um Page 313 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Olympic Sprinters Will Be Running Not Only For Gold, But For These Frigging Adorable Baby Cheetahs
Today, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. officially unveiled their two new cheetah cubs. The ridiculously cute fluffballs don't have names yet—the zoo is waiting on the Olympics. The three-month-old cubs will be named after the top American finishers in the men's and women's 100 meters. So, Justi...

USA Vs. Spain: Let's Discuss
The US men's basketball team is set to tip off its exhibition match against Spain in just a few minutes. Earlier, we wrote about what this game could mean, and now we want to yak about it with you as it unfolds (4:30 ET, ESPN2 and WatchESPN). Please report to the discussion section below with all o...

The Olympics Opening Ceremony? Giant Voldemort Fighting 30 Mary Poppinses, Obviously
London's Sunday Times is reporting that Friday's Olympics opening ceremony may not be unwatchably boring. According to Yahoo, which excerpted parts of the Times' subscription-only story, a 40-foot Voldemort (hologram? parade float? ventriloquist's dummy?) will take center stage for the ceremony and ...

Today's USA-Spain Basketball Game Could Mean Everything Or Nothing
The last time the United States and Spanish Olympic basketball teams met each other, they gave us one of the greatest basketball games that nobody watched. That was the 2008 gold medal game in Beijing, which the USA won 118-107 after being up by only four points with under three minutes to play. It...

Rick Nash Is A Ranger, But Columbus Fans Shouldn't Kill Themselves Over It
On trade deadline day, Columbus's demands for Rick Nash were reportedly Brandon Dubinsky, Chris Kreider, Ryan McDonagh OR Michael Del Zotto, Derek Stepan OR Carl Hagelin, and a first-round draft pick. Well, Nash is officially a Ranger today, and Scott Howson did manage to get two of the items on his...

Gay Cruising App Grindr Crashes After Olympians Arrive In London
Well, looky here. Seems Londoners have been having a tough time accessing gay cruising app, Grindr. The cause? The Mirror reports the app suspiciously crashed around the time that Olympians arrived into London:...

The First-Ever Horse Race Called By An Announcer On Helium
It was "Extreme Race Day" at Minnesota's Canterbury Park, a designation that seems to mean different things from year to year. This time around, it meant ostrich races, camel races, and in the ninth, track announcer Paul Allen taking hits of helium throughout....

Man Ruins Perfectly Good Sweater With Tribute To Joe Mauer
Sometimes the wastefulness of Americans is downright disgusting. We have homeless folks who would be eternally grateful for the shirts off our collective backs and this selfish jerk just decides to ruin his sweater by cutting into it so it would look like a Joe Mauer jersey....

London Eye To Serve As Giant Mood Ring For Olympic Games
EDF Energy, an energy supplier in London, has announced their Energy of the Nation initiative, in which they plan to illuminate the London Eye according to how Twitter users are feeling about the Olympics each day. EDF, along with a group of 70s-minded MIT grads, has developed an algorithm to conve...

Playing Basketball For Team USA Sure Seems Like Fun
From USA Today Sports, which has its own Pinterest board(!), comes this sunny photo gallery of Team USA basketball players practicing in Spain. We'll never know if this iteration of the Olympic team could have beaten the '92 Dream Team, but I think it's safe to say that the 2012 team has the edge i...

Mike Schur Is "Ravenously Hungry" For More Replay In Baseball
According to Bud Selig, "the appetite for more replay [in baseball] is very low." Because what would baseball be if it were not for that certain "human element?" However, in this week's excerpt from Slate's podcast Hang Up and Listen, Mike "Ken Tremendous" Schur (last seen around Deadspin in Septe...

Not Even Kate Middleton's Family Is Safe From The Olympic Branding Gestapo
We all know the Olympic folk are very touchy about their trademarks. No non-sponsor companies allowed in the Olympic village. No posting Facebook photos or Youtube videos from the games. No small businesses using any two of the terms "Olympic, London, 2012, summer, or games."...

Niagara Falls Columnist Is Really, Really Afraid Of Gay People In Hockey
Yesterday we brought you a column from the Niagara Falls Reporter by one Lenny Palumbo, and Lenny had some ideas about hockey and manliness:...

Doping, Cheating, And Insta-Celebrity: The Story Behind The First Great Sports Action Photograph, Taken In 1908
I grew up in a home without a television. When my parents’ TV went on the fritz, the story goes, they didn’t bother to get it fixed. So my earliest visual sports memories came not from watching television, but from gawking at the photographs in oversized books like The Wonderful World of Sport....

Every Baseball Fan Can Appreciate This Video Of CB Bucknor Taking A Fastball To The Face
Given that CB Bucknor's been named "Worst MLB Umpire" by pro ballplayers three times, it's a sure bet most fans don't think much of the ump, either. (Your reaction to our Better Know An Umpire on Bucknor backs that up.) So here's your chance to revel in some CB misery, as he takes an Ubaldo Jimen...

Today In Insanely Homophobic Statements From Small-Town Sports Columnists
Oh jeez. This is the kind of column you read, and then you do your due diligence to make sure it's not a parody news site. It's not! The Niagara Falls Reporter is real, and Lenny Palumbo is a real person, and he really wrote this....

This Summer League Dunk Required Massive Balls
You may never hear the name Angelo Sharpless again, but for two seconds and an eternity on Youtube, he was The Man. He plays guard for DII Elizabeth City State University, and pulled off this massive throwdown at the Ben Wallace Pro-Am league in Richmond, Va. (Like all summer league dunk videos, i...

Sure, God Made The Universe. But Can He Coach An American Marathoner To Olympic Gold?
March 29 was a busy day for Ryan Hall, the fastest American marathoner ever. He was 137 days and roughly 2,100 miles of road training away from representing the country in the London Olympics. He had to be up early for drug testing....

The Patriots Want Rob Gronkowski To Stop Being Rob Gronkowski
From the moment he hit the dance floor in the hours after the Super Bowl, we've loved everything about Rob Gronkowski's offseason. The last five months have been such a sweaty blur of shirtlessness and beer-stained Zubaz, we never really gave much thought to how The Gronk Show was being received by ...
