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.

The world. Ugh. Awful place. Can’t recommend enough that you avoid it. I know I do. I am a man who craves distraction, seeing as how it’s my best chance of isolating myself from all of the bullshit out there. This is why I don’t watch the news. What kind of fucking lunatic wants to watch the news right now? They can’t even do the news right anymore! They fucked it up, just like they fucked up everything else!

The professional tennis calendar might make sense if this was still the slow-paced lawn game of the previous century. But it isn't, and hasn't been for a long time. Every passing week intensifies the mismatch between the tour calendar and the bodily demands of pro tennis in ...

One of the motivations for the new Champions League format, which debuted in the men's game last season and now has come to the women's side, was to beef up the competition's first stage with more heavyweight bouts. The drool-worthy slate of games that kicked off this year's...

The Toronto Blue Jays needed a different script for Wednesday's Game 4 against the New York Yankees. They'd gotten their lead in the series by socking the ball all over the damn place—six extra-base hits in Game 1, eight in Game 2; 29 total hits and eight dingers—and by gett...

By default, Bill Burr exists in a state of his ass being chapped, but clearly it's been feeling more chapped than usual. The comedian has continued to address his decision to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, but he still can't settle on which lazy excuse he wants to employ.

Last week, Burr recapped his trip to the festival and attempted to explain his decision to take money from the Saudi government. Part of the explanation was that making the experience made him less racist. "My whole fuckin' idea of Saudi Arabia is what I've seen on the news," he said on his podcast. "I literally think I'm gonna fuckin' land and everyone's gonna be screaming 'Death to America,' and they're gonna have fuckin' machetes and want to chop my head off, right? Because this is what I've been fed about that part of the world, right?"

It felt impossible, after fine margins decided the first two games of their ALDS series, that the Seattle Mariners would be capable of winning a game comfortably, and yet here we are. They weathered Tarik Skubal while in Seattle, traveled to Detroit for a game that got just ...

Welcome back to The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off, where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show.

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Big boys mashing taters: It's what we all want to see. That's why we're proud to bring you a special playoff edition of Big Boy Watch, highlighting the beefers, hulks, and galoots from around the league. Philadelphia's burly lads aren't bashing, and it's causing a civic crisis. Milwaukee-Chicago is a fairly boring series because of—as experts will tell you—a distinct dearth of large fellas. Cal Raleigh, he of the ass, went yard, and the Mariners are on the verge of the ALCS. Coincidence? The ass thinks not.

But two of the Biggest Boys were in the Bronx Tuesday night, with the Blue Jays looking to close out a three-game sweep of the Yankees. They both put on a big show, as New York would stave off elimination for a day thanks to one of the least likely home run swings you'll ever see.

It's not the sort of career-capping achievement anyone had in mind, but Bill Belichick really has done something amazing at North Carolina. He has somehow managed to make his job, which was supposed to be coaching the school's football team but quickly revealed itself as som...

The Miami-Dade Circuit Court clerk released Tuesday a copy of the latest petition for divorce from the estranged wife of Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill. In the document, Lakeeta Vaccaro described in detail how, over the course of their marriage, Hill would violently threaten her and shove her to the ground; once kicked her out…

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 nice smelling farts, eating 500 gummy bears, amateur stakeouts, and more.

Your letters:

PHILADELPHIA — By the top of the ninth inning, the stadium was visibly pockmarked by absences, and people were booing Jhoan Duran's walkout show. Duran, who was just doing his job as the Philadelphia Phillies' best reliever, didn't deserve any of the boos just because manage...

“Gotham’s one of the best teams in the league,” Sofia Huerta told the broadcast after her Seattle Reign managed to hold the accelerating side to a scoreless draw. “Third place, really hard team to beat.” Then came the kicker, punctuated by a dark chuckle: “They just acquired Jaedyn Shaw, you know?”

That Huerta, one of the league’s best defenders, mentioned Gotham’s newest arrival unprompted proves the notoriety that Shaw has already earned in her short career. In her first full professional season, Shaw, then 18, was a core part of the San Diego Wave team that won the 2023 shield. In 2024, she had a standout year with the senior USWNT, earning 17 caps and Olympic gold. 

This past week saw the biggest WNBA action of the season: Games 1 and 2 of the WNBA Finals, yes, but also the opening two rounds of the WNBPA vs. WNBA collective bargaining showdown in the court of public opinion. As such, Harry and I were joined by two guests on this week's Nothing But Respect to talk through both conflicts. Jordan Robinson of the great Women's Hoops Show joined us, as did returning champion Maitreyi Anantharaman, live from Las Vegas, on the casino floor, in between dice rolls.

There's ball-knowledge dispensed (Jordan is a skilled hooper), and the second half turned into an unintentional episode of Namedropping as we talked forever about Cathy.

It is fair to say that Jack Grealish's time at Manchester City did not go as well as he must've hoped. It is also fair to say that getting paid lots of money to win the Premier League several times over, and to have been a mainstay in a team that won the Champions League, is...

The leftist British rock group Chumbawamba once sang the immortal lyrics "I get knocked down, but I get up again." Well, on Monday night against the Chiefs, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence fell down, tried to get up again, fell down, and then got up and ran for the game-winning touchdown. Catchy!

It really doesn't seem possible, looking at the freeze-frame above, that Jacksonville could have achieved from this scenario anything better than a chance at another play. Instead, the leader of the now 4-1 Jags persevered until the end zone, delivering a victory that equaled the team's win total from all of last year—and a defeat that means Kansas City is already guaranteed a worse record than they finished with in 2024.

When I was a child, I was a happy Catholic, not so much convinced of the truth of its theology as just swimming in waters in which I found myself born. Then, as an adolescent, I learned to put childish things away, and became a happy atheist. In addition to the healthy indep...

Jacksonville Jaguars move to a 4-1 record atop the NFL with a stunning victory. The news is so big and good that I've been cold calling people right out of the phone book to let them know about it. With a wink and a grin!

**RING RING**

[Ear-shaking siren noise.]

It's time for the NHL season preview! Drop the needle on Stompin' Tom.

LAS VEGAS — By now, there's virtually no mystery to the Aces. Their best players now were their best players three years ago. They weaponize continuity, familiarity. If you believed in this team heading into the WNBA Finals against a shiny new Phoenix Mercury team, it was at least partially because they’ve been here before. 

What really makes them special, though, is how calmly they navigate places they haven’t been. The Aces followed up their 89-86 win in Game 1 Friday night with a more fearsome 91-78 victory Sunday afternoon. They head to Phoenix for Games 3 and 4 with a 2-0 series lead, and with the confidence that they can always find some new way to win.

What is the appeal of college football outside of campus-indoctrinated school spirit? Is it enough that it's football and it exists? If that were the case, we'd all have watched the XFL more. The unique attraction of the college game is how it offers a level of chaos and magic at any given moment that makes suffering through maddening incompetence worth it. Anything really can happen. Case in point: one of the worst teams in the sport, a winless UCLA team that fired its coach and a couple coordinators just two weeks ago, just this weekend took out seventh-ranked Penn State, 42-37.

https://youtu.be/RyYINtbcIXo?si=BXa9Hjd1EKDhkDtr

Former NFL quarterback and current Fox Sports analyst Mark Sanchez will face at least one felony charge for his role in a fight outside a pub in Indianapolis on Oct. 4 that culminated in his getting stabbed, according to local officials. Previously, Sanchez had been charged with three misdemeanors: battery resulting in injury, public intoxication, and unlawful entry of a motor vehicle. As of Monday, that first charge has since been upgraded to a felony: battery involving serious bodily injury.

“We are literally talking about people fighting about a parking spot,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said during a press conference on Monday, per the Indianapolis Star.

Yes, that Sabrina. Yes, hunting.

OK, I am kind of messing with you. When I asked Sabs what they would want to try to do for the podcast, they told me they were interested in learning to catch and pin bugs, also known as "collecting" bugs. Does it still count as hunting if the life you're taking is a bug's?

The NHL salary cap is set to rise precipitously. Connor McDavid is still 28 years old, and he is Connor McDavid. The Edmonton Oilers, as a team and as a business, rely heavily on their continued employment of Connor McDavid. So it was easy, when extension talks neared an agreement, to imagine some insane numbers. The max eight years for certain, and an AAV that starts with a "20" and ends in "million" seemed likely.

The actual extension, agreed to Monday, is ... shockingly very much not that.

Playing quarterback in the NFL's Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen–Lamar Jackson era must be pretty demoralizing at times. That trinity pulls off the impossible on a regular basis, which makes even very good QB play pale in comparison. To wrest even a bit of the spotlight from the big three takes something magical. On Sunday, Drake Maye did just that, leading his Patriots to a win over Allen's Bills with a game-winning drive that included one particularly awe-inspiring sequence:

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1975037544913117670

A Week 5 late-afternoon game between the Tennessee Titans and Arizona Cardinals, by design, is supposed to get one live look-in and no more before everyone moves on with their day. The U.S. government has rules that prohibit anyone from thinking about this match-up for more ...

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it came and been refunded my $34 plus shipping, I would have. I didn’t want it any...

It's tough to say how Mariners fans should have felt before Sunday night's game against the Detroit Tigers beyond "faintly and familiarly nauseated." True, it was the second home playoff game they'd gotten to see in person in 24 years, and just the fifth Mariners playoff gam...

Get over here! It's time to solve the Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Erica Wojcik, Chandi Deitmer, and Kate Hawkins, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu.

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 Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Bari Weiss. As part of the deal, Weiss will ascend to the role of editor-in-c...