scandals Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

'No Reason To Expect This Would Happen,' Says School Who Hired Rick Pitino, As Coach Faces Fresh NCAA Charges
You get what you pay for — and Rick Pitino isn’t worth the hassle....

Report: Adidas Allegedly Funneled Money To Families Of DeAndre Ayton And Dennis Smith Jr.
The more reports you read from the ongoing wire fraud case against three Adidas representatives, the more it becomes obvious that the world of basketball recruiting is churning with cash, such that the only reason anyone inside of it could conceivably resist paying college athletes officially is to ...

Brandeis Cleans House After Investigation Into Basketball Coaching Abuse
After four months, the external investigative team hired to look into multiple accounts of coaching abuse at Brandeis University determined that former men’s basketball head coach Brian Meehan’s abusive behavior did indeed go on unimpeded by athletic department and university leadership for years, a...

Judge Dismisses Rick Pitino's Emotional Distress Lawsuit Against Adidas
Rick Pitino’s emotional distress lawsuit against Adidas—truly a bold “vehicle for proving that he had nothing to do with Adidas’ outrageous, wrongful, and illegal conspiracy” to put good basketball players onto his basketball team—was dismissed Tuesday by the U.S. District Court judge for the Wester...

Éric Abidal Denies Claim That Barcelona Bought Him A Black-Market Liver
Former Barcelona defender Éric Abidal has denied that his old club president bought him an illegal liver for a transplant he had in 2012, after a report from the Spanish paper El Confidencial cited recorded conversations submitted in court implying that this was the case....

Report: EPA Head Scott Pruitt Used His Position To Get 50-Yard-Line Seats For The Rose Bowl
I find myself more impressed than anything by EPA head Scott Pruitt’s venality. Sure, the man is corrupt. But he’s corrupt in ways no one had ever even conceived of before! The man’s unflagging creativity in graft is inspiring, in its gross way, and his drive is something to behold. For the rest of ...

Japanese College Football World Rocked After Player Reveals He Was Ordered To Injure Opposing QB
A single dirty hit in a college football game three weeks ago has become a such a scandal in Japan that the perpetrator held a nationally televised press conference today to explain himself. ...

It Took Five Years Of Complaints About Racism For Brandeis To Fire Its Basketball Coach
Last Thursday, Brandeis University fired head basketball coach Brian Meehan, citing a series of discrimination complaints from players. The firing was announced just days after Deadspin contacted Brandeis for comment on a number of specific allegations made against Meehan by a group of former player...

Brandeis Suspends Athletic Director Who Failed To Act When A Coach Told A Player He'd Ship Him Back To Africa<em></em>
A day after Brandeis fired men’s basketball head coach Brian Meehan in an attempt to beat us to the punch, the university placed athletic director Lynne Dempsey on leave and announced the hiring a pair of attorneys to conduct an internal review....

"The Most Dangerous Man In College Basketball" Dodged FBI Charges By Pocketing Money Meant For Athletes<em></em>
Brad Augustine was described and profiled by Yahoo! Sports as “the most dangerous man in college basketball” just six months ago; now, that dangerous man is skating on any punishment for his alleged crimes....

Why Cricket's Ball-Tampering Scandal Is Such A Big Deal
You’ve heard by now that the Australian men’s Test cricket team were caught ball-tampering in a match against South Africa. Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera scuffing the surface of the match ball with a piece of sandpaper, and tried to hide the evidence when informed that he’d been filmed in th...

Judge Overseeing College Basketball Corruption Case Would Like Everyone To Stop The Dang Leaks
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos has officially had it with the leaks coming out of the FBI’s ongoing pay-for-play case against various college basketball programs....

Is There A Good Reason To Doubt ESPN's Sean Miller Report?
Last Friday, ESPN published a big piece by Mark Schlabach that revealed the FBI had recorded phone conversations between Arizona head coach Sean Miller and sports agency runner Christian Dawkins in which they devised a pay-for-play scheme....

How Much Sympathy Does Tonya Harding Deserve?
When Allison Janney won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Tonya Harding’s mother LaVona Golden in I, Tonya, she made sure to shout out Harding, who sat in the audience that night. This was not just a passing thought. Janney praised many things about Harding, whom sh...

Rick Pitino Files $35 Million Suit Against Louisville For Breach Of Contract
After getting fired by the University of Louisville in October, Rick Pitino has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the University of breach of contract. Pitino is asking for damages of over $35 million, which he says is the full remaining unpaid amount on his contract that ran until 2026....

Deadspin Awards: Best Scandal
The Deadspin Awards are this month, and you can come! We also need our readers to decide the winners of these prestigious honors. Today, we ask you to help us determine the answer to an important question: What is the best sports scandal?...

Man, Is There Something Sketchy About These World Series Baseballs
So it’s still Game 5 of the World Series, and we’ve already reached the all-time record for home runs. There’s something very, very wrong with these baseballs. Further evidence follows:...

Report: Florida Believes It Can Fire Jim McElwain With Cause Over Death Threat Allegations
Edward Aschoff and Mark Schlabach are reporting at ESPN today that University of Florida administrators are working out how to fire head football coach Jim McElwain without paying his $12 million buyout, with sources telling the Worldwide Leader that McElwain’s claims of death threats against his fa...

The NCAA Finally Got The Lawsuit It Deserved, And The One It Wanted
“The schools are, in a way, the victims.”...

Red Sox Bosses Don't Like It When You Call Them To Chat About The Team's Sign-Stealing Scheme<em></em>
This morning, a day after news broke that the Red Sox allegedly used technology to steal signs from the Yankees, I called up executives from both teams to ask about how the smartwatch-assisted, sign-stealing operation came to be and what they thought would and should happen next....