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Arch Manning, Room Full Of Dipshits, Snicker About AI Video Of Steve Sarkisian Slapping Holly Rowe
Fair warning: This is a short blog post in which you are going to encounter exhausting behavior from some fellas who will leave you pining for the restoration of our culture's sense of shame. Texas beat Ohio State in dramatic fashion on Saturday night, and Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was all jacked up after the final whistle. After having skipped out on his halftime sideline interview due to a technical delay, Sarkisian decided that he also did not want to talk to ESPN sideline reporte...
LeBron James Wants Your Paycheck To Become His Paycheck, By Way Of Polymarket
The new Polymarket ad spot opens with LeBron James stepping onto an elevator and pushing a button labeled "SPORTS." This is not some AI-extruded, near-enough visual representation of a generic basketball player of the stature of LeBron James. It is the actual LeBron James, newly a paid endorser of Polymarket, the marginally less sneering and brazen—but still apocalyptically corrupt —of the two big prediction markets. To get to the SPORTS floor, in the ad, actual LeBron will pass betting floors...
The Jets May Want To Reconsider Being “AI-First”
What does it mean for an NFL team to be "AI-first?" It's a question that football fans have been pondering ever since New York Jets Chief Analytics and Data Officer Iwao Fusillo revealed in May that the organization would be striving to "to think AI-first." It was hard to detect the influence of AI in the Jets' 23-10 win over the Titans in Week 1, but maybe that's just because the paltry competition didn't require unleashing the awesome power of Microsoft Copilot on the gridiron. They might be...
Robert Kraft Now Decides Who Tours With Ed Sheeran
On Monday morning, the rapper Macklemore posted a lengthy Instagram statement alleging that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other NFL owners pitched a hissy-fit to get him dropped from the United States leg of Ed Sheeran's tour. Kraft, who has never shown much interest in music, allegedly called Ed Sheeran to tell him who was allowed to open his shows. According to Macklemore, "Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him...
The U.S. Open Men’s Final Changed Nothing
How strange it is to watch a whole Slam and feel as though we learned almost nothing about the true power hierarchy at the top of the men's tour. In Sunday afternoon's U.S. Open final, Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2. Check the box next to every single boring prediction: At least one tiebreak would be played; Shelton would struggle heroically to return serves; Zverev would play visibly nervy tennis in at least one juncture of the match and captivate viewers with his p...
Conor Benn Wasn’t Ready For Ryan Garcia
Ryan Garcia, the often troubled and always magnetic Californian who to this point in his career seemed unsure if he’d rather be an influencer who fights or a fighter who influences, struck a blow for his fighter side on Saturday in Las Vegas. Garcia hit Conor Benn flush in the face with the mightiest right hand he’s capable of throwing early in the second round of their welterweight title bout, putting his outclassed British antagonist down shortly before putting him out. If Garcia’s not on to...
Something Is Wrong With The Green Bay Packers
There's been a lot of clamoring for answers as to what happened in the fourth quarter of Sunday's unusually messy divisional matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. And yet for much of the game, and even into the fourth quarter, there was very little in terms of unanswered questions. When Trey Smack kicked a field goal to stretch Green Bay's lead to eight with 13:17 remaining in the fourth, all the juice was on the Packers' side and the game was, honestly, a little bor...
The Premier League Has Its First VAR Disaster Of The Season
The Video Assistant Referee is supposed to get everything right. This is an incredibly high standard to hold any sort of officiating, but this is VAR's main selling point and raison d'être . All of the delays, ticky-tack calls, and general disruption to the flow of a soccer match are supposed to be worth it; after all, who doesn't want the correct call made when an incorrect call could decide a match, a season, a legacy? But of course, VAR is not perfect, and it will never be perfect, even whe...
The Far Right Had Its Biggest Electoral Win In Germany Since The Nazis. What Now?
Elon Musk loves them . Donald Trump thinks they’re “the best hope for Germany” and that they’ll “MGGA” (Make Germany Great Again). They’re an existential threat for fact-based reasoning, democracy, human rights, and multiculturalism. And they're in position to become the first far-right party to lead a German state since 1945. Over 77 percent of the eligible population of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls on Sept. 6 in order to vote for their new state government. Alternat...
The Crossword, Sept. 14: Miscalculation
You can always count on our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Elijah Acquah , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE . The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sample the goods with a two-month free trial : "With an AVCX subscription, you get access to weekly the...
Nicholas Russell’s Debut Novel Gets Weird In The Desert
If you've read Nicholas Russell, here or elsewhere, you've gathered that he is thoughtful, erudite, and extremely curious. In addition to approximately one million reviews and essays here at Defector, he's published more than a dozen interviews, and they've ranged all over: politics podcasters, a film critic, an indie musician, a veteran foreign correspondent, a cruciverbalist, an English professor and Toni Morrison scholar, and the retired WNBA journeywoman Carolyn Swords. By now, you have pr...
Steve Ballmer Is Just Going To Have To Take It
Nothing beats watching a billionaire eat filth in public, unless the chefs and waiters at Maison De Merde are all billionaires too. And so it is that Steve Ballmer's semi-abject capitulation to reality, and to the penalty he was handed in the face of overwhelming evidence of salary cap contravention in the guise of botanical fraud , arrives without either the proper level of humiliation or the burn-down-the-village revenge that would have satisfied us all infinitely more. The fun was in the ...
The Protect College Sports Act Finally Has Its Suitably Off-Putting Mascot
College football fans who tuned into ESPN's College GameDay this Saturday were forced to encounter the alarming visage of Texas Senator Ted Cruz. To make matter worse, he monopolized nearly 10 minutes of air time in order to stump for the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA), a bill that is like a lot of things Ted Cruz stumps for, in that it is explicitly designed to make workers' lives worse. Proponents of the PCSA rely on a familiar set of talking points when hyping up their pet bill, which...
A Whole Lot Changed In One Week For The Rams
How best to react to the latest news on the Los Angeles Rams? Easy: with complete abandon and logical recklessness. That's how the veterans do it. Said latest news: that massive offseason acquisition Myles Garrett has fouled his knee, failed to will it healthy again, and now will have surgery that will take out all of September and a chunk of October as well. Garrett was the big swing of the summer , but the fact that it was the Rams that took it is no surprise. General manager Les Snead an...
There’s Job Security In Putting Out Fires For The West Sacramento Arsonists
West Sacramento Athletics manager Mark Kotsay knew the drill from months of exercising it. Another game was on fire, and he needed someone who could at least let it burn itself out, so he went to Carlos Cortes in the bottom of the eighth inning, the bases loaded with Mariners and four runs already in. And Cortes did his duty Saturday, inducing Victor Robles to fly out modestly to right field to end the inning. Seattle still led, 16-1, but Cortes did the required work. Then he went out again...
They Don’t Come Much Cooler Than Chris Johnson
It was supposed to be a day to remember Chris Johnson, and it still can be. The NFL's all-time single-season yards leader was scheduled to be honored today by the Tennessee Titans, for whom he starred from 2008–13, at halftime of their game against the New York Jets, for whom he played in 2014. But the Titans announced Friday that Johnson won't be able to travel to Nashville to be inducted into the team's Ring of Honor, and the ceremony will be postponed to a later date. I hope it does happen ...
College Football Means Finding Something To Get Mad About
The truest thing about college football is that there is no such thing as being too small, too petty, or too whiny about being too small or petty. We're not being frivolously critical here, despite how good doing that makes us feel; blaming people in the industry for acting out is like blaming a fish for being wet. These are simply the conditions that prevail. You simply have to learn to forget everything you ever learned about the values the sport allegedly respects, and take the mess it chur...
Cheating Is A College Football Feature, Not A Bug
Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide , where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Ray: With all the braying about the blessed return of football games this past week, all by people who should be constantly monitored for their protection and ours, we note that while there were many games, there was only some football. So far this season, ranked teams have beaten unranked teams by an aggregate...
Famously Undiplomatic Britt McHenry Handed State Department Gig
Britt McHenry, a former Fox host and ESPN reporter best known for a towing-yard tirade , says she’s taken a job with the Trump administration. McHenry posted on social media Wednesday to confirm that she’d been hired as a “press advisor” for the U.S. Department of State. Her announcement, which was first reported by Barrett Media , included vague details about what her duties will be. She said she would be developing "strategies to address media concerns and enhance public understanding of ...
Honey Deuce McBride, With Giri Nathan
This week on Nothing But Respect , we welcomed back million-time guest Giri Nathan to talk primarily about his experience covering the U.S. Open. How bad is the phone situation ? How does the memetic object of the Honey Deuce explain the current predicament? What's been the match of the tournament? We also touched on the biggest NBA news story of the past week , as well as the fallout from the NBA's hammer-style punishment of the Clippers . You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podca...
Report: Family Of Oneil Cruz Hired Fixer To Cover Up Fatal 2020 Car Crash
On Sept. 10, ProPublica published a story by reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts detailing how Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz avoided prosecution after a traffic collision in the Dominican Republic, in which he rear-ended a motorcycle, killing all three passengers. The crash occurred in Cruz's hometown of Nizao in the Peravia province, on Sept. 21, 2020; at the time, Cruz was 21 years old and still a prospect. While an initial press release from the public prosecutor's office stated t...
The 49ers Struck A Blow For Sensible Travel Strategies And Thumped The Rams
The power of a well and oft-told narrative is not to be diminished, but it also should not be feared if countervailing information comes to light. And so it is that the San Francisco 49ers, irradiated scoundrels though they may be and summer vacation wastrels they absolutely proved to be , came up with the one enduring rebuttal to all the amused schadenfreude that has been aimed their way. Specifically, they answered it with a comprehensive kicking of that arse. The 49ers put that indis...
How NFL Teams Avoid The Great Big Middle
The NFL is built on parity. The middle exudes a tremendous gravitational force, with the schedule, the draft, and the salary cap all conspiring to pull every team toward 9-8 or 8-9 records year after year. While the larger-order churn of the league hews to that pattern, a number of teams have found ways to consistently defy the schematic, either by consistently posting winning records or failing to take advantage of the considerable structural help built into the way the NFL is organized. But ...
How Do I Avoid Becoming A Doomsday Prepper?
I knew I had gone too far when the question of whether we should buy a gun crossed my mind. This came at the apex of a weeklong anxiety spiral triggered by a New York Times feature about the possibility of an 18-month nationwide blackout. I was uneasy seeing the phrase “art form” used to describe the archaic manufacturing process of the transformers that underpin our electrical grid; the process involves painstakingly bespoke techniques of winding copper coils, wrapping paper insulation, and b...
How Tennis Channel’s Jim Courier Sees The Sport
The quality of the average tennis broadcast has skyrocketed in recent years. Analysts assume far more curiosity and intelligence on the viewer’s part than I can ever remember, and they're no longer limited to tropes and cliches, recycled set after set. Instead the television audience receives tasty morsels of granular observation. Sure, you might still have to deal with a certain American legend entering the booth and freshly learning about the existence of any player ranked below No. 12, but ...
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