It's pretty remarkable to recall today, after the firing of Xabi Alonso and the uncertainty about the state of Real Madrid's star-studded project, that the club is only a year and a half removed from the absolute pinnacle. The 48-hour period between June 1 and June 3, 2024, ...

After limping into the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Steelers suffered another first-round loss. After months—years, really—of intense scrutiny of his job, head coach Mike Tomlin has decided to "step down" from the position he's held for 19 years. Like a cowboy at the end of a we...

The precocious Eagles child got his wish, sort of. The Philadelphia Eagles announced Tuesday that offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has been removed from his position, though he will not be banished to a career of burger-flipping, and may even remain on head coach Nick Sir...

Sometime in the late 1990s, an adult ribbon worm was scooped up from the murk in the waters off the San Juan Islands, in the Pacific Northwest. He was moved to a tank along with a smattering of other invertebrates, including two vermilion bat stars and approximately 30 beige...

The operating principle of JD Vance's life in politics seems to be as follows: How can I serve every powerful person while appealing to literally no normal person? There is no boot he won't lick, no special interest he won't kowtow to, no family member he won't throw under t...

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 football, e-shopping, lotion application methods, and more.

Your letters:

Raffi12:

The last-place New York Rangers hit a humiliating new low on Saturday, when the Boston Bruins demonized them with a 10-2 drubbing up in Beantown. Trudging back home in the Charlie Brown Christmas pose, the team that played the best regular season in all of the NHL just two s...

After his Boston Celtics lost 98-96 to the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, head coach Joe Mazzulla delivered a tour-de-force performance as the character "Joe Mazzulla." While speaking to press, he answered all six questions with the same two words, then left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdk4OmBnRM

There's a lot to love about Mazzulla's line delivery. You think, just for a second, that he might provide an actual answer to the next query—nope. "Illegal screen."

I think about shoulders a lot. (Bear with me.) What would you say made humans the dominant species on the planet Earth? (I said, bear with me.) Is it our big brains, allowing us the use of language to pass down technology and culture? Sure, but before that. Is it our bipedal...

With the football world's sudden fixation on Mike Tomlin's future or lack of same in Pittsburgh raising the question of why coaching longevity is suddenly a bad thing, we have completely forgotten the more obvious reason for caring about the Steelers—the end of Aaron Rodgers...

This week's Nothing But Respect with returning champion and human body expert Henry Abbott was a very fun one. Before we get too far into what was said, I have to tell you, I have been thinking nonstop about something Henry said over an hour into the recording: When he playe...

You heard me. Is eight dollars five dollars? Or is eight dollars 10 dollars? Why are you making that face right now? Stop making faces and answer the question: How much is eight bucks? Stephen Totilo, games journalist and author of the Game File newsletter, got into the ont...

When we last caught up with No. 12 LSU and declared them schedule merchants in for a rude awakening, the Tigers were reeling from an 0-2 start to SEC play and looking ahead to a game against undefeated No. 2 Texas, an even tougher opponent than the Kentucky and Vanderbi...

On Sunday, U.S. Figure Skating announced its Olympic roster, which adhered, as is natural, to the top three performers at its national championships. The men's event saw the most upheaval from the anticipated roster, but not in a way that was particularly interesting for Oly...

The early rounds of the FA Cup are supposed to be straightforward. While every lower-division team that faces Premier League opposition dreams of pulling off the unexpected, these matches tend to look more like Manchester City's 10-1 thrashing of League One side Exeter City ...

The Western Conference's nexus of pain is in an unsurprising location: Sacramento. Let us consider three NBA teams whose seasons have been impinged upon by straying too close to The Beam, whether physically or psychically.

Exhibit A: Houston Rockets

What was your favorite moment from Sunday night's season premiere of Industry?

Was it the opening scene with its pounding New Order needledrop and its unveiling of an all-grown-up Kiernan Shipka aka Sally Draper?

Solve our Monday crossword like nobody's watching. This week's puzzle was constructed by Jonathan Raksin, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Jon is a long-suffering Orioles and Ravens fan living in Philadelphia. His crosswords have previously appeared at Apple News Plus+, Fireball, Universal and The Wall Street Journal. 

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. 

Who says Bari Weiss doesn't know how to run a newsroom? "My general view here," the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador's CECOT concentration camp, "is that we do our viewers the best service by presentin...

Federal agents continued their operations in Minneapolis over the weekend, where they were met with resistance from local residents who do not want to see their communities invaded by masked shitheads who are there to kidnap and kill their neighbors. Groups of people have come together to protest, to chase ICE agents out of their neighborhoods, and to make sure Gregory Bovino can't piss in peace,

In some instances, ICE officers have been defeated by the elements themselves. Nobody got it worse than this fucking guy:

There were two noteworthy injuries in the NBA over the last week, each of which elicited diametrically opposite reactions—one to a multimillionaire player, one to a referee. Guess which injury drew which response if you like, but you're going to be wrong. The injured player...

Hey, I got a new idea for the next baseball game: Instead of hitting the ball, with a bat, I will just have a bunch of guys on my team pick me up and carry me to first base. Knock over the first baseman if necessary. And, oh, here's an idea for the next basketball game: I ca...

You have to feel a little bad for Justin Herbert, who ended Sunday night's 16-3 wild card loss to the New England Patriots by getting treated like a jobber in a Hell In A Cell match. The Patriots' front seven, which sacked Herbert six times, seemed to be trying out various s...

Everybody knows Josh Allen’s as tough as a fast-food steak. That’s how Tim McCarver once described a banged-up-but-game George Brett during a baseball broadcast, and that’s what I was thinking all Sunday afternoon as I watched a banged-up-but-game Allen and his like-minded, ...

The Atlanta Falcons have kicked off another rebuild, and their old quarterback is coming back to help them with it. The team announced Saturday that Matt Ryan will return to the franchise and serve in a newly created role: President of Football. Yep, that's it. Just "Preside...

Comebacks are just what Caleb Williams does. The second-year quarterback drilled DJ Moore with a 25-yard touchdown pass with 1:43 left as his Chicago Bears beat the visiting Green Bay Packers, 31-27, in an unbelievably believable thriller of a wild-card playoff game Saturday night. The Williams-to-Moore hookup capped off the Bears' seventh fourth-quarter comeback win of the season.

Chicago hadn’t won a playoff game since 2011. That sorry skein seemed secure after the first half at Soldier Field, with the Green Bay Packers up 21-3 and moving the ball at will, and the Bears flailing and failing, never more obviously than their 1-for-4 fourth-down conversion rate over the first two quarters.

The Peach Bowl was over by halftime. It felt over after the first play of scrimmage. Oregon quarterback Dante Moore threw a pass intended for Malik Benson, in an attempt to be aggressive at the start of the drive. Bad idea. Indiana corner D'Angelo Ponds jumped the route for an interception, and ran it back 25 yards for a touchdown.

The Ducks had started the game with possession and lost it after only a few seconds. To their credit, they responded with a touchdown catch by Jamari Johnson, but then the Hoosiers' offense finally took the field to put together a touchdown drive—then, later in the second quarter, another. And another. And another. By halftime, Indiana led 35-7, and viewers at home would've been forgiven for doing something else with their Friday night.

A confession: For the past week, I grew convinced that the Carolina Panthers would do it. They had already beaten the Los Angeles Rams once in the regular season, in Charlotte, and this playoff game would be at the same stadium. The weather forecast looked crummy, working ag...

This week, Rolling Stone published an article in which writer Marisa Fox interviewed hostages who were held in Gaza after Oct. 7, talking to them about how music helped them. The artists mentioned in the piece include Frank Sinatra, Bill Withers, and Avenged Sevenfold. What caught my attention was one specific paragraph that was illustrative of the low journalistic standard for writing about Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.

The part in question is about 40-year-old Moran Stella Yanai, who was held hostage in Gaza for 54 days before she was released. As you read the following excerpt, your vision might be clouded by some unexplained yellow filter, and the bootleg adhan used in every Hollywood film set in the Arab World will begin to involuntarily play in your head:

What is the point of Unrivaled? Or rather, how seriously should it be taken? It’s easy to understand what the players get out of it: Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart founded the startup basketball league in 2023 as an offseason option for a few dozen WNBA players, offeri...