KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As celebrity restaurant mascots, athletes offer a tidy sense of vertical integration: Why not supply the very calories they need to expend on the field? I’m surprised there are so few successful models. We have all mostly forgotten (or agreed not to talk a...

The present-day Lakers-Suns rivalry seems to spring from profound mutual disgust. This is best glimpsed in microcosm, via the "rivalry" between LeBron James and Dillon Brooks, two hammy fellows who love to pout and push each other around. Over the course of Sunday's Lakers v...

Here's a one-play summary of the Cleveland Cavaliers season: On Sunday, Halfway through the second quarter, with his team trailing the piece-of-shit Charlotte Hornets, Darius Garland navigated not so much around but rather into a Jarrett Allen screen, smacked into his teammate, fell over, and gave up a pick-six layup.

Saturday afternoon a man barged into a lecture hall on the campus of Brown University, in Providence, and fired an assault weapon at the 60 or so students assembled there. Eleven people were shot, and two died. The attacker left the hall and is presently at large. Rhode Isla...

The Cincinnati Bengals are cheap. There is a good chance you already know this, as it is a longstanding issue. When Takeo Spikes joined the team in 1998, the team gave players used jockstraps. As of a few years back the organization had just six full-time scouts. “There’s a ...

Last Wednesday, newly minted CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss dropped the big news. As she walked through the CBS newsroom, Weiss looked into the camera, mechanically moved her hands around, and gave it to us straight: "I just sat down for an hour with Erika Kirk, and we ...

In the poster advertising the new film Ella McCay, a woman stands on one leg, her mid-length coat waving around her, as she gently touches the back of the high heel of her left shoe. Her other arm is extended up and out for balance. It is such a strange position that people have begun posing like her as a challenge. What could this movie possibly be about? Was it about shoes? Was it about imbalance? Who the hell is Ella McCay? 

These were the questions that haunted me when I went to New Jersey on Saturday to find out. I traveled to the closest theater playing Ella McCay, bought a giant popcorn and giant soda, and settled in. The 2:00 p.m. showing, one day after the movie’s release, was almost entirely empty. There were seven other people in the theater, and my friend and I (both in our 30s) were a full two decades younger than any of them. 

You know who got obliterated yesterday? Well, not Philip Rivers. Eat that with a pointed stick, you morbid ghouls. We expect that the number and conditions of the many casualties from this most recent knives-and-cleavers mosh pit of a football Sunday shall be covered in the...

Who else? Gardner Minshew brought down the Chiefs dynasty. Down 16-13 to the Chargers, helmed by a backup quarterback, and in field goal range, Kansas City had 20 seconds to save its slim playoff chances. Head coach Andy Reid had his choice of appropriate endings here. One w...

You can always bank on a good Monday crossword here. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a crossword constructor in Gainesville, Fla., where he is pursuing a master’s degree in counseling. His puzzles have been published in the New York Times, USA Today, and the New Yorker, among other venues. When he’s not making puzzles, Matthew enjoys cooking, birdwatching and playing ultimate frisbee.

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.

On Sunday night, fans of the Minnesota Wild got to enjoy the very best genre of regular-season game that there is: Amazing New Trade Acquisition Immediately Contributes To A Win. In a 6-2 stomping of the Boston Bruins, defenseman Quinn Hughes earned his first career goal for an NHL team not in Vancouver—entering the attacking zone behind the play at speed, picking up a pass, and then launching a shot through the legs of Jeremy Swayman. That No. 43 sure looks strange in forest green, but that's our problem, not the Wild's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXg0XHmllM

Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy is suddenly fighting back against the "sucks" allegations. Sunday night's 34-26 victory over the Cowboys was not only his second straight as a starter, but another game in which he showcased some competent quarterback play. Completing 15 of 24 passes for 250 yards, three total touchdowns, and an interception is fine. It's fine!

By the second quarter, McCarthy was feeling good enough about his performance to introduce a little dance. With the ball right on the Cowboys' goal line, the Vikings called a beautifully executed naked bootleg that left McCarthy to enjoy a solitary trot into the end zone. Blessed with all that freedom, the quarterback's zoomer instincts kicked in and he hit the griddy into the end zone.

Yesterday Army played Navy in college football for the 127th time. For a long time this annual contest pitted two of the top teams in the country against each other, but you almost certainly don’t remember that unless you are in your 80s. The people watching from the student...

It is not the biggest problem facing the NBA, and it is not really the Oklahoma City Thunder's fault, but it is unfortunate that the best team in the sport is such lousy television. It's more accurate to say that the basketball that the Thunder play is absolutely masterful, ...

Michigan men’s basketball came into Saturday night’s game riding an impressive streak. The Wolverines had beaten six straight opponents by 25 points or more, and most of the teams they walloped were pretty decent! Four are currently in the Kenpom top 45 even after getting sh...

Sherrone Moore, who only two days ago was the head football coach at the University of Michigan, was arraigned in an Ann Arbor courtroom Friday on charge of third-degree home invasion, a felony, as well as misdemeanor counts of stalking and entering without permission. 

Moore was arrested Wednesday night and jailed in Washtenaw County, Mich., after an incident at the residence of a coaching assistant with whom he’d had what Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kati Rezmierski termed “an intimate relationship for a number of years.” (The name of Moore’s assistant was not used in court today, and will not appear in this article.)

On Wednesday, Real Madrid hosted Manchester City in a portentous Champions League showdown that, for the home team, promised or threatened to mark a definitive before and after. Win, and Madrid could credibly claim the result as a turning point, when a devastatingly talented...

The promise of Grand Slam Track was alluring. Track athletes have long struggled to make money; the quadrennial cycle of the Olympics brings attention to the sport in erratic bursts that are difficult to sustain between Summer Games. After the Paris Olympics, several track s...

There are only so many ways to surprise in the construction of a murder mystery, which is why the set-up of Wake Up Dead Man is understood from the start and goes so far as to cite its sources: Here is a locked room murder, a la John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, and, as we...

It seems that it is no longer a good time to be one of Bill Belichick's special guys. Following the old-timer's disastrous first season at North Carolina, changes are underway. According to multiple reports, Belichick is firing offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and special teams coordinator Mike "Nuke The Gays" Priefer.

Kitchens and Priefer were among the cadre of washouts and football sons for whom UNC became a work program under Belichick. Kitchens was the Tar Heels' offensive coordinator during Mack Brown's final season in charge, but survived Brown's firing and was allowed to keep his position under Belichick, no doubt due to their long-standing relationship. Priefer, on the other hand, was entering his third year of unemployment when Belichick came along and offered him a lifeline.

For a few years, Maggie Nelson was everywhere. The celebrated autotheorist is the voice of, if not a generation, a meaningful corner of one; her 2015 memoir The Argonauts is one of the rare unifying must-reads of the millennial intelligentsia. Nelson is omnipresent within he...

Audi Crooks wastes no time. Eleven games into Iowa State’s season, the 6-foot-3 junior forward is the nation’s leading scorer, averaging close to 28 points per game while playing less than 26 minutes per game. Her best performances can somehow be both clinical and overpoweri...

Podcasting is a "next man up" business. Not in the way that the NFL is—no one is actually getting injured out here, although thinking about human-induced climate change after last week's Peter Brannen episode did bum me out a little bit—but the show must go on even when the booked guest calls in feverish and groggy on the day of the show. Luckily, Drew is on a texting basis with Matthew Coller of Purple Insider, which meant that we not only could still talk NFL this week, but could do so with one of the elite emergency podcast quarterbacks, a returning champion guest whose football knowledge goes far beyond the grim NFC North team which he and Drew care about the most. We barely even mentioned the Vikings in this one, because there was too much other ball to talk.

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.

This is not the best Buffalo Bills team of the 2020s. They’ve gotten dusted by the likes of Atlanta and Miami. They have a negative turnover differential. Their passing game is often inert, especially in the face of oncoming blitzes. They still don’t have a viable WR1, cycling through a gallery of slobs—Brandin Cooks, Mecole Hardman, Curtis Samuel—in a fruitless attempt to get more production out of that room. They’ve lost two vital interior defensive linemen to IR. They even lost their kicker for the season. Everyone still hates the offensive coordinator, and no one trusts the head coach.

Halfway through the second quarter of a Dec. 1 game between the Phoenix Suns and the hosting Los Angeles Lakers, the Peacock streaming network broadcast returned from commercial and threw to Robbie Hummel for an update. Hummel, a Purdue University legend who briefly played in the NBA before turning to broadcasting, reported from the Suns bench that coach Jordan Ott had spent the previous huddle telling Mark Williams to continue to "win the race" against his man every time. Hummel delivered his report while wedged next to the actor Austin Butler, whom play-by-play man Noah Eagle razzed Hummel for not knowing about before checking in with Derek Fisher from the Lakers bench.

There's a new documentary about Diddy in the wake of his recent criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to 50 months in prison after being found guilty of procuring sex workers. The documentary, titled Sean Combs: The Reckoning, has gotten a lot of buzz due to the fact tha...

University of Michigan head football coach Sherrone Moore was arrested Wednesday, hours after the school issued a statement announcing he’d been fired for what was termed an "inappropriate relationship with a staff member.” 

Details of exactly what crimes Moore, 39, is accused of committing remain vague at this time. According to The Athletic, cops in Pittsfield Charter Township, Mich., were summoned to the home of a “female Michigan football staffer” yesterday afternoon. The Pittsfield police issued a statement last night to ESPN and others saying the officers were “investigating an alleged assault” at that address. Moore, who was not named in the statement, was subsequently arrested by police in the nearby town of Saline. The Athletic story says the arrest was part of the same assault investigation, and Moore was handed over to Pittsfield law enforcement.

A remixed version of "Meet The Mets" played at the ballpark in Queens before every home game in 2025. But when fans arrive next year, that song will have a much more literal meaning, because they'll be stepping up to greet unfamiliar faces who have filled the void where long...

Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios are participating in a Battle Of The Sexes match this month in Dubai. Somehow, the sentence I'm about to write is even more dispiriting than the one that precedes it: Kyrgios and Sabalenka spent a half an hour on Tuesday promoting this match on Piers Morgan's show.

https://youtu.be/GgGa0EOSiUs?t=808

It's the most wonderful time of year, and we at Defector are proud to bring back our series discussing some of the most, uh, available holiday movies.

Sabrina Imbler: Thanks so much Kelsey and Alex for trudging through this “film” with me.