The 2025 Formula 1 season opened with a sense of optimism that we would see a close, exciting championship battle. Well, the championship battle is certainly close. It is also mind-numbingly boring.

There is tension, I suppose, in the sense that the two numbers next to each driver's name in the standings are quite close to each other, and if you can do rudimentary math, you can calculate the difference between those two numbers as it expands or contracts. But with the exception of one or, generously, two races, recaps about the championship fight can ignore the action on track entirely and simply report the updated point totals at the end of each weekend without missing anything of note.

To the people who are paying $200 for an Uber to leave the U.S. Open, I have read the New York Post story about you, and I see you, and I hear you, and I am here to offer a solution: Take the train.

The U.S. Open grounds are directly attached to the Mets–Willets Point station of the 7 train and the LIRR. You can recognize the LIRR by its janky little station, and the 7 train by its purple colors and the number 7. MTA wayfinding can be a little confusing for people unfamiliar with the system, but I have two points of good news for you: It is still easier to navigate than swaths of nondescript concrete, and if taxi lines are long enough to last 40 minutes, you will have enough people leaving at the same time to ease the process.

BALTIMORE — With two outs in the bottom of the ninth on Saturday night, the Dodgers leading the Orioles 3-0, all I was thinking about was Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The L.A. ace looked poised to wrap a no-hitter at Camden Yards, and the entire crowd was on its feet, either outright...

FLUSHING — “Seventy-five years of breaking barriers” is the official slogan of this year’s U.S/ Open, but for anyone who’s spent time out at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, it can often feel like the tournament is more adept at putting barriers up than taki...

In May of 2015, Vick Ballard became the first Remembered Guy, and a great many hours have been spent since doing the work of Remembering various Guys, sometimes on video and sometimes in blog form but also just in those moments when Remembering A Guy is what’s called for. In the intervening decade since Vick […]

The relationship between the Los Angeles Clippers, the dubious carbon-credit company Aspiration, and Kawhi Leonard sure looks like salary cap circumvention, as journalist Pablo Torre has convincingly laid out on his podcast. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer had personally invest...

There are two ways to become popular as a sports owner. The harder of the two is to win a championship and not act like an ass about it; the simpler one is firing someone your customers dislike. At Tottenham Hotspur, the first is apparently out of the question, which meant t...

The opening line of Lucas Schaefer’s novel The Slip concerns the smell of shit: a bold first impression for a debut author. Luckily, reading the book provides a far more pleasant sensory experience. The Slip—set in Austin, Texas between 1998 and 2014— is part boxing novel, p...

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Ray Ratto and Israel Daramola will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Ray: Forty-seven Division I coaches have already lost a game this year, which means that 47 c...

The NFL has completed its hostile takeover of the American entertainment industry, but mindful of its place atop the time-wasters pyramid it still sent memos out to its 32 teams reminding them that with great power comes great mone—err, responsibility. And with that responsi...

This season, NFL RedZone will have commercials. It actually had commercials for a moment last year: During a Sunday slate of games this past December, the NFL tested out whether it could get away with them without a revolt. Despite complaints, the ads are here to stay.

RedZone host Scott Hanson mentioned this change during an interview on Wednesday's episode of The Pat McAfee Show. He noted that his introduction will no longer be "Seven hours of commercial-free football starts now," because that simply isn't true anymore. "The business folks handle the business, and I have no say over different elements that could or could not be in the show," Hanson told McAfee. Going forward, the host's intro will be: "Seven hours of RedZone football starts now."

In one of the least competitive major finals in tennis history, Amanda Anisimova got squashed by Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon this July. It was a stark 6-0, 6-0, the dust settling in just 57 minutes. There wasn't much to take away from it. "I don't think it helped me become a be...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, largely concerning U.S. vaccine policy, which the infamous anti-vax conspiracy theorist oversees in his role as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. As is his custom, Kenned...

We do not do emergency podcasts at The Distraction, although we do joke around about it a lot. The phrase itself feels like a joke, summoning as it does images of two people roughly my age sliding down a fireman's pole into a brightly lit room with a Shure S7 microphone in it...

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.

It’s August and my mom is moving. My dad passed away a little less than a year ago, and after a slog of a winter living in the house they once shared, Mom decided that she wouldn’t tolerate another one. So she found a townhouse close to my sister’s house: small, airy, and bright. It was perfect.

Last week, I trudged through the Strip’s endless construction and a labyrinthine parking lot to have my first experience of Sphere. Sphere—just Sphere, no definite article—is owned by Sphere Entertainment, a holding company of the Dolan family (see: HBO, AMC, Radio City Musi...

Prior to Philadelphia's Thursday home opener against the Dallas Cowboys, the Eagles' stadium put out a travel advisory for attending fans. The home opener comes 11 days after SEPTA, the Philly metro area's primary public transit system, underwent its first set of service cut...

There was a strange shimmer of hope in the air this past weekend. The weather in the Northeast was perfect: sunny, warm enough, big blue skies. The sun dawdled along the fading of summer. People were out smiling, shopping and bopping, having a beer in the sun with their frie...

Nine years as president of the WNBA players’ union has made Nneka Ogwumike a savvy politician, and like any savvy politician, she knows how to read the room. After a brutal late-game loss to the Sparks on Monday night, she and her Seattle Storm teammate Skylar Diggins sat beside each other at the postgame press conference. Ogwumike was her usual self—mellow, introspective—and she knew this was a night for her to do all the talking. Diggins was pissed. “For Skylar, do you feel like you guys…” one reporter began, before quickly changing course. “Or Nneka,” he offered, as his initial target’s frown deepened. When the press conference ended, Diggins left having not said a word for all four minutes, her arms still crossed as she got up from the table and exited the room. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_SLpcOcYxk

Some people are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Philadelphia Eagles.

Nobody won Stage 11 of the Vuelta a España on Wednesday in Bilbao, as race organizers chose to neutralize the stage due to huge groups of anti-genocide protestors at the finish line. Thousands gathered and waved Palestinian flags in in protest of the inclusion of second-tier team Israel–Premier Tech (IPT), and as Jonas Vingegaard and Tom Pidcock were riding toward town, organizers said over race radio that the stage would be neutralized three kilometers out "due to some incidents at the finish line."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7W7U0XVf-E

The Los Angeles Clippers are alleged to have set up a no-show job for star forward Kawhi Leonard to help convince him to sign with the team. And not just any no-show job, but a $28 million, multi-year gig with a carbon credit/tree-planting company that has since gone bankrup...

As the muggy malaise of summer winds down, you might find yourself interested in taking advantage of one of several safe and proven vaccines to help protect you from the inevitable brumal surge of respiratory illnesses. You might be interested in conveniently booking an appo...

Some people are fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: “The Last Great American Dynasty”

Pinball is the most romantic of arcade games. A bit of my belief in this comes from real life, but most of it comes from the movie Before Sunrise, which I spent my late teens and early 20s watching over and over alongside anyone with whom I shared an emotional connection. It...

I love my hair. It looks like a fancy dog’s ears. My friend calls it “magic hair.” Everyone I talked to said my hair was incredible. Strangers have compared me to multiple pro wrestlers, Brad Pitt, Kurt Cobain, and Jesus Christ. These are all incredible comps. People see the hair and feel compelled to tell me I remind them of a person famous for being handsome or the literal Lord and Savior.

So you can understand why it might be a front-of-mind concern for me now that I’m losing it. Ah. Well.

Everybody cares about your fantasy team; it's your season to shine.

With the NFL season "kicking off" Thursday, you've likely held your draft already. We wanna see your guys! Who did you steal long after you thought they'd be gone? Who got snapped up right before you were going to take them? (Don't you hate when that happens?) Head to the comments to share your wildest stories from draft night.

A baseball season is long and frustrating. By the time the calendar flips to September, and the season enters that phase where the stresses of playoff races compound the mental and physical fatigue that has accumulated over the previous 140 or so games, it's fair to wonder h...

Days before the start of the 2025 season, Naomi Osaka made an ominous remark about her future in tennis. "I don't think I'm the type of player that would hang around," Osaka said, if her ranking didn't improve. "I'd rather spend time with my daughter if I'm not where I think...

Fresh off the heels of the only disappointing 9-4 record in college football, Alabama fans this year must have been hoping to see a new Crimson Tide that looked more like the old ones. After a strong first drive in their season opener against Florida State on Saturday, it se...