There’s a new sports sponcon documentary out, and this time it’s about the little-known story of a mini-dynasty from Dallas that reigned during the end of the last century. That’s right: It’s the ’90s Dallas Cowboys’ turn to be exhumed for easy, bloated content. In my best Stefon voice, this documentary has everything: old men […]| defector.com
Defector is an employee-owned sports and culture website brought to you by the former staffers of Deadspin.| defector.com
As Texas congressional districts go, the 21st is pretty easy to parse. The outline of it, which dips into Austin and enfolds a vast swath of the San Antonio suburbs, looks like a lumpier-than-average flightless bird, or a small-headed figure wearing a cape in a windstorm. It is rich and Republican by design and has been represented by Rep. Chip Roy since 2019. Roy was born and raised around suburban D.C. and got two degrees from the University of Virginia. After a brief career in investment b...| Defector
I can't remember exactly what I was doing when it happened. The morning had started normally enough. It was a Tuesday and I'd woken up before my alarm—this part was not normal, and the subsequent consequences almost certainly ensure it will never happen again. I fed my cat and watered my plants. I made a cup of coffee. I washed the dishes I'd left in the sink overnight. Maybe it was then that I first started to feel ... something in my back. It wasn't quite pain yet, or at least not a type ...| Defector
Well shit, summer's over! We'll be trying to come to grips with that tragedy over the long weekend, and will be back to full blogging strength on Tuesday. Feel free to entertain yourselves here until then.| Defector
Some people are fans of the Washington Commanders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Commanders. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Washington Commanders, and just when you and I were ready to leave all of the name discourse behind…| Defector
These are trying times for Millennial soccer fans. Signs of the passage of time and the effects of aging are everywhere you look. Our old idols of physical prowess, chiseled beauty, and rakish charm are now middle-aged men whose rounded faces and time-ravaged (or Turkensteined) hairlines are plastered onto our TV screens during interminable pre- and mid- and postgame pundit segments, where they spout the most tired "yer da" drivel about why the players these days just don't do it as well as t...| Defector
Welcome to The Backlog, a series in which we will take a look back at 12 games from 2020 that, in one way or another, had a lasting impact on the video game industry. If the most recent entry of The Backlog focused on two games that were made to play with your friends, then this edition is about a game that can isolate you, consume your life, and leave you in a daze, wondering where the hours went and when the last time you talked to another person was. That's right: It's time for Crusader Ki...| Defector
Thursday evening provided us with a moment that baseball does better than any other sport: taking two things that used to be special but now almost seem mundane, and then slamming them together in an alchemist's fever dream. This particular moment came when Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies, owner of baseball's 21st four-homer game in history and the third this year, faced Atlanta infielder Vidal Bruján, the 61st non-pitching pitcher of 2025, in a showdown to see if there was any actual history...| Defector
Welcome to Margin of Error, a politics column from Tom Scocca, editor of the Indignity newsletter. On Monday, President Donald Trump put out an executive order directing, among other things, that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth make ready "a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment." The president also called for Hegseth to create a new "specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard, subj...| Defector
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. Israel Daramola: It’s not quite autumn, but it is college football season. America’s favorite roux of bloodsport, campus pageantry, and shady bookkeeping returns in a moment of existential crisis for the sport, as playoff fever and corporate greed threaten to tear asunder the things we once held precious. Not...| Defector
Psychoanalyzing Jerry Jones is the safest and cheapest dollar there is to be made in all of sports punditry. The template is already there, and everyone uses it. He’s old. He’s powerful. He’s competitive. He’s spiteful. He’s a megalomaniac with the tongue of an auctioneer. Check, check, check, check, and double check. Thus, his decision […]| defector.com
If you’d ever like to throw some extra cash our way, whether you’re a current subscriber or not, we’re glad to collect it. Each time we reach $79 in the tip jar, we’ll set aside a complimentary annual Reader subscription for a student, a laid-off federal employee, or someone else in financial need. You can […]| defector.com
It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of companies’ generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever. Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that […]| defector.com
Once upon a time, in a different life, I was tasked with running a blog vertical devoted entirely to help men, who read a sports site, become slightly better at things. Not exceptional. Not great. Not even very good. Just … adequate. We gave advice on anything and everything: cooking, grooming, relationships. We weighed in […]| defector.com
Did you hear the news? Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk!!! Despite being a 40-year-old man, I am uniquely in tune with the younger generation because I go to the mall. I am more than happy to explain this all to you. OK, I don’t really know if I need to know any of this. You […]| defector.com
It is a measure of the history of the Florida/Miami Marlins that Sunday feels like the third-biggest day in franchise history. It wasn’t, but this is what happens when your franchise has two World Series victories and seven other playoff games in 33 years. That third spot on the podium remains very much available. Still, […]| defector.com
It’s all that baseball fans can talk about this morning: the huge memorable swing of the bat at the narrative and emotional climax of Monday night’s dramatic game in Arlington, Texas. An incredible, historic moment! Allow me to set the scene: It’s the bottom of the 10th inning, the ghost runner is stationed on second […]| defector.com
Defensive tackle Christian Wilkins was released by the Raiders last week, which immediately scanned as just another instance of the franchise deploying its “trip over your own feet” philosophy of roster construction. Yes, it’s strange to release a guy who you just signed to a four-year deal with $84 million guaranteed last offseason, but that’s […]| defector.com
Some people are fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: Las Vegas, nee Oakland, nee Los Angeles, nee Oakland Raiders. Your 2024 record: 4-13, […]| defector.com
With last week’s sale of Kotaku, the project that was G/O Media is effectively dead. Its media portfolio is now something of a media one-pager: The only website it still owns is The Root, another publication that deserved better. The Nosferatus in Oxford blue shirts at Great Hill Partners, which owns G/O Media, have polished […]| defector.com
Terry Bollea died on Thursday. The former professional wrestler was 71 years old. According to his longtime manager, Bollea died at his home in Clearwater, Fla.; different reports say that paramedics responded at dawn to an emergency call reporting that Bollea was suffering from cardiac arrest. He’d had some sort of recent neck surgery, and […]| defector.com
Pat McAfee ended his daily ESPN show on Wednesday by finally addressing the role he played in ruining a college student’s reputation. To nobody’s surprise, he was extremely annoying about it. Back in February, McAfee used his show to amplify a rumor about Ole Miss student Mary Kate Cornett having an affair with her boyfriend’s […]| defector.com
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, while you’re at it. Today, we’re talking about cleaning up before dying, ketchup, being a new stepdaddy, and more. Sorry for the abbreviated bag today, but Why Your […]| defector.com
I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking about when I first saw them. It was one of those summer days that was defined chiefly by its sprawl. I had spent the morning at the gym; every year my trainer holds a charity competition for his clients, and this year’s was called Bench-A-Palooza. (Because I […]| defector.com
HAUTACAM, France — “Fuck, what a shit birthday,” Laurence Pithie gasps. The Kiwi rider from Red Bull has just summited the Hautacam, a winding, rolling, and, today, infernally hot Pyrenean climb that takes roughly 40 minutes. A better verb for what he did might be survived, as he finished 63rd, more than 31 minutes behind […]| defector.com
BAGNERES-DE-LUCHON, France — As we descend off the back of the Col du Tourmalet, a fan clasps her hands to her head, mouth gaping in disbelief at our speed. Markus Hoelgaard nearly overcooks a wet corner and unclips to stabilize his balance at the last second, with our car and two motos bearing down on […]| defector.com
The Olympic nameplates have a style guide. Though the TV broadcasts favor small caps over lowercase letters, the general rules of capitalization are the same—the given name of the athlete is written out with standard capitalization, and the family name is in all caps. To borrow some relevant gymnastics examples: Simone BILES. Suni LEE. Stephen […]| defector.com
I do not usually have a fear that my friends will change, in whatever facets they may. Change is just an inevitable, wonderful part of getting older. There is, however, one exception: I have recently developed a fear that my friend Will, whom I have known since middle school, will eventually become a Bill, and […]| defector.com
You may have once again noticed that a lot of people on TV, the internet, and in your real life are talking about files. The Epstein files. They want them released! They want Donald Trump in jail! They want to know what the hell is going on! Seriously, though, what the hell is going on? […]| defector.com
For Bill Guerin, who’s been GM of the Minnesota Wild since 2019, the beginning of this month must have felt like finally taking off an extremely tight pair of pants after a very long day. As a consequence of the team buying out both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, they were stifled by three years […]| defector.com
“You can’t be a serious critic,” New York Times technology reporter Kevin Roose wrote on Tuesday, on Bluesky, about artificial intelligence, “if you’re in denial about how useful it is.” Narrowly, in strict terms, this is true: You can’t be a serious critic of anything if you are in denial about any part of it, […]| defector.com
Back in January, an arbitration case between the NFL and the NFL Players Association came to a quiet end. The case was initiated by a grievance filed by the NFLPA in 2022, which argued that NFL owners had colluded with each other to deny players fully guaranteed contracts. The arbitrator’s final ruling, that the league’s […]| defector.com
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was, during the competitive portion of a not-very-competitive Game 2, about as good as it is possible to be at the sport of basketball. There was an insanely cool sequence in the first half where he seemed to take a horse-hair bow and go fiddle mode on the superstrings of reality. It started […]| defector.com
Hypothetical: You are an NBA head coach and your team is leading a playoff game by three points with 11.1 seconds to go. The opposing team is getting ready to inbound the ball from under their own basket, they have no timeouts, and their best player is stuck on the bench. Do you foul and […]| defector.com
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan […]| defector.com
The boxes came from Tokyo: first by tanker, then overland via container truck from a Pacific port, across the Continental Divide, and finally backed into a driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in a south Denver suburban enclave. This was a neighborhood with Razor scooters dumped in trimmed front lawns. Where family walks with […]| defector.com
I first met Becca Rothfeld when I pitched her back at the end of 2020. She had just joined The Point Magazine as a contributing editor, but I reached out because I loved her essay “Same As It Ever Was,” published in a magazine called Cabinet. The piece was about the Talking Heads and heaven, […]| defector.com
Happy Holidays to one and all. It’s time to gather ’round the fire with your loved ones for our nation’s oldest and finest tradition: reading about people that jammed things in their holes and couldn’t get them out without medical intervention. All reports are taken from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visits, […]| defector.com
As the biggest entertainment story in decades unfolds, the trades’ practices are being exposed, with reporting that alternates between being useless to outwardly harmful.| defector.com
I went to hip hop’s 50th birthday party, and all I got was a collection of insipid lists. And a new Sprite commercial. To be fair, there were also the usual puff pieces. The New York Times detailed “How Hip Hop Conquered the World.” But I’ve been with it almost every step of the way, […]| defector.com
