tldr Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

FanSided, <i>Sports Illustrated's</i> Slimy Appendage, Reeks Of Exploitation
In 2015, Time Inc., the listing titan of 20th-century publishing, bought FanSided—a network of more than 300 sport- and team-centric blogs producing the sort of easily digestible and SEO-friendly posts that exist purely to show up near the top in Google searches—and attached it to their legacy publi...

There's Nothing Candid About LeBron's <i>The Shop</i>
When you’re watching porn, especially one of those gauzy-lensed sensual ones, you generally do not find yourself thinking, Boy, that porn star fellow must be quite the gentleman at home....

The Big Ugly Battle Over The World's Largest Rubber Duck
SANDUSKY, Ohio — There is more than one enormous rubber duck. I did not know this when I decided to travel to Sandusky to see one, but I can’t unlearn it now. Though there was once a bigger duck in Saint-Nazaire, France, the monstrosity anchored in Sandusky comes with a registered trademark: it is t...

Sex, Steroids, And Arnold: The Story Of The Gym That Shaped America
When did the modern-day fitness movement really begin in the U.S.? ...

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...

Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields
Baseball consensus holds that umpires only get noticed when they make a bad call. Steve Fields’ career as a major league ump was bookended by two calls that put him in the spotlight. But he went to his grave insisting both were right....

The Sherpa Of New York
“This was the original price,” Serap Jangbu Sherpa assured them as he pulled down a waterproof jacket from the rafters, “but now you get 35 percent discount.”...

SafeSport, The USOC's Attempt To Stop Child Abuse, Is Set Up To Fail—Just Like It Was Supposed To
As he was questioned by lawyers in 2015 over and over again about what he did and did not know about sexual abuse suffered by Olympic athletes, then-U.S. Olympic Committee lawyer Gary Johansen made a choice. No matter the question, no matter which lawyer asked it, Johansen did not say “child abuse,”...

Brooke Shields's Sweetness Was Matched Only By Her Denial
Originally published as “Brooke on the Brink” in the October, 1990 issue of New York Woman, this profile appears here with the author’s permission....

Fox's John Strong Is America's Voice For An America-Free World Cup
John Strong was eating at Jake’s Famous Crawfish, a Portland, Oregon institution since 1892, when Portland Timbers President of Business Mike Golub offered him his dream job. Strong, who was 25 years old at the time, jumped at the chance to become the voice of his hometown soccer team as it moved up...

The Fight For Peace Has Never Been Easy
This piece is part of a recurring series that aims to be a complete guide to the laws of war. You can read previous entries here....

What It Meant To Be Young And Homeless In Old New York
This feature originally appeared as “The Young and the Homeless” in the September, 1987 issue of New York Woman, and appears here with the author’s permission....

What Are The Laws Of War, And Why Do They Matter?
There are laws in war....

Down And Out With Art Schlichter, Football God Turned Con Man
Originally published as “The Long, Slow Fall of a Gridiron God” in the December, 1988 issue of GQ, this profile appears here with the author’s permission....

What I Found At The Bottom Of My Father's Huge Collection Of Baseball Stuff
“Did he still have The Brooks Room?” one of my dad’s old friends asked me at his wake last July. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the question that day. The Brooks Room was what his friends called the small basement room in Queens where he kept his collection of baseball cards, programs, figures, ...

The Legend Of Mitch Green
A note before starting: This piece contains a lot of conversations that took place many years ago. They’re not word-for-word quotes, but they are pretty motherfucking close. The phone answering machine messages are exactly what was spoken....

Your Guide To The CONIFA World Cup, The World Cup For Not-Quite-Countries<em></em>
LONDON — “We have nothing against FIFA,” CONIFA General Secretary Sascha Düerkop told a tittering press corps on Wednesday. We were all sitting in the basement of a student accommodation block in North London. “They are very great to learn how not to do things.” ...

The NCAA Is Running Out Of Excuses On Brain Injuries
When it was time to change her husband Greg’s diaper, Deb Ploetz followed a routine. First, she would lead him to the bathroom of their rental house in North Little Rock, Arkansas, where they had moved to in February of 2015—in part to be closer to Deb’s family, and in part because memory care facil...

How An Inner-City Minnesota High School Built a Girls’ Badminton Dynasty
Bao Nhia Thao is maybe 5-foot-2, with an enigmatic smile—smooth and benign. ...

SB Nation Is Still Exploiting Workers, But In A Kinder, Gentler Way
In the nine months since Deadspin reported on how SB Nation’s business model relies on underpaying and not paying workers across its sprawling empire of more than 300 sports sites—“team sites,” as the jargon goes—bosses at SB Nation and its parent company, Vox Media, have put in a lot of work to mak...