The NFL will be ridden hard until its profit-generating corpse is truly dead. I think what we will see is the slow death of football from the bottom up: there will ultimately be no more players coming through the pipeline.

Rule 5.09(a)(1) “catch” comment: “A fielder may reach over a fence, railing, rope or other line of demarcation to make a catch. He may jump on top of a railing, or canvas that may be in foul ground.”

Advanced statistical measures work in baseball because baseball is a single-moment-at-a-time game, where each moment is a one-on-one event (pitcher vs. batter, outfield vs. fly ball, base runner vs. pitcher, etc.) You can not only break down a game into a discrete chronology of data points, you can compare those data…

You’ve got Mississippi, football, and “higher education” in the same story and you’re professing confusion as to ethics of some of the participants? Will the next Deadspin story express dismay about a story involving the NFL, money, and player health?

As a Dodger fan, it pains me to see Beltre have such success elsewhere, but what an amazingly under the radar great career this guy has had. It definitely helps to start your professional career in your mid-teens, but the dude is still producing at an All-Star+ level at the age of 38 (this season’s numbers on a per…

“Stephen A. Smith is a gross loser who lives on the coattails of professional athletes.”

I’m generally in favor of putting whatever condiment you like on food, but there are always limits. I cite a very insightful philosopher on this point:

My son played AAU basketball for quite a while. The only thing worse than the adults who take the whole thing as their life, are the ones who do that but also have a super-talent as a child. Parents like LaVar Ball are as toxic to sports development as Trump supporters are to America.

I love Lebron, but I think this is his way of avoiding all the hate he engendered the first time he left Cleveland. “I love Cleveland because it is now, and always has been, my home, but I play basketball to win championships, period. I came back, did everything the organization asked of me, delivered 4 Finals and 1…

Trump should be hiring sports agents for his legal advisers; those guys have years of experience with clients who say things they shouldn’t say. If I’m Kyrie’s agent, I’m calling him right now to remind him that “the first rule of Being the Man Club is you don’t talk about Being the Man Club.” If Irving had an iota…

I think there’s a good chance he can make a negative difference on a good team. Whatever Melo was or might have been, the only version of Melo that matters is the 2017 version. That guy is a me-first, ball-stopper who is a sub-nominal defender. In the 2017 NBA, which relies heavily upon ball-movement and smart…

There is a negative correlation between athletic ability and financial success: if you can prove the size of your dick on the field, you aren’t incentivized to prove it other places like school. So I’m not real convinced by a rich guy’s claims that another rich guy is good at sports.

Because, Brandon, the NFL isn’t about football, its about television contracts and jersey sales. I don’t care if God took Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana and combined them into the perfect QB, the chances of that guy playing in the NFL approaches zero if God put that talent into a Muslim named Mahmoud al-Rahman who was…

Yes, I have to agree with The Jews.* Mr. Danger, you are conflating athletic performance with athletic knowledge and “coaching”. There is a reason that the list of “great players who became great coaches/executives” is basically Jerry West and no one else (maybe Larry Bird, maybe Elway). Just because a marriage…

Why would an NFL owner, making millions of dollars just by showing up - and often making said millions even by doing idiotic football things (see, Jones, Jerry) - take the risk of being considered a communist, traitor, or, worse, an attacker of The Shield? For competitive football reasons? The days of Al Davis are…

Generally, you are allowed to redact information that is not legally relevant* to the issues involved and are personally identifying; FOIA does not trump privacy concerns, particularly for those of uninvolved individuals. It would be completely appropriate for Freeze to redact the phone numbers of calls he made to…

“Pornhub publicist” has got to be the most depressing business card ever.

Market value is always defined relative to how much others are willing to pay for similar goods. Quality isn’t important, quantity is. Unless and until there’s a whole bunch of great QBs available (or even an ability to reliably identify potentially great QBs), QBs will be paid a whole lot more than they’re…

You miss Burt Allen’s point: it’s such a privilege to play in the NFL that players should just take whatever money is offered.

He’s not Chris Paul, I agree. I don’t see him as as awkward as you do, but agree there is something hitchy about his play (even excluding his shot). There is a saying in boxing that you don’t want to fight or spar awkward boxers; boxing relies upon anticipation of next moves and awkward guys don’t do what is…