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Possible Super Bowl one-hit wonders
The Super Bowl is the most covered single sporting event on the American sporting calendar every year. No pregame leaf unturned by the gaggle of broadcast and print media, tugging at the heartstrings of even the most jaded sports fans. There’s going to be a package about how Bengals quarterback Joe ...

A Matt Stafford victory is a win for all mid-career professionals
During the summer of 2006, I was a fledgling student journalist baking under the blistering sun at a preseason practice at UGA, capturing B-Roll of a fellow pimply-faced true freshman from Texas. The quarterback phenom was about to be the talk of the SEC. Matthew Stafford’s singular talent created r...

The Canadiens are so weird
When you still consider yourself the league’s signature franchise, maybe things just have to be weird. The pressure the team is putting on itself year after year just warps things, and that’s before you even get to the media that considers itself some sort of modern version of the Knights of the Rou...

Prop bet season is here: Wacky Super Bowl wagers for you to lose some money
As legal gambling spreads further across the country, the Super Bowl is bigger than ever for betting, and of course that doesn’t just mean betting on whether the Rams cover the 4-point spread....

Avert your eyes, either Stan Kroenke or Mike Brown will get to hoist the Lombardi
Mere mention of the names Stan Kroenke and Mike Brown, owners of the two NFL teams facing off in the Super Bowl on Sunday, triggers largely negative emotions from fans of teams they own. (LA Rams fans are nihilists, dude, so discount them.) Talk to Bengals fans, former St. Louis Rams fans, Arsenal f...

Are we sure that defense still wins championships?
The saying goes, “Offense sells tickets. Defense wins championships.” Having a flashy offense with a quarterback who can throw the ball 80 yards through the air is great and all, but a defensive unit that can counteract those talents is arguably more valuable, or at least you’d think....

What it means when prosecutors decline to charge sexual assault
I have a love/hate relationship with Olivia Benson and the ubiquitous Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU to those of us who have it on the background at least 65 percent of the time). On one hand, it’s copaganda of the highest order, where police are nearly always the good guys, and one cop in p...

If Lillard and McCollum didn’t work, then why was it so much fun?
I just saw CJ McCollum in Chicago like a week ago. He seemed fine — he had 29 on 13-of-23 from the floor and played well — but the team wasn’t itself anymore. It was a Sunday morning, and I was in bed when my girlfriend asked, “Hey Portland’s playing today. Want to go?”...

Meet Deadspin’s Super idiots
The Super Bowl is the biggest stage in sports, where stars are made, legends are born… and embarrassment lives forever. There are plays that just don’t get made, sure — like Scott Norwood’s field goal at the end of Super Bowl XXV — but there’s a difference between not getting the job done, and screw...

Kings doing what they do
Over time, certain franchises take on personality archetypes. The perennially moribund Sacramento Kings are a chaotic compulsive gambler swinging wildly between winning big at the slots and squandering their winnings on shell games outside the casino. Sacramento dumping the 6-foot-5 Tyrese Haliburto...

College players sue to be classified as school employees
Out west, the students are taking matters into their own hands, pushing college athletics another step further into its new athlete-empowered era — and they may be making things a lot more complicated for the NCAA....

It sure looks like the Arizona Coyotes are going to play in a warehouse for the next few years
There’s little that can surprise anyone when it comes to the Arizona Coyotes anymore. They’re being kicked out of their building after this season. They were nearly kicked out in the middle of it. It’s apparently an abhorrent place to work. The owner might not have any actual money. And the team has...

Who are the 12 teams who have never won a Super Bowl?
Close your eyes for a moment and think of all the terrible organizations in the NFL. Well, maybe don’t close your eyes, you should keep reading. Just take a second to think....

An old beef classic has returned: Stephen A. Smith versus Kevin Durant
It all started with Stephen A. Smith’s Thursday appearance on NBA Today, which included a searing hot take about Kevin Durant. The Brooklyn Nets at the time were on a six-game losing streak that on Friday extended to seven. They are currently on a five-game Western Conference road trip that ends fol...

Pro Bowl has become definition of irrelevant for the NFL
The NFL Pro Bowl used to be one of the more exciting parts of the football season, but over the years has become as irrelevant as Motorola’s two-way pager. Watching the most outstanding players the game has to offer each year at the same time has now been reduced to nothing more than filler in betwe...

Olivier Giroud continues to just do the work
It is hard to look at Olivier Giroud and think “grafter.” Because it’s not hard to look at Giroud at all. Ask Leslie Jones. It would be silly to suggest that people don’t make conclusions based on how a player looks. It’s hard to reconcile him as a pure, old-school center forward. Strong, holds up t...

Claude Giroux gets his due
Saturday might have been the day that put Claude Giroux’s eventual candidacy for the Hall of Fame over the top. That’s a strange thing for an All-Star Game MVP nod, but sometimes you need a cherry on the sundae to bring it home. ...

Fan-on-fan violence was always out of hand, we just didn’t see it
Fans fighting each other is nothing new. It’s so prevalent in soccer that they made a movie about it. While I wouldn’t recommend “Green Street Hooligans” because Elijah Wood playing a Harvard dropout-turned-soccer hooligan is as ridiculous as it sounds, I have been guilty of sharing fan fight videos...

Auburn's winter of discontent
Most Power Five Conference college football programs take as much of a deep breath as they can after the traditional National Signing Day, taking place the first Wednesday of every February. Teams’ rosters are as set as possible in the transfer-portal era of the sport after inking the final parts of...
