Defector
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Hull City Drags Red Devils Right Back To Hell
As a soccer fan, one of the best things you can do for your physical and mental well-being is to studiously avoid overreacting to results early in the season. Especially for the big teams, and especially coming off a summer international tournament, the first few weeks of the league are essentially an extension of the preseason, and therefore should be considered little more than glorified training sessions aimed primarily at working players back into shape after their abbreviated, inebriated ...
49ers Owner Jed York Red-Faced After Arrest In Ohio
San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York was arrested this weekend in Ohio, originally on the charge of engaging in prostitution, though a plea agreement amended it to misdemeanor charges. York, who is originally from Youngstown, Ohio, was arrested Sunday morning at the Wheat Hill Mobile Home Community in East Palestine, according to local news station WKBN . The arrest was reportedly conducted by the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force as well as East Palestine police. By Monday morning...
Turn Your Busted Tomatoes Into Tomato Water
I can't help but empathize with the heirloom tomato this time of year. The first BLTs have been eaten; the novelty has worn off. Stacked on farmers' market tables like milk bottles in a carnival game, late-summer tomatoes start to look a little worse for wear. Like me, they are often etched with lines from spotty hydration. They're a little busted, a little bruised. Also like me, they retain in their haggard hides a secret well of great beauty and value. If you find yourself with a surfeit...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Philadelphia Eagles
Some people are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Philadelphia Eag—God, I’m exhausted just typing their name. Makes me wanna spit on a guy. https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1963761757760930233
Alexander Chee Trusted His Gut
Traditional publishing is a frustrating industry whose workers are under-resourced and often mandated to chase metrics like authors' audience size and nascent trends based on "data," "vibes," and "TikTok." If, in the yearslong dark period when I had an agent but not yet a book deal, an editor had told me exactly what I needed to change about my project to get them to buy it, I would have jumped at the chance. Especially if what they wanted was a book I already had in the works—it just wasn'...
Red Uniforms, Ranked
Some of my favorite sports uniforms are red. This has always been true, and my choices of teams to support have only reinforced that. (A chicken-egg situation?) Other than the Miami Marlins (who did have the snazzy Sugar Kings red jerseys a few years back), the Miami Heat, the New England Patriots (god, I love those red throwbacks ), Liverpool, Barcelona, and MY Florida Panthers all have red(-ish) uniforms. I therefore feel uniquely qualified to contribute a ranking of red jerseys across th...
Some Spiders Savor Sacrificial Somersault Sex
Imagine you are a horny male redback spider. You might be a small guy—a fraction of her size—but unlike some, you don't have a complex about it. You're just happy to be there, "there" meaning the haphazard snarl of a web of a female redback spider. Only 20 percent of male redback spiders ever mate, so you're already feeling lucky. You know that the climax of your life has arrived, meaning your climax. You approach the spider and insert into her one of your two pedipalps, a pair of leg-like ...
The Crossword, Aug. 24: Bat To Ball
Just shut up and solve our Monday crossword already. This week's puzzle was constructed by Owen Bergstein and Nick Dent , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Owen and Nick are longtime frenemies based in Boston. They met when Owen was a freshman in high school and Nick (aka "Mr. Dent") was a math teacher. Over the years, Nick served as the advisor for Owen's ever-growing Puzzle Club, one of the school's most popular clubs. By the time he graduated this May, Owen was spending all of his free time in M...
Is My Hair Red? A Defector Slack Investigation
I won't dispute that I once had red hair. Back in 2019, just for kicks, I went with a bright Hayley Williams–esque red that petered out for obvious reasons the following year. Then in 2025, with a 30th birthday and a big trip on the horizon, I decided to freshen up my look with a new color that my stylist tells me is as light as I can go without using bleach. For full transparency purposes, here is what it looks like the day after the salon. I thought of this hair as simply a lighter ver...
How Cincinnati Ruined All-Star Voting For A Dozen Years
For as long as baseball’s All-Star Game has been played—almost every year since 1933, including twice a year from 1959 to 1962—it’s been the ultimate in wish fulfillment for fans. Want to see a team of future Hall of Famers playing together? It’s got that. Want to see your favorite local players honored on a national stage? It’s possible. Poignant curtain calls and unexpected comedy ? You bet. But actual fan participation in selecting All-Star teams? That’s been a rockier road. In this g...
It’s Reds Week
Gaze into the eyes of Comrade Redlegs, and let the truth of the situation wash over you: It’s Reds Week. That’s right. You may have survived Senators Week, Rays Week, Wings Week, and Bills Week—but do you have what it takes to journey with us into our latest theme week? Over the next five days,…
Deshaun Watson: Very Telling That Browns Fans Would Boo Me For Being A Lousy Quarterback And Shitty Guy
There are a number of very obvious reasons why Cleveland Browns fans might boo Deshaun Watson, all of which are a matter of public record and none of which Watson can really afford to concern himself with. It is a requirement of his extremely difficult job that Watson must maintain a towering and preposterous level of self-belief, a load-bearing faith that must be strong enough, which is to say unreasonable and unreasoning enough, to withstand any and every possible failure or humiliation. Bei...
Randy Arozarena Made The Mariners Smile
The Seattle Mariners have reached the stage of a busted season where they are just hunting around for reasons to smile. This was a 90-win team last season, one that came within a George Springer dinger of advancing to the franchise's first ever World Series. Now they are crud. More specifically, they are stuck three games back of the resurgent Houston damned Astros in their division; a couple of games back of the final American League wild card with four teams ahead of them; and six games belo...
Frances Tiafoe Is Peaking At The Right Time
It's August, you know the drill: Frances Tiafoe's tennis season is just getting started. North American hard-court summer is his wake-up. I once asked him if he could figure out how to bottle up the confidence of playing on home turf and tap into it elsewhere on tour, and his response was—paraphrasing here— Nah, I'm just never gonna feel like that in Barcelona . Fair enough. Got to respect this level of self-knowledge. Though he's barely weeks removed from wrist surgery, Tiafoe now seems to...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Los Angeles Chargers
Some people are fans of the Los Angeles Chargers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Los Angeles Chargers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Los Angeles Chargers. https://twitter.com/ChargersCountry/status/2086143238252183978
The 2026 College Football Offseason Recap
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. It's almost fall! School is back in session, and football is just about back. The 2026 college football season will be here next week, and the sport is as chaotic as ever. NIL money is flying, coaches are forever off their rockers, and the NCAA is holding on for dear life to a system that is crumbling in real t...
Seattle Times Dipshit Quits Because His Editors Were Smart Enough To Spike His Stupid Columns
People sometimes wonder what editors do. It's a fair question to ask, given how difficult it is to read a column or blog post and be able to discern exactly how much influence an editor did or did not have over the final product. It's easy to assume that editors don't do much at all, actually, and just skim a hardworking writer's drafts before publication. Thankfully, there are guys like now former Seattle Times columnist Matt Calkins out there to remind us of how much value editors can provid...
Tadej Pogacar Returns To The Scene Of His Arrival
Before Tadej Pogacar became a hypertuned killer on a bike, before he won any of his record-tying five Tours de France, before he was able to push the boundaries of the volume and variety of races that any single rider could win, he first had to break through. He did so seven years ago at the 2019 Vuelta a España, wherein he won three stages and finished third overall despite coming to Spain to learn how to race and to support Fabio Aru. Pogacar's talent was as obvious as his inexperience, a...
And Now, A 2026-27 Premier League Preview In Five Storylines
It feels like the World Cup just ended, and yet somehow, some way, the Premier League is already back. England's top flight kicks off on Friday with defending champi—oops, I mean attacking champion ; sorry Mikel—Arsenal taking on newly promoted Championship champion Coventry City in North London, before everyone else takes the field over the weekend. It's a quick turnaround after the six-week odyssey that ended with Donald Trump trying to insert himself in Spain's trophy celebration, but that'...
Texas Tech’s Administration Is Just As Embarrassing As Its Football Program
It’s been a summer of bad news for anybody with favorable feelings (me!) about Texas Tech. The New York Times joined the pigpile this week with a feature story whose subhead said the school had become a “a dystopian academic nightmare.” As if this year’s athletics debacles weren’t nausea-inducing enough. How can a guy (me!) root for a place like this? The Times piece mulled the aggressive missteps taken by Brandon Creighton, the low-aiming and cartoonishly evil chancellor of the Texas Tech...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Pittsburgh Steelers
Some people are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Ctrl-V.
After All That, Max Verstappen Re-Signs With Red Bull Racing
Talk about a load-bearing hyphen. After a half-season of half-threatened retirement and full-frenzy speculation, the status quo simply continues: As the Formula 1 summer break comes to a close, Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen announced before Verstappen's home race that he has re-signed—not resigned!—with the team for four more years, extending his contract through 2030. This is the least interesting outcome of F1's purported silly season, though it is still somehow notable thanks to the...
The Sun Is Setting On ‘The Distraction’
I don't get nervous before recording episodes of The Distraction , and was surprised to notice during our more recent live episodes that even the usual bite of anxiety which comes with going onstage was just a fairly mild nibble. Some of this is because Drew does a lot of the annoying work required to make the podcast happen, but most of it owes to how comfortable I've become doing this show with him and for the audience that followed us from The Deadcast over to The Distraction , for the past...
The Tempo Have To Take Things At Their Own Pace
In a kinder world, WNBA expansion teams are allowed to flail and muck about in peace for a few years before anyone pays close attention to them. But this is an unkind world, one that finds the Golden State Valkyries second in the standings and headed to the playoffs for the second time in their two years of existence. You can understand why a Toronto Tempo fan might have been hoping for something more in the team’s inaugural season. For the last time the Tempo won a game, you’ll need to go ...
Tugboat Wilkinson Has Steamed Into Port
We had moderate hopes for Tugboat Wilkinson in his Major League debut, just because his nickname and carriage merge so harmoniously. But because the San Francisco Giants clearly hate all of you, we didn't get nearly enough tug, or boat. Wilkinson, whose real name is Matt, is only the second Tugboat in Major League history after Thurman Munson, and he comes by his nickname with the fullest honesty. He is listed at 6-foot-1, 250 pounds, and has the front porch to suggest that the second numbe...
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