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The Athletic Fails To Raid The <i>Washington Post</i> Sports Desk
The Athletic, the venture capital-backed digital sports media venture that’s plundering sportswriters from news organizations all over the country and has said it wants to brutally kill newspapers, finally announced on Monday that it is turning its gaze to Washington, D.C. The company’s voracious r...

This Is How You Erase A Woman From Her Own Story
Courtney Smith has said, repeatedly, that she feared her ex-husband, Zach. She said he physically and emotionally abused her, in court documents, to police officers in two different states, to two reporters, including one interview on camera, and now to Ohio State investigators. All this became publ...

Here Are The Key Details From Ohio State's Investigation Of Urban Meyer<em></em>
At a little before 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, Ohio State released a “summary of findings” into what investigators found happened regarding domestic violence in the home of Courtney and Zach Smith while Zach Smith was an assistant football coach for the university, as well as what head football coac...

OSU Investigation: Urban Meyer Talked About Deleting Text Messages After Brett McMurphy Report
According to the newly released summary of findings from Ohio State’s investigation into Urban Meyer, the OSU coach had a “concerning” first reaction to reports that he and his wife, Shelley, were both aware of Courtney Smith’s allegations of Zach Smith’s abuse in 2015. After Brett McMurphy publishe...

The NCAA Will Use A New Metric To Screw Your Team Out Of The Tournament
RPI, the long-bemoaned metric used to determine who’s in and who’s out of the NCAA tournament for the past 37 years, is dead. ...

Tanking Master Bernard Tomic Is Back On His Bullshit
After what feels like an eternity of emotionally disintegrating in public, Bernard Tomic is somehow only 25 years old, with plenty of talent to spare, and was as recently as last season a top-30 player on tour. This season he’s been fighting to qualify for the majors, though the tortured former No. ...

Papa John Has Created A Blog To Rally His Fans, Of Which There Are Many
Papa John, the person, has constructed his latest weapon against Papa John’s, the pizza company: the blog. ...

Outgoing Transfer Accuses Texas A&M Of A Boatload Of NCAA Violations
The NCAA’s new transfer waiver rule lets players make the case that they should be allowed to play right away at their new schools, so long as their transfer was triggered by hardships beyond their control. Holding aside, for the moment, that requiring a waiver in the first place is bogus and unfair...

UFC Fighter Bryce Mitchell Drilled His Nuts Apart
“So i was gunna train today but i ripped my nutsack in half,” begins a Homeric Facebook post by UFC featherweight Bryce Mitchell. This is the “A screaming comes across the sky” of our time. ...

Joanna Warmington Becomes Latest Female Ex-Coach To Accuse UMD Of Harassment And Discrimination
University of Minnesota Duluth women’s cross country and track and field coach Joanna Warmington announced her resignation on Monday in a letter published by the Duluth News Tribune. In the letter, Warmington slams UMD for what she says are violations of both Minnesota law and Title IX, while descri...

Clueless Ref Nearly Allows MMA Fighter To Be Choked To Death
The main event of this weekend’s Demolidor Fight event in Brazil ended with one of the scariest things you will ever see in combat sports. In the third round of Melquizael Costa’s and Rafael Barbosa’s featherweight title fight, Barbosa locked in a standing choke and grappled Costa to the ground. He ...

Mike Lombardi Wrote Doug Pederson A Letter Apologizing For Being A Dummy
Football Knower Mike Lombardi infamously said that Eagles head coach Doug Pederson was “less qualified to coach a team than anyone I’ve ever seen” before the start of last season. Pederson went on to win the goddamn Super Bowl, and Lombardi has been eating crow ever since. Today, Pederson served him...

All It Takes To Make A 49ers Game Fun Is A $12,500-A-Year Field-Level Leather Recliner<em></em><em></em>
A floor seat at a basketball game has a powerful cultural weight. It helps that it’s the best and most exciting way to watch a basketball game, but it’s appeal goes beyond that. Those seats are where celebrities and investors go to see the game and be seen watching that game—a badge of wealth and pr...

New ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro Is Ready To Roll Over For The NFL
After five months in charge at ESPN, company president Jimmy Pitaro got up in front of a bunch of reporters on Friday and revealed his big new vision for the network. Based on Piatro’s comments, ESPN will stride boldly into the future by sticking to sports and playing lapdog for the NFL....

Holy Shit, The Athletic Just Swiped A Bunch Of NFL Beat Writers
The Athletic is committed to pulverizing newspapers, and it brought out the sledgehammer today. The site announced the launch of six new localized verticals plus additional football coverage in four cities in which it already had a presence:...

Taekwondo Coach Reinstated By SafeSport Following Brief Ban Over "Decades Long Pattern Of Sexual Misconduct"
Jean Lopez—the former U.S. taekwondo coach who was banned in April 2018 following a report from SafeSport that described “a decades long pattern of sexual misconduct by an older athlete/coach abusing his power to groom, manipulate and, ultimately, sexually abuse younger female athletes”—will be rein...

You'll Never Guess What Alabama Plans To Spend Another $600 Million On
You almost have to respect the University of Alabama for so boldly and dickishly doubling down on the extreme inequality that plagues college athletics, without even the slightest care for the awful optics of their decadence. Almost. ...

Athletic Writer Throws Fit Over Rhode Island Not Giving Into Stadium Financing Scheme
A hot new sports media startup may not be the place you’d expect to find a braindead take lifted straight from a dead-tree columnist’s 1996 notebook, but then you remember that The Athletic, in its quest to destroy all print sports sections, did hire plenty of middle-aged white guys. One of those gu...

There's No Bad Idea Like A Sports Bad Idea<em></em>
It is a harsh truth, but an undeniable one: If it weren’t for bad ideas, we would not have anything to talk about on the Deadcast. In point of fact, if it were not for bad ideas the Deadcast itself would not even exist. But while our world is currently much worse off for all the bad ideas that curre...

Keith Hernandez Has Some Takes On Jose Ureña Beaning Red Hot Ronald Acuña
The Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. has been raking as of late, hitting .471/.514/1.235 (!) over his last eight games, with eight homers over that time frame. He’s also led off with a homer in each of his last three games against the Marlins. In some players’ Weird Baseball Logic, that means, accordingly, ...