il Page 481 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Texas Rangers are backing up
For avid horseplayers, there comes a point in most races, especially when your steed has shot out to the lead from the opening of the gates, where it becomes pretty clear you’re going to lose. Somewhere on that far turn, your horse’s gait is shrinking, the jockey is working just a little too hard fo...

Breanna Stewart is the heir apparent to Diana Taurasi’s scoring crown
In a sport where offense sells, Breanna Stewart is a closer. On Tuesday night, the New York Liberty needed each and every one of Stewart’s 40 points on a panoply of turnaround fadeaways, driving finishes, post-ups, and off-the-dribble triples to put away the Dallas Wings 94-93. ...

Coco Gauff is proof that tennis is wack without Black women
They used to not want Althea Gibson’s “kind” around. Now we don’t know where tennis would be without them. That’s how you ace an opportunity....

Ben Shelton feels limitless
There’s been a lament, until recently, that on the men’s side American tennis just had a ceiling. And that ceiling wasn’t anywhere close to winning a Grand Slam. Which is a little unfair to Andy Roddick, who without the existence of Roger Federer would have been a multi-Wimbledon champion and probab...

Hard Knocks Finale: Robert Saleh ended the season with a winner
In some ways, being a head coach is like being a late-night host. Day and day out, for an entire season, this person has to perform. There may be only 17 games in an NFL season, but every single day a head coach is forced to perform for the media, the players, and bosses. So many speeches, PowerPoin...

Jerry Jones traded for Trey Lance and didn't even tell Mike McCarthy
Recently, Jerry Jones made a front-office move that shocked many around the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys owner traded a fourth-round draft pick to the San Francisco 49ers for Trey Lance. In the aftermath of that deal, what wasn’t reported at the time is that Jones made the swap without consulting his foo...

Is Deion Sanders ushering in a positionless era at Colorado?
Deion Sanders is an iconoclast, if nothing else. Sanders has gone against the grain by taking the rarely traveled SWAC route to a Power 5 coaching job, in addition to his use of the transfer portal, his braggadocious coaching style, his deals with Barstool and decision to sign with Colorado over mor...

Mark Cuban is the hero America needs (on Xwitter)
Sometimes, in life, you don’t get the hero you want, but you get the hero you need. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks — an organization that has been embroiled in ongoing sexual misconduct allegations for the last several years — is best known for either his role on the wildly popular Shark ...

Maybe Dabo Swinney's success was tied to a string of good QBs all along...
This isn’t a referendum only on Clemson’s embarrassing 3-touchdown loss to unranked Duke. Things have been unraveling in South Carolina for nearly two years now and the signs of Clemson being brought down a few notches on college football’s hierarchy happens regardless of the result against Duke, si...

You know you’re cooked when Woody Allen comes to your defense
Whenever Luis Rubiales’s case ends, and it’ll hopefully be soon, he’ll know that Woody Allen voicing his opinion on the side of Rubiales was the death knell. There’s no coming back from Allen thinking he’s your ally. If Rudy Guiliani calls soon, he’ll know it’s very much over. ...

College football on Labor Day has always been a sick joke
Labor Day Weekend serving as the official kickoff for college football is still the biggest oxymoron in sports. For decades, college football was the most abhorrent, openly accepted form of free labor. Unlike their basketball counterparts, NFL-caliber athletes are forced to push themselves through t...

Why have there been so many WNBA broadcasting blunders this season?
Broadcasters in the 2023 WNBA season are mostly pronouncing players’ names right. Considering the frequency with which on-air talent mispronounced players’ names (or misnamed players) in recent years, this is a triumph....

NIL and the reckoning of college athletics
When you give someone an inch to placate their desire for a mile, don’t be surprised when they still ask for a mile. For college football players and other student-athletes, name, image, and likeness deals were not the final step in fixing the flawed system that is college athletics, but rather a fi...

CM Punk fired from AEW after altercation with Jack Perry
CM Punk has been fired by All Elite Wrestling. The 44-year-old wrestler allegedly got into a backstage altercation with Jack Perry before AEW’s All In pay-per-view in London on Sunday, and was subsequently suspended before his dismissal....

The ACC is the least powerful Power 4 Conference — even with Cal, Stanford, SMU
It’s better to be proactive than reactive, right? Unless you consider what the Atlantic Coast Conference is already doing to be reactive, scraping up the leftovers from the Pac-12 Conference instead of having enough power in the college athletics landscape to attract more lucrative schools of their ...

How much is Travis Kelce worth if TJ Hockenson can get $17M annually?
TJ Hockenson’s new contract makes him the NFL’s highest-paid tight end. The former Detroit Lion — who last year was traded to NFC North division rival Minnesota mid-season — will earn $17.125 million per year after receiving more targets, hauling in more receptions, and gaining more yards than only ...

Saudi money putting an expiration date on soccer stars’ charisma
There’s a weird gray area for soccer stars after they turn 30. They’re still good, maybe not great, yet are so established that they command larger sums of money than a younger player or two who is not yet a household name and could Moneyball their teams the same production. In past instances, those...

From Northwestern to San Diego, college football hazing isn’t going away
From the billion-dollar Big Ten to the “mighty” Pioneer Football League, hazing is allegedly alive and well in college football....

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: Luis Rubiales, John Angelos, and the elusive White Sox park shooter
Welcome once again to the latest edition of Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, where we rant insanely about people we don’t like! Up yours, woke moralists!...
