surfer from Barbados, was reportedly killed this week surfing the huge swell created by the approach of Hurricane Irma. From a Surfline report:...

NCAA Bylaws Are Cramping Kelvin Sampson's Hurricane Harvey Relief Drive
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, University of Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson used social media to solicit donations from coaching colleagues to be distributed to families affected by the devastation in Houston. Specifically, what he wanted was clothing—new t-shirts and shoes, some...

God Help Me, I Am About To Agree Whole-Heartedly With LaVar Ball
There are times—yes, there are—when LaVar Ball is right. Often he is a grandstanding buffoon who gets the benefit of the doubt for drumming up attention for his sons, without any particular concern for whether his sons much want that attention, and with even less concern for whether the gains earned...

Longtime Villanova Coach Rollie Massimino Dead At 82<em></em>
Rollie Massimino, the longtime Villanova basketball coach who led the Wildcats to an improbable national championship in 1985, has died. He was 82....

Stetson University Football Player Dies After Collapsing At Practice
Stetson University released a statement Monday announcing that 19-year-old sophomore linebacker Nick Blakely had died after collapsing on the field earlier in the day. Blakely had reportedly gone to the sidelines shortly after practice started and said he wasn’t feeling well....

Report: Hugh Freeze Called A Dozen Escort Services From His Ole Miss Phone
Last week, the Wall Street Journal released a scoop—former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze had been calling escorts from his university-issued phone during recruiting trips. But the scoop didn’t have all the details a reader might expect, thanks to the fact that athletic director Ross Bjork went out of ...