pe Page 715 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Canadian Super Bowl Broadcaster Forced To Air Stupid American Ads For Free<em></em>

This morning, a spokesman for Bell Media announced that the company would be laying off an undisclosed amount of workers at over two dozen locations. With over 6,000 employees, Bell is Canada’s largest media company. They are the parent company of Canadian sports giant TSN and they have broadcast pa...

Science! Shows That Roger Federer's Backhand In Fact Defeated Rafael Nadal

Yesterday we argued that Federer’s unusually strong backhand anchored his Australian Open win over Rafael Nadal, and today we found a startling statistical basis for that claim. It comes courtesy of the always helpful Jeff Sackmann at TennisAbstract. Relative to other sports, tennis remains fairly d...

The Case Of Kyle Shanahan's Missing Backpack Has Been Solved

Kyle Shanahan is about to coach in the biggest game of his career. He might need his playbook this weekend, but he lost it after the backpack he was carrying it around in at NFL media day got nabbed! Who could have pulled off such a dastardly caper?...

A Certain Fancy Dog Might Not Share That Opinion

Roger Federer Played Free And Gave His Archrival The Back Of His Hand<em></em>

“I’m a different player due to Rafa’s presence,” Roger Federer said in a 2015 press conference, and if you needed it, yesterday’s 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 Australian Open win offered the clearest possible evidence. When your defensive-genius nemesis applies crushing pressure on you for more than a de...

"A Kick In The Ass" For Labor: A Union Leader Considers The Age Of Trump

Stuart Appelbaum, the head of the most powerful retail workers union in America, swears he is optimistic. Why? ...

Oh, God, The King Cake Baby Is Out In The Wild Again Today

New Orleans’s favorite nightmare demon infant is out roaming the streets once again—that’s right, the King Cake Baby is at the city’s annual King Cake Fest today....

Roger Federer Wins Australian Open For First Grand Slam Title In Five Years

Thirty-five-year old Roger Federer took down old rival Rafael Nadal in five sets to win the Australian Open—his 18th Grand Slam title, but his first in five years. ...

Serena Williams Is No. 1 Again

In terms of what it actually was, Serena Williams’s Australian Open victory was fairly straightforward; in terms of what it means, it’s totally overwhelming....

Lawsuit: Baylor Football Players Committed 52 Rapes In Four Years Under Art Briles

Baylor football players committed 52 rapes in four years, the majority at off-campus parties hosted by football players, including five gang rapes; the university paid off one woman who said she was raped by giving her free tuition; and football staff arranged for women to have sex with recruits on ...

Oh God The Knicks Are Going To Screw This Melo Shit Up So Completely, I Can't Wait

The Los Angeles Clippers are wounded—literally!—and in trouble. Chris Paul’s out for at least five more weeks with an injured thumb; Blake Griffin only just returned from a knee injury that kept him out of 18 games. They’ve lost three of four, and to some real dogs: the Wolves, Nuggets, and 76ers. T...

Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Will Face Off In A Throwback Australian Open Final

This photo’s from 2005—they were about to meet in a Grand Slam for the first time, the 2005 French Open, a semifinal match Rafael Nadal won before claiming the title, his first of many. They’d then spend about a decade at the top of the game, sucking up all the available oxygen, dominating all major...

Old Man Federer Survives To Reach Australian Open Final

Thirty-five-year-old Roger Federer sputtered his way to the championship round of the Australian Open. Though his all-Swiss semifinal against Stan Wawrinka looked like a gutsy struggle on paper—five sets! 7-5, 6-3, 1-6, 4-6, 6-3!—it actually lasted just over three hours, and the two major inflection...

Venus Williams Is Very, Very Happy To Be In The Final Of The Australian Open [Updated]

All evidence suggests that 36-year-old Venus Williams is feeling good about reaching the final of the Australian Open. She defeated CoCo Vandeweghe 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-2 to become the oldest women in a Grand Slam final since Martina Navratilova in 1994....

Now It's Just Rafael Nadal And A Bunch Of Gorgeous One-Handers

Rafael Nadal dug around and exploited two glitches in the Milos Raonic serving machine—two successfully converted break points, that is—to win his Australian Open quarterfinal 6-4, 7-6 (7), 6-4. And now he’s surveying a field full of the prettiest one-handed backhands in all the land. Roger Federer’...

Usain Bolt Just Lost A Gold Medal

Usain Bolt and the rest of Jamaica’s 4 x 100m relay team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics have been stripped of their gold medals after a stored doping sample from one of the runners, Nesta Carter, tested positive for a banned stimulant....

These DeAndre Jordan Free Throws Are High Art

DeAndre Jordan stands to have his production decline as much as anyone on the Clippers in Chris Paul’s absence. Jordan is Paul’s primary alley-oop muse, and his offensive rebounding skills are a lot less handy without Paul’s penetration. However, that has nothing to do with Jordan airmailing two fre...

Venus Williams Becomes Oldest Woman To Ever Reach Australian Open Semifinals

Venus Williams, aged 36, ranked No. 17, hasn’t dropped a single set en route to the semifinals at the Australian Open. Her 6-4, 7-6 (3) win over No. 27 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova made her the oldest woman in the Open era to run this deep into this tournament. ...

It's Time To Speculate About Peyton Manning's Political Aspirations

Now that Peyton Manning, the ad pitchman and NFL quarterback, has retired from one of his two day jobs, it’s natural to wonder what comes next. He’s still making a string of commercials, but he hasn’t made much visible progress toward finding new football-based employment. Jay Glazer reported earlie...

Stan Wawrinka Drained Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's Will To Live

The notion of athletes “wanting it more” than one another must be one of the most insufferably inane tropes of sports analysis, but halfway through an Australian Open match between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Stan Wawrinka the commentators began flinging it, and at some point it actually began to stick. ...