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Racehorse Owner Told To Rename His Hitleresque Steed
The Jockey Club , the leading sanctioning body in what’s left of the sport of horse racing in the U.S., sent out a clear message Wednesday to anybody thinking of naming their horse after Hitler: Don’t name your horse after Hitler . The two-year-old colt Austrian Painter made his racing debut Monday with a win in the third race at Horseshoe Indianapolis Racecourse. Obligatory: He covered the 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:04.97, and paid $9.00 . Afterward, the Jockey Club received objections about the...
Judge Declines To Seal Josh Jacobs Video, But Cautions Against It Becoming Public
Brown County Circuit Judge Marc Hammer ended his temporary seal Thursday on records in Josh Jacobs's domestic-violence criminal case. But that doesn't mean the records, which includes video showing the Green Bay Packers running back throwing his ex-girlfriend to the ground, will immediately become public. Though Hammer unsealed the files, he also had strong words of caution for those who will decide what is released. "Our [state] Constitution provides in part that crime victims are entitled...
It Sucks To Be Alex Bregman Right Now
The person in the photo above is not a strange wanderer whose arrival at the local inn coincided with that of a growing pestilence. That is Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman, photographed in the dugout two nights ago. Bregman looks like that because he was struck by a foul ball while standing in the on-deck circle during last Sunday's game against the Reds. He suffered multiple facial fractures , which is obvious by the look of him. Here he is this morning arriving at Wrigley Field: ...
Revisiting Weezer’s Cringe Masterpiece At 30
The second project is probably always the hardest. This is especially true if it follows a successful debut. You make something great, and by some act of the gods it catches fire and becomes the new, hot thing—a one-in-a-million shot. But then comes the next thing, the followup to your great big deal of a project. It’s a haunting and intense proposition. When I was at NYU for an MFA, I met a lot of famous and successful authors, and I remember one of the pieces of advice was to just write the ...
Sean Payton, After Wrongly Accusing Mike Macdonald Of Cheating, Is Somehow The Only One Not Groveling
The NFL schedule is not likely to renew the fading historical rivalry between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. The two teams are now separated by the conference divide, and, though both teams are currently good, you'd be a fool to bet on the Super Bowl producing any particular matchup, especially one featuring Bo Nix's ass. But though proximity cannot suffice, the rivalry was juiced up this week by an out-of-nowhere controversy involving the teams' head coaches and some shit that w...
Blitzing All The Time Is Analytics
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it . An internet lifetime ago, ESPN football columnist Gregg Easterbrook was one of my go-to reads. Easterbrook was a pundit for The Atlantic by day, but moonlit over at ESPN's Page 2 to write his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column every week during the ...
The NWSL’s Struggling Teams Are Falling Behind
The 2026 NWSL season has provided some astonishingly fun soccer, and many off-field successes too: The league has boasted some record attendances , salaries , and goal-scoring this year, not to mention a few signings from at least a couple of the big European clubs it lusts after. But recently there have been too many reminders that although the NWSL has raised its ceiling, the floor is still in hell. On Sept. 13, Savannah DeMelo, the star Racing Louisville midfielder who suffered a cardiac...
No One Should Win The AL West
A week ago, we explained in scabrous detail the multiplicity of shortcomings of the American League by focusing on the Central division and blaming it at least indirectly on the Pope's inability to close . But like most short-term trend stories in baseball, it quickly proved to be in error. Defector regrets not just the misidentification but also hiring the nitwit who made the observation. Steps, we assure you, will be taken. In fact, it is not the AL Central that was dragging down the clas...
The Secret Life And Crimes Of The American Office Plant
When we set out to do a supersized season of Normal Gossip , it was all tee-hee, ha ha, look at all these funny goofs we have! And then we went through The Process and made 12 actual episodes of silly, unhinged, or just plain weird stories. Now? We need a nap. Luckily for everyone, we saved the best for last! There was no way we were going to do a season of all-stars without bringing back our dowager queen, Kelsey McKinney! For our finale (for real this time), we brought Kelsey a story a...
Ryen Russillo Hawks Troughs Of Sodium In Grim Video
Barstool Sports podcaster Ryen Russillo has an urgent message for you: He will be dead in 72 hours unless $12 million is wired to the following bank acc—sorry, my mistake. I just assumed that's what he was going to say based on the haunting thumbnail on this video. Now that I've played it, I see that Russillo is simply interested in selling you some appallingly lit food. https://twitter.com/TheRyenRussillo/status/2102566992217776535 The video appears to have been shot in a study room a...
How Do I Get My Kid To Be A Sports Sicko Without Turning Myself Into A Vile Sports Parent?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Giri answers a question about how to encourage your child to love your favorite sport.
One Game Is Not Enough To Deem Anyone A Fraud … But Two Games Is
In the grand scheme of things, Week 1 of the NFL season means nothing. There are still 16 games to go afterward, and a lot of teams use that first game as a kind of unofficial preseason game to iron out all the kinks. After just one week, it wouldn’t be fair to make such grand pronouncements as “The Falcons may never win another game,” or “Boy, the Lions are kinda fucked,” or “Justin Herbert has gone from overrated to just plain sucking ass.” But after two games? Well now, I think that’s a ...
The Protect College Sports Act Reveals The Dark Heart Of Management
The Protect College Sports Act passed another procedural vote Tuesday in the Senate, by a 70-21 margin. It will clear a few more procedural steps this week before going up for a final vote, at which point it is expected to pass and be sent to the House. In the meantime, it continues to mutate into a worse and more exploitative version of itself. More than 35 amendments were added to the PCSA yesterday, and one in particular stands out. Republican Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville am...
Ireland Going Ahead With Israel Matches Against Everybody’s Wishes
Ireland and Israel are, at least for now, set for some really weird soccer matches. Unfriendlies, you might say. Their national men’s teams have a home-and-home series scheduled to open this weekend, only there are no home games for either side. Both matches will be played in Central Europe: one in an empty stadium, the other with only Israeli fans. The top story in Ireland these days, sports or otherwise, is that the games will be played at all. “I think we all agree we shouldn’t be in t...
I Spent Three Sweltering Days Shredding The High Seas At Jogging Pace, And It Ruled
Sisi is a Volvo Ocean 65 racing sailboat. She is fast as hell and built for sickos. She is not a comfortable luxury yacht, I assure you. Sisi is a frightening, angry, 72-foot, 12-ton sea monster. Sisi, owned and operated by an Austrian company called Kora Yachts, is used for racing, her calendar divided between summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean, or what the rest of us know as "the life." In between all the racing, Sisi has to be delivered from port to port. To get t...
Maybe The WBC Cursed The Red Asses Of Team USA
A baseball season is very long and offers plenty of time for everyone involved to forget the stuff they would rather forget. For that reason among many others, it would make a great deal of sense to have long ago consigned Team USA's performance in March's World Baseball Classic to the ol' memory toilet. They were uniquely joyless in an event otherwise defined by goofball cheer; in place of the light nationalism that sets the WBC's otherwise highly variable stakes, Team USA was scowling, half-...
It’s Totally Cool And Normal That Real Madrid And La Liga’s President Are Bickering Online
If José Mourinho bringing a printout of questionable fouls from the Madrid derby to a press conference was an objectively funny maneuver from the Special One , the resulting fallout is bewildering, convoluted, and a little bit pathetic from everyone involved. It seems that Mourinho's actions did what he meant them to do: They grabbed the attention of La Liga. Mourinho, however, may not have wanted the attention specifically of league president Javier Tebas. Tebas, who grew up a Real Madrid ...
Look How Fanatics Massacred This Simple Trading Card
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it . Today, we're talking about flawed domes, office condiments, life on one leg, and more. Your letters: Baron:
Government By Influencer, With Eamon Whalen
This week on Nothing But Respect , Harry and I were joined by returning champion Eamon Whalen. Eamon just published a big profile of Nick Shirley in New York magazine, and we spent the first half of the show talking about the particulars of the story, the broader implications of letting 24-year-old prank YouTubers dictate policy decisions, and the uncomfortable position people like Shirley put supposed right-wing intellectuals like Chris Rufo into. We then transitioned into some Minnesota Timb...
Two Indie Action Films, One Clear Winner
Adam Wingard opens his new movie, Onslaught , with a brainrot history of the military industrial complex, a slipshod compilation of combat footage, political speechmaking, and behind-the-headlines conspiracy that (semi-)convincingly situates the origins of the American century in Operation Paperclip and the importation of Nazi scientists at the end of the Second World War. It rules. Set to a pounding synth score and employing the kind of queasily associative quick-cuts that would make even a 9...
Fifth Third Park Is A Terrible Stadium Name
The Detroit Tigers announced Monday that their ballpark will henceforth and forever, or until the naming-rights deal runs out or some more banks merge, be known as Fifth Third Park. "When you look around, it's so much more than where the Tigers play baseball," Ryan Gustafson, CEO of Ilitch Sports and Entertainment, said at the unveiling . So much more. It's not merely a "Tiger" "stadium." It's Fifth Third Park. Fifth Third! Ol' One and Two-Thirds Field. The Fraction. Hey, you wanna catch a ...
How One Trick Play Tells The History Of Football
When I called up my grandfather Irwin Miller last fall, I asked him if he felt his age. “Uh, no, probably 94,” he said, laughing as he shaved off three years. “The body feels 97, the head doesn’t, thank goodness—I think my memory’s pretty good.” I call my grandfather Papa, and his memory was more than pretty good considering he was born before the Great Depression. Last November, I wanted to ask him about a big moment in his life: the year he graduated from his New Orleans high school and s...
Ed Sheeran Delivers Pointless Statement Then Cries During Latest Concert
This past weekend, Ed Sheeran performed his first concert since decrepit Patriots owner Robert Kraft stuck his hand up the singer's ass and made him respect Israel. The culturally Irish but politically English musician played with no openers and a new backing band Saturday night in Philadelphia, because all his previous supporting acts abandoned him after his craven decision to drop pro-Palestine rapper Macklemore from his U.S. tour, at the behest of Kraft and other NFL stadium owners. During ...
Dana White’s Latest UFC Prodigy Gets KO’d In 12 Seconds
Gable Steveson, the hottest UFC prospect in years who arrived at the promotion with a past marked by a sexual assault allegation, got knocked out by a nobody in 12 seconds on Saturday in Los Angeles. Dana White sure knows how to pick ‘em. Steveson, an NCAA legend and Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, was given a slot on the main card in just his second UFC fight. That fast-tracking now looks absolutely foolish. Mere moments into the fight, Steveson walked into a straight right hand to the...
States Roll Over And Show Bellies To Paramount, Will Allow Warner Bros. Merger
On July 13, California state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he would lead a 12-state coalition in mounting a supposedly bold legal challenge to the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery mega-merger. The deal had cleared every previous legal hurdle, but the states had to try and stop the Ellison family from gaining control over the plurality of American media production because, in Bonta's words , that consolidation would represent a "death knell for the film and TV industry—and ...
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