uci Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Shohei Ohtani's most likely landing spot is the NL West
We’ve come to the end of our tour of the islands of every MLB team’s offseason outlook. We wrap up in the NL West, still the favorite landing place for Shohei Ohtani, as two of the rivals here are going to duke it out to bring him either slightly up the coast or six hours up it. One more time…...

ESPN cuts pay during COVID, inks Pat McAfee for $85M, vax jokes with Aaron Rodgers
Dancing with the devil is a personal choice. But when the heat from that tango singes others, it becomes a problem. Some ESPN employees have to be burning mad over how they lost money due to pay cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic, all for the worldwide leader to spend almost $100 million for Pat McAf...

What Travis Kelce and Aaron Rodgers can debate instead of the vaccine
After Aaron Rodgers referred to Travis Kelce as Mr. Pfizer, Kelce fired a return grenade at Rodgers, whose team is owned by a pharmaceutical magnate. Rodgers’ idea to resolve this once and for all was inviting Kelce onto his Pat McAfee Show home turf to debate the vaccine along with Robert Kennedy J...

Behold The Skate Men: NHL Eastern Conference Preview
Like the college kids who crash through the side door into a party with a goofy, boozed-up look on their face, here comes the NHL season as a surprise....

First rule of team social media: Don’t s**tpost your own player
It didn’t take long for SSC Napoli to crash from the dizzying heights of their third-ever Scudetto last spring. First, manager Luciano Spalletti left the club and eventually took the Italian national team manager’s job. And then the team got off to a very wonky start this season in Serie A, collecti...

World Cup Day 14: New kids on the block
As the group stage nears its close, we got some more surprises going through, and an old favorite calling it a career at this level. We also got some hilarity, which the last group games always promise but don’t always deliver. Let’s spin this right round!...

In the battle of COVID vs. sports, evil vs. entertainment, sports won
Now that COVID is officially over, and everyone can throw their masks in the trash, (Is that how this works?), it feels like a good time to declare that sports beat COVID. If you’re wondering who was keeping score, I was, and sports handily outlasted the virus — that killed very few, if any, athlete...

The Women’s World Cup is already a battle of attrition
The World Cup is always a measure of health and a team’s ability to deal with it. It comes at the end of a long season — unless you’ve fisted it into a desert, totalitarian country that makes you have it in the middle of the season — and players have logged the most possible miles before they play i...

March Badness: Scandals defined the year in college hoops
In a year devoid of a dominant blue blood or player, college basketball stayed in the headlines for the worst reasons. Preseason No. 1 UNC whiffed on the season and missed the tournament entirely. Gonzaga is relying on a normal supply of veteran talent, but is less interesting to watch for casual fa...

A beginner's compendium on Aaron Rodgers' stupidity
Jets QB Aaron Rodgers has done and said many stupid things over a course of just the last few years. These are those things....

The Eagles must be a tool of the devil
You don’t need me to tell you that the Philadelphia Eagles, and really anything from the city of Philadelphia as a whole, are evil. The loudest guy in your office? Almost certainly from Philly, or Delaware at best. That girl you know who has a habit of puking on your shoes? Grew up on the SEPTA, whe...

Napoli are Showtime
While Arsenal have gobbled up most of the world’s oxygen in the “came from nowhere to lead the league” category, there’s another team in Europe that’s outside the usual cast of characters that is destroying the competition. And while Arsenal may be a joy to watch, they’ve got nothing on S.S.C. Napol...

Anyone can play Qatar — World Cup 2022 Group A Preview: Netherlands, Senegal, Ecuador, Qatar
It’s still hard to believe that for a team with the history of The Netherlands — three-time World Cup finalist, Euro ‘88 champion — that their recent history doesn’t even include qualification as an automatic. They missed the last World Cup, and 2016’s Euros. The latter was the first European Champi...

No surrender in Calgary
One of the familiar tropes in the NHL is the “poor ol’ Canadian team.” Lord Stanley’s chalice hasn’t been parked north of the border in 29 years, and there must be a reason for it. After all, the first two Great Bettman Lockouts were somewhat based on the fact that Canadian teams couldn’t have their...

The Calgary Flames will not go quietly into that good night
It’s the kind of trade that’s only cooked up at the bar, and almost certainly not before midnight. It’s only then and there that the right kind of desperation can be tuned into, as fans of whatever team it may be, try and live in denial for just a little while longer that their window of contending ...

Juan Soto is on the trade block — and GMs better be prepared to break the bank
Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto is a 23-year-old superstar. In just four and a half years in the bigs, he has established himself as one of the best pure hitters in the game. He’s a perennial MVP candidate, a master of plate discipline — and now he’s on the trade block....

If 'We Own This City' was any indication, Baltimoreans still very much love the Orioles
During a recent vacation, I binged HBO’s We Own This City, which plays out like an epilogue to The Wire. I could go into the plot points and actor Jon Bernthal’s exquisite performance as corrupt supercop Wayne Jenkins, but all you really need to know, as it pertains to this piece is, god damn, the O...

Miguel Andújar's fall from grace
In 2018, young Yankees were taking over AL Rookie of the Year ballots. New York’s third baseman Miguel Andújar and shortstop Gleyber Torres finished second and third respectively in rookie of the year voting, losing out to Angels’ two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani....

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: It’s pretty much downhill from here
Welcome, once more, to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, in which we catalogue the most bleak recesses of professional athletics and mock them. Hooray!...

Johnny Hockey is on one
Pacific time zone hockey tends to get ignored in the same fashion as west coast baseball. It’s hard to win an MVP or another award when your games are on at 9 and 10pm, as you’re cutting into hockey writers’ drinking time. You have to put on a world-class and ear-shattering whining campaign to get s...