that Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Year In Fans Running Onto The Field: A Video
Is there anything more life-affirming than watching a fan—likely drunk, possibly naked, probably a moron—jump a barrier and dash onto a field in the middle of a sporting event? The responsible authoritarians who run the TV networks won't show you these occasional bursts of the anarchic spirit, but...

This Guy Died This Year: Shrek, The Unshearable Sheep
There is only meaning in life if there is revelation in death. Billions of generations have come and gone, and most are meaningless for the purposes of the living if we can't take some sort of lesson from their brief time on earth. It's why we scour the obituaries and mourn the famous and infamous a...

This Guy Died This Year: Bil Keane, Comics Paterfamilias
Bil Keane was known, among his fellow professional cartoonists, as a funny, funny man. His life's work, in The Family Circus, was to hide that fact from as many people as possible. Day after day, decade after decade, The Family Circus delivered the mildest gags imaginable—observational humor minus t...

The 11 Worst Grantland Long Reads Of 2011
11. Wesley Morris, "On Brady's Hair"...

ShortCenter Special: The Best Of Herm Edwards Being Completely Unhinged
Or maybe the worst. Either way, Herm Edwards has certainly set himself apart from the rest of the SportsCenter gang with his firm convictions, bizarre tangents, and generally unhinged behavior. Here is a collection of some primo Herm moments from his SportsCenter appearances this fall....

The 50 Most Popular Deadspin Posts Of 2011
Transparency time. Here are the 50 or so most popular Deadspin posts from 2011, ranked in order, beginning with the year's most popular. The list has a little of everything: sports, fights, sex, fights about sex, sex during sporting events, and whatever it was Glen Rice did with Sarah Palin in the c...

Get To Know Norris Cole (That Guy Playing Point Guard For The Heat)
The NBA season started on Sunday, and the whole thing has been predictably disorienting. Vince Carter is now fat and on the Mavs bench? Who knew?...

30 Paragraphs About 30 Teams From The Basketball Prospectus Guide To The Truncated NBA Season
The following is an abridged preview of an abridged NBA season, culled from the team chapters of the ever-incisive Pro Basketball Prospectus. Buy the book as a PDF for $9.98. ...

When You Get Cocky In An MMA Gym, You Get Beat Down
Matthew Polly has never been a man for half-measures. When he wanted to learn kung fu, he left college for two years to live and train in the famous Shaolin Temple in China. Polly wrote an excellent book about the experience. His new book, Tapped Out, follows Polly on another two-year journey as the...

And Then Al Michaels Said To Howard Cosell: "You're Drunk. You're Ruining The Fucking Telecast."
Howard Cosell, who died in 1995, ruled sports broadcasting from the 1960s until the 1980s. He commentated on Monday Night Football from its inception, called boxing's biggest fights, and popped up on Olympics and baseball telecasts, too. In his new book, Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Tra...

Penn State AD Tim Curley Will No Longer Receive Award For Nation's Top College Athletics Administrator
Penn State athletic director Tim Curley—currently on an administrative leave as the investigation into Jerry Sandusky's alleged child abuse continues—was awarded with the nation's top honor for a college athletics administrator back in June. The National Football Foundation (NFF), which administers ...

How A Comedian Helped Birth The "F-You" Patriots
Back in September 2007, the Patriots were caught taping the Jets' defensive signals on the sideline. This was week one, after the Patriots beat the Jets, 38-14. The next 15 games—all of which the Patriots won—were blowouts a lot like that, but with a venomous edge. In his new book, War Room, which h...

JaVale McGee To Become The Latest Non-Filipino On The Philippines National Basketball Team (UPDATE)
The Philippines is a nation crazy about basketball. Sick of always losing to China in the FIBA Asia Championships, which act as qualifiers for the Olympics and World Championships, the country has taken advantage of some lax laws on citizenship to stock their team with talent from around the world. ...

"An Olympics Without Black Athletes": Martin Luther King Jr., John Carlos, And The Boycott That Wasn't
John Carlos is best known as the man who, along with Tommie Smith, raised a clenched fist—the Black Power salute—on the medal stand after the 200 meter race. Carlos took bronze, and Smith gold, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But that moment was a culmination of months of political discussion amon...

Progress! Rick Reilly Is Now Ripping Off Writers Who Are Not Rick Reilly
"The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa," by S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated, Jan. 31, 2011. "Aliquippa's Silver Lining," by Rick Reilly, ESPN.com, Oct. 17, 2011....

A List Of Places Where Brett Favre Is Also Not Going, Yet
There is a special moment in the news cycle during which outlets report on things that are not happening, but that maybe could happen, but that also could not not happen because it would be so interesting if they did happen. Do you follow?...

Wrongfully Imprisoned Man Wins His Pro-Boxing Debut At 52, Retires Undefeated
Despite the apparent disgrace that was last night's Hopkins/Dawson "fight," it wasn't an altogether horrendous evening for the "sport" of boxing. Take 52-year-old Dewey Bozella's professional debut against an 0-3 palooka named Larry Hopkins (ironic, but no relation)....

This Photo Of Dominick Cruz's Surgically Repaired Hand Is HOLY SHIT LOOK HOW BIG AND GROSS IT LOOKS
Cruz, UFC's bantamweight champion, broke his right hand en route to earning a unanimous decision against Demetrious Johnson on Oct. 1. He finally got around to having surgery on the hand this week, and our stomachs are all grateful to him for posting what it looked like the following day on Twitter...

Stories That Don't Suck: Hunter Thompson On Al Davis
Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear And Loathing At The Super Bowl" essay ran in the Feb. 15, 1973 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. In it, Thompson chronicles a pair of encounters with the general manager and "de facto owner" of the Raiders....

"I Ain't No Damned Monkey On A String": The Sadness Of Sweetness After Super Bowl XX
Today the 1985 Chicago Bears were finally honored at the White House—25 years after their 46-10 romp over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX. (The original trip was canceled because of the Challenger explosion.) That Super Bowl was memorable for many reasons—the headbands of Jim McMahon, the ...