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The best (worst?) Super Bowl celebrations
For all the cultural impact the Super Bowl has built up, from the game itself to the ridiculous ads to the high-budget halftime show, it’s honestly a crime that the following Monday hasn’t been declared a national holiday yet. While the average watcher may be going into work not feeling quite in tip...
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...
Prop bet season is here: Wacky Super Bowl wagers for you to lose some money
As legal gambling spreads further across the country, the Super Bowl is bigger than ever for betting, and of course that doesn’t just mean betting on whether the Rams cover the 4-point spread....
People want Roger Goodell to be better at his job — he can’t
It was 85 degrees in Los Angeles on Wednesday, but that wasn’t the reason why Roger Goodell was sweating....
Arkansas will pay for fans rushing the court after beating Auburn, but who cares?
It was a matter of if, not when, Auburn men’s basketball lost another game. As its football team, the biggest draw of the athletic department that overshadows every other sport combined, goes through unsettling offseason turbulence, the fightin’ Bruce Pearls are putting together the school’s best re...
Avert your eyes, either Stan Kroenke or Mike Brown will get to hoist the Lombardi
Mere mention of the names Stan Kroenke and Mike Brown, owners of the two NFL teams facing off in the Super Bowl on Sunday, triggers largely negative emotions from fans of teams they own. (LA Rams fans are nihilists, dude, so discount them.) Talk to Bengals fans, former St. Louis Rams fans, Arsenal f...
Are we sure that defense still wins championships?
The saying goes, “Offense sells tickets. Defense wins championships.” Having a flashy offense with a quarterback who can throw the ball 80 yards through the air is great and all, but a defensive unit that can counteract those talents is arguably more valuable, or at least you’d think....
Dan Snyder knows no shame
Under Dan Snyder’s stewardship, the Washed Football Team has become a tired, dull reflection of the burgundy and gold of old. Each offseason is replete with a stream of allegations, controversies, and criminal investigations. Oh, and the team is rudderless....
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf deserves an apology
Now that the NBA’s social justice pomp and circumstance have faded away, it’s past time the league officially apologized to former player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf....
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...
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. ...
The NFL knew Alvin Kamara was a suspect in a Vegas police investigation before Sunday’s Pro Bowl, but let him play anyway
Contrary to what the NFL would like you to believe, they aren’t always the most upstanding, law-abiding group of individuals. I’m not only referring to players, but the people running these organizations all the way up to ownership....
I know just the coach for Auburn
The writing is on the wall for Bryan Harsin at Auburn, to the point where Paul Finebaum is openly speculating about Hugh Freeze coming in from Liberty — after five years of SEC exile — to take the Tigers job....
The Senior Bowl ceased public weigh-ins that resemble slave auctions the same week Brian Flores filed his lawsuit against the NFL
Back in the era of slavery — which wasn’t as long ago as racists, conservatives, and the GOP would like you to believe — Black bodies would be stripped naked, or close to it, and put on the auction block where they were sold to the highest white bidders. Their height, weight, skin color, sexual orga...
The Bengals are in the Super Bowl, but don’t expect them to pick up a check in L.A.
The Cincinnati Bengals have overcome quite a bit of adversity to get to Super Bowl LVI. They had to claw their way to an AFC North championship after some bad regular-season losses, including the infamous 400-yard Mike White game against the New York Jets, followed by getting smoked by Cleveland Bro...
Odell Beckham Jr. to the New England Patriots, that was nearly a thing
There was no force on earth that would’ve stopped the Buffalo Bills from dragging the New England Patriots up and down the field during that 47-17 Wild-Card beatdown. But maybe that’s not the Patriots’ first-round opponent if they were able to land Odell Beckham Jr. after he was released by the Clev...