Defector
Total reads
61
This week
0
Rank
#293 of 449
Published
652 posts
Last 12 weeks
Most read posts
Featured on Sportsblogs
Run this blog? Add the badge to your site to show readers you're featured — it links back to this page.
Latest Entries
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 ...
How An Unsubtle 9/11 Tribute Was Added To Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man’
Name an iconic scene from the first Spider-Man movie, the one directed by Sam Raimi that came out in 2002. You’re saying it’s the upside-down kiss? Yeah, that’s fair. Let me ask my question in a different way: What’s the most iconic line from the first Spider—OK now that I’m saying it out loud, it’s definitely “With great power comes great responsibility.” Which I know is not a creation of the film but it did popularize it and … we’re already getting off-topic. Let me try this again: Hey...
The State Of The U.S. Open Is The State Of Us
It’s being shouted from all corners: The U.S. Open has become an overcrowded, overpriced circus awash in influencers , aspirational influencers, corporate stooges, drunken buffoons , brand activations, inane stunt food , weed smoke , and bettors. It is newly hostile to children, people who value personal space, and genuine fans of tennis. These louts and narcissists, armed with their ring lights and stacked empty Honey Deuce cups, are ransacking this once-dignified event. I've been attendin...
Talking To Emily St. John Mandel About Revision, Timeline Corruption, And Living Without A Floor
The first line of Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party sets the tone of the whole book. She writes, “In the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the blossoming of the jacaranda trees felt to Ari like grace.” We have been dropped into yet another one of Mandel’s post-apocalyptic worlds, but, as with Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility , it retains a vivid glimmer of hope and life. The book introduces Ari as our protagonist, but, as with other Mandel books, she is ...
Barry Melrose Brought Hockey Home
Go ahead and listen to this . (For the real perverts, use this one ; you just know you're about to stay up until 1:00 a.m. for a particularly shitty Sharks–Mighty Ducks game.) What does it evoke? What do you think of? More specifically, who do you think of? You immediately know you're about to spend some time with Barry Melrose, the formative face—and hair—of an entire generation of American hockey fans. Melrose died Wednesday at age 70 , three years after he had been diagnosed with Parkins...
The NFL Opener Had That Wednesday Night Football Feeling
The National Football League is back, in case you haven't already been lectured, hectored, and badgered into aural submission by the various communication venues that have been screeching about it for weeks. This post-modern Christmas, with all the soul-crushing commercialism that implies, has come five days later than last year, because the league decided it needed one more week of buildup before beginning its full 22-week Advent calendar, and that it wanted to see how strange football might ...
What Gets Left Out Of Math’s New Era?
The science fiction author William Gibson's pithy observation that "the future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed" has had different shades of meaning since it was first formulated . In its original context, Gibson meant it as a measure of technological progress: certain people have access to gizmos, gadgets, and virtual-reality dugongs before that blessed day when those innovations trickle down to the rest of us. There has always been an economic valence to this quote: I...
Ben Shelton Took Down Carlos Alcaraz In The Match Of His Life
Who knew Ben Shelton could do all that? Certainly not the Defector writer who was slandering him in the early stages of the match as "John Isner with WiFi." The 23-year-old American revealed levels to his game heretofore unseen, over the course of a U.S. Open quarterfinal that technically began Tuesday night but was mostly played early Wednesday morning. Matched up against defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, Shelton hit the apex of his career at 3:33 a.m., when he wrapped up the deciding set ti...
Do You Hear The People Sing? Singing The Song Of Sequined Teens?
At my university, you had to take an introductory fiction writing workshop before you were eligible to apply for the more advanced workshops. Admission to these big leagues was by no means guaranteed. The first time I got in, I experienced about a week of absolute elation followed by several months of intermittent terror and imposter syndrome. At the time, it all felt very high-stakes, which is perhaps why I was so profoundly distressed when I showed up on the first day and realized that 90 pe...
The Gift Of Forgetting
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season (except when the season starts on a Wednesday; kiss my ass, Goodell). 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 . I turn 50 a month from now. Hold your applause. About the only notable thing about hitting 50 is that I will no longer be eligible for a midlife crisis, seeing as how my life will ...
‘Only If You Get Caught’ Returns Next Week
The time has once again come to break the rules: Only If You Get Caught is back for Season 2. If you listened to the first season, welcome back; if you didn’t, you have six days to do so before the show returns on Sept. 15. You can listen to the trailer here. OIYGC is…
Should I Be Worried That My Kid Hasn’t Found A Best Friend?
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, Justin answers a question about helping your child find a best friend.
Horrible Toad Very Good At What It Does
It is difficult, and yet important, to practice holding multiple truths at once, such as: No animal is inherently bad, and also the Surinam toad is a toad of nightmares. The diversity of life on Earth should be celebrated, and also the Surinam toad's particular eccentricities are satanic. Every living thing is beautiful because it is alive, and also the body of theSurinam toad is an affront to beauty itself. The Surinam toad, which has the dissonantly cute scientific name Pipa pipa , is an ...
Displaying items 76-100 of 652 in total