il Page 639 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The colorful but forgettable history of Bengals-Rams
The way that NFL scheduling works, Super Bowl opponents are always teams that don’t have a lot of regular season history. Still, Bengals-Rams feels particularly unfamiliar as a matchup, for a couple of reasons....

In a surprise to no one, Russian Olympic team in another doping scandal
Only seven years after a comprehensive Russian state-sponsored doping program was discovered, and two years after Russia was consequently sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Russian Olympic Committee’s 15-year-old star skater Kamila Valieva has tested positive for a banned substance, pos...

I just want to watch Keith Lee throw people out the building all the time
When you boil down what people love about AEW so much (and Tony Khan’s running of it), it’s that the company and he usually just do the simplest thing. Just give the people what they want. It sounds like it should be obvious, but there are a lot of ways to overthink it....

Possible Super Bowl one-hit wonders
The Super Bowl is the most covered single sporting event on the American sporting calendar every year. No pregame leaf unturned by the gaggle of broadcast and print media, tugging at the heartstrings of even the most jaded sports fans. There’s going to be a package about how Bengals quarterback Joe ...

A Matt Stafford victory is a win for all mid-career professionals
During the summer of 2006, I was a fledgling student journalist baking under the blistering sun at a preseason practice at UGA, capturing B-Roll of a fellow pimply-faced true freshman from Texas. The quarterback phenom was about to be the talk of the SEC. Matthew Stafford’s singular talent created r...

The Canadiens are so weird
When you still consider yourself the league’s signature franchise, maybe things just have to be weird. The pressure the team is putting on itself year after year just warps things, and that’s before you even get to the media that considers itself some sort of modern version of the Knights of the Rou...

Barfstool is at it again
I probably don’t need to document, once again, what an utterly disgusting collection of rock people BarfStool is, but yesterday was…well not a “new” low for them, because that’s not possible. But still a low that sticks out....

Mikaela Shiffrin doesn’t have to look too far for a tale of redemption
When Mikaela Shiffrin skied out of her second event at the Winter Olympics on Tuesday night, it was shocking. She’s been the face of U.S. Olympic coverage, including my coverage, and not only did she fail to medal in her first two races, she failed to even finish a run. ...
![It feels like LeBron James is done with this Lakers team after Tuesday night’s post-game presser [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/8a0a1c7973a224367148b5d438d6c797.jpg)
It feels like LeBron James is done with this Lakers team after Tuesday night’s post-game presser [Updated]
LeBron James is fed up, and it feels like he’s throwing in the towel on this year’s L.A. Lakers team after Tuesday night’s 131-116 beating at the hands of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks. When asked after the game if he thought the Lakers could reach the level of the Bucks, James got r...

Oscar Tshiebwe toyed with the hearts of bettors everywhere
Kentucky forward Oscar Tshiebwe had a major effect on many people’s wallets and mental state Tuesday night. For many bettors, that night’s Kentucky-South Carolina game was the worst beat of 2022, and we’re less than a month and a half in....

Nathan Chen brings figure skating to us dorks
I wouldn’t dare lie to you folks. I couldn’t get away with it if I tried. I know very little about figure skating. It comes into my consciousness every four years, probably like most people. I find the competitors to be incredible athletes, it can be a truly beautiful art, but also struggle with any...

Calling Adam Silver
It’ll take a miracle for Marcus Morris Sr. to not be suspended after extra hard foul on Ja Morant...

Automated offside is here, and it’s pretty damn cool
Even through its many, many bumps and hiccups (the kind of hiccups where you feel like you’ve pulled an oblique) I have been pro-VAR. It is hardly perfect, and far too much of it still depends on the whims and judgements of people. Except now being in the hands of whatever is floating between one pe...

If Lillard and McCollum didn’t work, then why was it so much fun?
I just saw CJ McCollum in Chicago like a week ago. He seemed fine — he had 29 on 13-of-23 from the floor and played well — but the team wasn’t itself anymore. It was a Sunday morning, and I was in bed when my girlfriend asked, “Hey Portland’s playing today. Want to go?”...

Meet Deadspin’s Super idiots
The Super Bowl is the biggest stage in sports, where stars are made, legends are born… and embarrassment lives forever. There are plays that just don’t get made, sure — like Scott Norwood’s field goal at the end of Super Bowl XXV — but there’s a difference between not getting the job done, and screw...

NBC gets the story it wants
The mystery of why NBC ponies up most countries’ defense budgets for the right to broadcast the Olympics still evades me. I know what the answers are. The ratings are worth it, which means the ad rates make it worthwhile, and that those who tune in aren’t really interested in the results of various ...

College players sue to be classified as school employees
Out west, the students are taking matters into their own hands, pushing college athletics another step further into its new athlete-empowered era — and they may be making things a lot more complicated for the NCAA....

If you didn’t already know Caitlin Clark’s name, you'd best learn it
Steph Curry is arguably the most exciting player to watch in the NBA right now. His ability to expand the floor with the range of an ICBM can make stone-faced humbugs raise an eyebrow and crack a smile in astonishment and awe. Women’s basketball hasn’t had anything like that in recent memory, that i...

Nathan Chen deserves every second of the Olympic spotlight he’s about to get
The Winter Olympics are always sports’ most unique event. For the most part, it’s a collection of niche sports getting international attention all at once. Exceptions have existed with men’s ice hockey, with five straight Olympiads allowing the NHL’s stars to participate for their countries, last ta...

The NFL’s Rooney Rule is a joke, and owners like it that way
Could abolishing the single ownership model in the NFL be a catalyst for legitimate change in the league’s hiring processes? Probably — but there’s no real path to that abolition. ...