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Sportswriter Frank Deford Is Taking Your Questions In The Comments Now
Frank Deford, of SI, Real Sports, NPR, The National, and many bestsellers, is in the comments now. He's written a new book called Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter. It's funny and folksy and evocative of a different era in sportswriting. Read our excerpt for a taste, then buy the damn book....

David Stern Doesn't Really Give A Shit About Flopping
The short answer is, there's no short answer to flopping. It's nearly impossible to legislate intent, except in the most egregious of cases. Soccer has long failed to address even the glaring dives, and the NHL's embellishment penalties are often more controversial than the plays that don't get whis...

Dead Letters: Maurkice Pouncey Stole My Buddy's Trashcan (Plus: Lots And Lots Of Hate Mail!)
Subject: So, my bud is neighbors with Maurkice Pouncey and his trashcan went missing yesterday...

Cockblocked By A Washing Machine!
Welcome to Great Moments in Drunken Hookup Failure, where we showcase four heartwarming true stories of drunken love gone horribly awry. Off we go....

Sacha Baron Cohen Doesn't Know You're Tired of Him
One of the surest signs you've become a successful comedian is that a lot of people absolutely can't stand your shtick. When you're starting out in standup or as a performer, you're desperate to get noticed, but you also have the time to hone your act and experiment and figure out your unique thing,...

Here Are The Best Entries In Our Drunk, Sulking Patrick Kane Photoshop Contest
This fine entry kicked off our Patrick Kane photoshop contest, but somehow we knew our wise readers had more in store. And you did not disappoint. I've picked the best ones here—with special commendation for our winner at the end—because we can cram only so many images into a gallery, but keep in mi...

Everything You Need To Know About Sarah Phillips, Former ESPN Columnist And Social-Media Scammer
Last week, we published a long story about Sarah Phillips, the ESPN columnist who, among other things, used her connections to the Worldwide Leader to hijack a teenager's Facebook venture. The story developed quickly from there, getting progressively more complicated as more tipsters came forward wi...

Summer Is The Goddamn Worst
May has started, which means that we're quickly running out of May and I don't want May to end because that means summer is here and OH FUCK GOD PLEASE NOT AGAIN....

Reconstructing Patrick Kane's Drunken Weekend In Madison, With Eyewitness Testimony
On Monday we showed you photos of a soused Patrick Kane in Madison, Wis., and then we asked you if you knew more about what happened while Kane was there. We had heard some bad stories—that Kane supposedly choked a woman, that Kane supposedly said anti-Semitic things—and we wanted to know if other p...

Before Steve Kerr Sends 19-Year-Old Players Back To College, He Should Try Some Academic Research Himself
Former NBA star Steve Kerr penned a lengthy, multi-sectioned argument in Grantland this week in which he not only defends the NBA's current ban on players under age 19 but pushes for the minimum age to be raised to 20. Forcing young people to spend more time as scholar-athletes, according to Kerr, ...

A Special Graduation Message To The Class Of 2012
I had a long drive home the night that I found out my son was in grave danger of being born too early. Not long in the sense of distance, but long in an existential way, the way that a minute spent waiting in a dentist's office is far longer than a minute spent hooking up with someone for the first ...

Tim Burton Bottoms Out. <em>Dark Shadows</em>, Reviewed.
1. How was there ever a time that we considered Tim Burton weird? He certainly isn't weird now—give this guy a slight haircut and he's essentially an insurance salesman—but in retrospect, knowing the bloated, self-satisfied cookie-cutter hack Burton turned out to be makes one wonder what all the exc...

Everybody Loved Grantland
Excerpted from Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter....

Better Know An Umpire: Brian Knight
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...

Down And Out In Baseball's Indie Leagues; Or, What Made Tommy John Want To Rake The Infield?
A dispatch from our correspondent with the Bridgeport Bluefish, an unaffiliated team in the Atlantic League....

Bristolmetrics: <em>SportsCenter</em> Said "Fire Extinguisher" More Times Than "Kobe Bryant" Last Week
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....

Better Know An Umpire: Jim Joyce
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...

How Bobcat Goldthwait Became A True Artist Of Independent Cinema. (Seriously.)
Bobcat Goldthwait, in almost every possible fashion, belongs on the list of those creatures who could only have come of celebrity age in the '80s, along with Emmanuel Lewis, Grace Jones, and Dr. Ruth. When the highlight of your popularity is that you were the star of the second through fourth Police...

The Fruitless Search For Decent Facial Recognition Porn Software
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Source: Sarah Phillips Steered Business To A Bookie Who Was Probably Nilesh Prasad
So far, we know that former ESPN columnist Sarah Phillips and her partner, Nilesh Prasad, hijacked a 19-year-old's Facebook page, misrepresented their connections to ESPN, and engaged in some sort of minor-league hustle at a Corvallis, Ore., T-Mobile store. To that list, let's add another, more seri...