January 07, 2016

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle:

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

posted by huddle to general at 06:00 AM - 9 comments

No Lovie: Lost.

posted by beaverboard at 01:31 PM on January 07, 2016

posted by yerfatma at 01:41 PM on January 07, 2016

Can anyone explain Deadspin? It used to be sports-focused, but now it offers occasional sports with entirely random dudebro stuff and things that defy all categorization, like today's This Is The Year I Stop Picking At Myself Like A Freak.

posted by rcade at 05:47 PM on January 07, 2016

49ers talking to Chip Kelly about coaching vacancy ...

Management and ownership have displayed great ability to run all of the good players on the roster out of town or into retirement. Don't know why they are looking to add a coach whose only strengths are in the same area.

Probably take a boatload of cash to get any decent coaching candidates to apply for the role which works in Kelly's favor.

posted by cixelsyd at 12:01 AM on January 08, 2016

Can anyone explain Deadspin? It used to be sports-focused, but now it offers occasional sports with entirely random dudebro stuff and things that defy all categorization

Of course it rises and falls, but the Deadspin main page is currently:

That's Why The Lakers Need To Cater To Their Youngsters

Beware Jeff Jones's Post-Game Handshakes

Bryce Alford's Step-Back Three Downs #7 Arizona

The UFC Is Putting Conor McGregor And Holly Holm On The Same Card And Oh My God

Court Docs: MLS Coach Spanked Players, Called Concussed Players Pussies And More

Fred Smoot: The Sex Boat Wasn't Even That Cool

Sweet Life: A Van Man Shows You How To Dude It -- fittish.deadspin.com

Deadspin Up All Night: You're Not!

Maine Governor Blames Heroin Epidemic on Men "Named D-Money" Who Deal Drugs and "Impregnate a Young White Girl" -- gawker.com

Alexandre Pato Turns Down Crazy Money From Second-Tier Chinese Club, Pissing Off Current Employers

Meet the pro basketball playera Penn State productwho plays Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This Is The Year I Stop Picking At Myself Like A Freak -- adequateman.deadspin.com

The Ultimate Guide to All the Science Fiction and Fantasy TV Shows Coming in 2016 -- io9.gizmodo.com

Amazon's Having a Big Sale on...Chewing Gum -- deals.kinja.com

Bucs Called Lovie Smith To Set Up Meeting To Fire Him, Ended Up Just Firing Him Over The Phone

Denver Nuggets "White Pride" Hat Provides A Valuable Lesson In Phrasing

Damn, You're Not Reading Any Books by White Men This Year? That's So Freakin Brave and Cool -- jezebel.com

Actually, Daily Fantasy Is Good, Because I Won A Bunch Of Money On It

That's 12 out of 18 purely sports-focused stories. They're a Gawker site, so they're going to be linking to other Gawker stories to cross-promote (Maine Governor..., The Ultimate Guide..., and Damn, You're Not...). The Amazon gum sale story is essentially an ad, so that's really only two out of 13 "Deadspin" stories that aren't inarguably sports (Sweet Life... and This Is The Year...).

posted by Etrigan at 08:40 AM on January 08, 2016

After getting canned near Camden (home of Campbell's soup), some folks thought Chip Kelly would be interested in returning to the Pac 12. Him going to the Niners would fulfill that prophecy.

When Kelly is described as a "splash" hire, it's unclear what type of splash they're referring to. There are a lot of possibilities.

Of course, it took almost a year for people to find out why Tomsula was described as a "fart" hire.

posted by beaverboard at 08:44 AM on January 08, 2016

Can anyone explain Deadspin?

Etrigan basically explained it, that all Gawker sites cross-post to try to drive traffic. In addition, Deadspin has a couple of side blogs, "Adequate Man" and "The Concourse" where the sports writers post on non-sports topics. Neither of which bothers me. What's killing me about Deadspin (especially now that Grantland is dead) is the new wave of writers there. Deadspin always seems to change writers in waves and maybe it's just a "Get off my lawn" thing but I cannot stand the new approach where every article is an attempt to coin a new phrase, create a nickname and generally act the fool. Not to pick on a particular writer (except I hate him with the heat of a thousand suns), but Billy Haisley has (almost) single-handedly made their soccer coverage unreadable. He tries to make every MLS story into something about how the MLS sucks, even when the story isn't about the MLS, his headlines make me want to icepick my own eyes and he's just so goddamn Millenial (somehow seeing David Moyes' comments supporting LvG as an Moyes excusing his own failures when there's 0 excuse for failing at ManU of course). Just in general there is a lot more 'he's also gotta be like "Daaaamn, that's the sweetest stroke I've ever seen"' then I'd prefer in a sports page.

Christ, Screamer (Deadspin's soccer coverage) loves Everton and even that drives me nuts with the constant attempts to refer to Everton's starlets as "Yung Cock So-and-So". It's a group of high school kids who have no idea they're not the coolest kids in school.

posted by yerfatma at 08:59 AM on January 08, 2016

Anyone have a link to (or their own) handy list of where former Grantland authors are publishing pieces? I know some of the big-sport big names (Lowe, Barnwell) are at ESPN, but would be curious where some of the others have landed (to the extent they have found regular or at least frequent gigs).

posted by holden at 01:26 PM on January 08, 2016

Not to beat this dead horse too long, but Billy's article "Unknown Guys In Liverpool Shirts Draw With Random Lower League Team In FA Cup" originally said Liverpool won and was only corrected after multiple commenters pointed it out. I don't ask for a ton in my sports blogs, but basing your #HotTake on the actual results of the event seems like a small request.

posted by yerfatma at 11:27 AM on January 11, 2016

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