interview - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
An Interview With The Viral Chinese Stunt Drinker Who Became Our King
One day late last month, Liu Shichao, a 33-year-old farmer in China’s northern Hebei province, awoke to a flood of messages that he had become famous on a foreign social networking platform called Twitter. Liu had never heard of this app; social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have...
A Brief Interview With A Novice Climber Who Comfortably Scaled A Replica Of Trump's Border Wall
Donald Trump is confident that the wall along the southern border—which was the central promise of his presidential campaign, and which is slowly, stupidly, expensively, illegally, taking shape—cannot be scaled. “We got climbers. We had 20 mountain climbers,” the president burbled last month. “That’...
A Brief Interview With A Man Who Faithfully Recreates LeBron's Instagram As If He Were A Giraffe
An artist who goes by “Maso Rich” has produced hyper-faithful, parallel-universe versions of the Instagram accounts of LeBron James and Steph Curry. In these universes, LeBron is a giraffe and Steph, in an inspired bit of casting, is a bush baby. Deadspin spoke with Maso Rich on the phone to underst...
"He Would Have Mounds Of Towels": A U.S. Open Ball Person Dishes On The Nicest Players And Oddest Habits
Tennis watched on TV has nothing on tennis watched from the stands. Tennis watched from the stands, in turn, has nothing on tennis watched while standing right on the court. That’s one perk of being a ball person, one of the many workers crucial to the smooth function of a tennis tournament. They en...
Why Good Organizations Know How To Handle Players Like Antonio Brown
Jimmy Farris spent six seasons in the NFL as a receiver with the 49ers, the Patriots, the Falcons, Washington, and the Jaguars. He won a ring in Super Bowl 36, when he signed with New England just before the playoffs. As an undrafted rookie in 2001, Farris had an up-close look at the dynamic between...
Andrew Luck And The Art Of The Abrupt Exit
I’m not saying that you don’t want to get a text message from Drew Magary on a Saturday night. For one thing it’s easily the quietest way to interact with him, and it’s also a good source of breaking news if you are avoiding your computer at a time when a prominent NFL quarterback abruptly plays the...
Does Pro Wrestling's Merchant Of Secrets Have Any Left To Sell?
Wayne Farris, better known as The Honky Tonk Man, demanded Seagram’s Extra Smooth Vodka. It was 2007, and the man who made his name touring the wrestling territories and eventually the WWE with an indestructibly greasy pompadour, a Memphis jumpsuit, and a frequently weaponized acoustic guitar was ge...
A Calm But Occasionally Perplexing Interview With The Ex-NBA Scout Who Beefed With All His Critics On Twitter
Bryan Oringher, a former video coordinator for the Wizards as well as a former scout for the Raptors and Hawks, has since left the NBA to make a career in public-facing basketball commentary. The one hitch in that plan is that he has struggled to peacefully interface with the public....
Q&A: John Urschel On NFL Analytics, Two-Point Conversion Cowards, And <i>That</i> Math Problem
John Urschel spent three seasons as an offensive lineman for the Ravens. He’s also a candidate for a Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT—a pursuit he began in 2016, during his final season in the NFL. He’s also written a book, Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football, that’s being released today by Peng...
The Ballpark Is The Great American Public Space
Is a ballpark a place to watch baseball, a theme park, a microcosm of its city, or something else entirely? It’s an open question that stretches back to the late 19th century, when enclosed ballparks, flanked by cheaply constructed wooden bleachers, began the gradual evolution of ballpark constructi...
An Interview With The Local TV Producer Fired For A Graphic Calling Tom Brady A "Known Cheater"
Michael Telek is a 27-year-old news producer who, until yesterday, worked for the CBS affiliate KDKA in Pittsburgh. He was fired after a Super Bowl news segment used a chyron that labeled Tom Brady as a “known cheater.” As was obvious to pretty much everyone, the graphic was a joke—and not inaccurat...
How <i>Golf Digest</i> Started A Movement To Free A Man Wrongfully Convicted Of Murder
Golf Digest is not a political publication. Recent stories include “2018 Ryder Cup frequently asked questions” and “Web.com Tour introduces the Evans Scholars Invitational to schedule, with all proceeds aiding caddies’ college scholarships.” Many of the cover lines in the monthly print issue are ab...