state Page 23 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
XFL, USFL wisely begin talks to merge leagues
Nearly everything Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has touched over the past 20 years in sports & entertainment has turned into gold. His Midas touch began in pro wrestling behind Vince McMahon and the WWF/WWE, then carried over to the big screen in Hollywood. Johnson revamped McMahon’s twice-failed XFL pr...
Name something dumber than Jay Norvell talking smack about Deion Sanders
This week, ESPN’s College GameDay is setting up shop in Boulder, Colo., for Prime University’s cakewalk contest against Colorado State. Colorado are 23-point favorites, but the Worldwide Leader needs a reason to hop onto the Deion bandwagon before it loses steam once the schedule toughens up. Even b...
Michigan State should not benefit from Mel Tucker, but it will
Secretly, the grossest thing about this Mel Tucker scandal — outside of all the unverifiable tips being sent to the Deadspin general email — is that Michigan State might actually benefit from its own incompetence. Tucker would be owed an $80 million buyout if he were fired for being an abhorrent foo...
Here is what we kind of learned from the USMNT’s week
As we and many others stress, international friendlies are weird. Especially when everyone has to fly over from Europe for two games that don’t count for anything while trying to not get hurt. And for the USMNT, there weren’t really too many players trying to carve out a role, or a bigger role, with...
Michigan State thinks the answer to another public sexual misconduct scandal is more Mark Dantonio
In February 2020, Mark Dantonio — by far the most successful football coach in Michigan State’s history — retired. The stress of managing 120 student-athletes every year wore on him, Dantonio said. He wanted to make his life less complicated, so he was stepping away from football and East Lansing....
LeBron James is Team USA’s shadow GM and possibly its next director
LeBron James is back to doing what he does best, flexing those roster construction muscles as the league’s greatest shadow GM. According to Shams Charania and Joe Vardon’s report in The Athletic, an effort to recruit Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, Jayson Tatum and Draymond Green, is being...
Mel Tucker was the highest-paid Black coach in college football history — he blew it because he’s a creep
Two years ago, Mel Tucker blazed a trail for Black head coaches. One day ago, Mel Tucker set them back....
![Michigan State's Mel Tucker has been suspended [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/662f342034a41f1815def2e3503f5c03.jpg)
Michigan State's Mel Tucker has been suspended [Updated]
[Updated at 4:17 pm ET] The Title IX investigation into sexual harassment claims against head football coach Mel Tucker has been ongoing since December of 2022, but it only took a few hours of media scrutiny for MSU to decide to discipline him. Funny how that works....
Donald Trump, Ron Desantis in Ames for the ‘Cases Pending Kickoff Classic’
Former president, and current defendant, Donald Trump is attending the Iowa-Iowa State game today, where he’ll watch two schools — with current and former players under investigation, or accepting plea deals for gambling — face off. Oh, and Meatball Ron Desantis will be in attendance as well, as the...
Oh right, Gregg Berhalter returns to USMNT this weekend
Mostly, the international break is just a water break for fans. Qualification for various tournaments doesn’t really matter until the end, or to a handful of countries on the bubble, if it matters at all. That’s doubly true for the USMNT, who don’t have anything to play for and anyone to play right ...
If the shootings at UVA couldn’t change gun laws, nothing will
America has its favorites — football, guns, and racism. Charlottesville, Virginia, has all three....
Dillon Brooks and Luka Dončić take NBA antics international
NBA players can’t help themselves sometimes, even while playing under international rules. Canada played Slovenia in a FIBA World Cup matchup Wednesday morning, with the Canadians coming out on top, 100-89. Multiple NBA players headlined this game — mainly for Team Canada — but once Luka Dončić (Slo...
Mark Cuban is the hero America needs (on Xwitter)
Sometimes, in life, you don’t get the hero you want, but you get the hero you need. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks — an organization that has been embroiled in ongoing sexual misconduct allegations for the last several years — is best known for either his role on the wildly popular Shark ...
Mel Tucker gets paid too much to be this cavalier with his players
The college football season is back, and with it, negligent and dangerous coaching decisions. In East Lansing on Friday, senior receiver Alante Brown was knocked out while blocking on the first kickoff of the game. He was carted off, but somehow managed to return to action, taking a kick 16 yards be...
Team USA must play like this for the rest of the FIBA World Cup
Americans don’t care when Team USA wins non-gold medal games. But they do give a damn if they lose them....
Julie Ertz, the USWNT’s most irreplaceable player, retires
I’m a sucker for a midfielder. Especially one like Julie Ertz. It’s not that I played there or anything. It’s just something about a player who sees all the angles on both sides of the ball before being anywhere near it that gets me, I think. Xabi Alonso is my favorite Liverpool player of all time. ...
Maybe Noah Lyles was right about the NBA after all
The NBA announced Wednesday morning that the Dallas Mavericks will take on Euro League champions Real Madrid in a preseason exhibition on Oct. 10 in Spain. It isn’t unusual for the NBA to send teams to other countries for games before the start of the regular season, but this announcement’s timing ...
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson has taken quite a star turn during the FIBA World Championships
It was a long shot for Jordan to qualify for the second round at the 2023 FIBA World Championships. They are 0-3 through three games and were throttled by USA, 110-62. However, through the defeats a player bloomed. The leading scorer in the FIBA World Cup is, unsurprisingly, Luka Dončić at 30 points...
HBO's 'BS High' doc is somehow more truthful than 'Swamp Kings'
I normally have a firm policy against critiquing any work that I have not entirely consumed. That is an edict that I was almost completely comfortable breaking away from as soon as I saw the trailer for Netflix’s Swamp Kings. Everything in it suggests a somewhat compelling watch, except for the firs...
Christian Pulisic is having fun
If you’ve found yourself lost on soccer Twitter the past week, and it is a haven for the truly wayward as we’ve all had our brains addled by too many pre-dawn wakeups and day beers, you’ve probably seen a lot of “Pulisic is so back!” tweets and hashtags. Whether Pulisic is actually “back” is another...