This Week's Signs Of The Apocalypse

For nearly two decades, Sports Illustrated has stirred the tea leaves to discern a weekly Sign of the Apocalypse. Deadspin salutes the magazine's ongoing effort to cover the end of times but declines to cede the scoop on the biggest event in world history.

Here's SI's Sign of the Apocalypse this week:

For $1,950, members of the Urban Daddy Perks club can have NFL free agent and Giants alltime leading rusher Tiki Barber join them for a game of flag football, basketball, kickball or, in the words of the Perks website, "pretty much any sport/gentlemanly activity you can think of."

While it is unfortunate that a former NFL star is consigned to earning a couple of thousand dollars a day by trading on his celebrity status, and that somewhere in Durham a Duke frat boy is scrounging together donations on the hope that a flip-cup tourney could be considered a "gentlemanly activity," we must wonder, honestly, if this is truly so apocalyptic.

Why, just this week other, starker signs also appeared. An anti-purple drank website warned against children imitating Raiders QB "Jim Marcus Russell." A citizen of Richmond, Va., spoke against the Redskins' training camp moving there because football players are "murderers, rapists, wife and girlfriend beaters, drunkards," etc. Also, ESPN The Magazine threw its full long-form narrative might into the aftermath of a scrotum's unsavory tour-de-face.

Undoubtedly these sent doomsday-watchers to DEFCON 3. But Deadspin's going with this as our weekly Sign of the Apocalypse:

Israel's four-day rocket and air assault on Gaza City that destroyed Hamas headquarters has killed 11 children among 38 reported fatalities in Gaza.

Israel destroys Hamas headquarters in Gaza City [Los Angeles Times]