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Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Cincinnati Bengals
Some people are fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Cincinnati Bengals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-ZZLXoDQQ
Alex Eala Is Catching The WTA’s Best Off Guard
In tennis, it can be pleasant to play under the flag of an underrepresented country with a large diaspora. Essentially, you have a network of sleeper cells who can be activated all over the world. They are extremely willing to spend money to come watch you play, and extremely loud, because to them you are one of the most important sportspeople alive. A player in these circumstances doesn't have to reach the absolute peak of the sport to have this effect on people. Brazilian fans go nuts for bl...
New York’s Use Of AI For Family Policing Summarizes The Last 30 Years Of City Politics
Davene Roseborough still can’t believe the number of foster homes she lived in that had locks on the refrigerators and cabinets. At one spot, Roseborough was barred from eating dinner if she wasn’t home by 6:00 p.m. That place didn’t last long, though. She was bounced from home to home from the time she entered foster care at the age of eight to the time she aged out at 18. Those years were characterized by rampant physical and sexual abuse, for which her foster parents received a $1,200 a mon...
How Do I Talk To My Kid About Death?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Dave answers a question about talking to your child about death .
For One Night Only, A Rookie And His Sweet Folks Make It Possible To Enjoy The Yankees
It used to be that all the normal, real people of this great nation could set aside political and religious differences, and even a well-calibrated distaste for Bostonians, and come together in our pure and righteous hatred of the New York Yankees. Now it's all confused: The Yankees—once such an inevitability that Bob Costas invoked the word "socialism" to describe how collective action could force them from the mountaintop—are no longer the sport's big bullies. Hell, they're no longer even th...
How Far Would You Go To Save Your Kia Soul?
If we have learned anything from decades of superhero movies, it's that people love a vigilante. Something lurks deep in the hearts of most of us, but is it a sense of justice or something else? If you had the opportunity to go rogue—to solve a crime or right a wrong on your very own, or even just steal back something that was once yours—would you? Today’s gossip revolves around a woman whose opportunity to embody justice, in the form of hunting down her stolen Kia, fell on the day of the f...
‘Nothing But Respect’ Is Back From Summer Break
Now that I am back from France, so too is Nothing But Respect back from its brief summer break. This week on the show, Harry and I caught up and chatted about the Tour de France and the way I covered the race for Defector; Harry's experimental forays into vertical video ; and the ongoing Kyle Kuzma Massive Thinks situation . Harry also makes a fantastic NBA player comparison for a certain former guest and current NBA staffer's game. Also, we always plug the Broke Jumper Tip Line in these po...
What Are You Banning When You Ban Influencers?
A couple weeks ago, I bought an apple cider slushie at the farmer's market. It was a hot summer afternoon, and the ice crystals in the slushie sparkled and burst in my mouth with crisp acidity that immediately cooled me down. The cider had been made by the farmers who ran the stand so it wasn't too sweet, just the platonic ideal of apple flavor somehow frozen into slushie form. Before I took another sip, I pulled out my phone to snap a picture of it. The rich brown of the slushie was framed by...
We’re Just Going To Keep Doing 2020 Again Until All The Wrong Stuff Is True
In a bunch of ways, there is no real percentage in remembering what things were actually like during the worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond all the uncertainty and suffering and death, there is just not a lot to hang your hat on. It was, in the manner of every single thing befouled by Donald Trump's sticky palm prints, very manifestly going to be made worse and more damaging for all that nasty attention, and was in fact made much worse and more damaging for it. From one moment to the...
Is This The End For Gianni Infantino?
All Gianni Infantino needed was patience. Memory for scandal is short, even in a sport as massive as soccer, and whatever controversies the FIFA president willingly courted during the 2026 World Cup would have soon faded into the background as he won what was going to be an unopposed re-election next March. He could have ridden off into the sunset in 2031 and made millions off the connections built during his tenure at the head of FIFA. That wasn't enough for him, though, and so now, the walls...
The Women’s Pro Baseball League Will Eventually Need To Escape The Past
You may think you've experienced joy before, but you had previously never seen a mascot version of a 99-year-old woman with a cane dancing and cartwheeling around a baseball field in Springfield, Ill., which ushered in the inaugural weekend of the first professional women’s baseball league in nearly 30 years. I have never been happier than I was witnessing that moment. Our lives are all downhill from here. That mascot is modeled after Maybelle Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Gi...
Concussion Protocols Are A Sham
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 flouting the law, botched first dates, jealous dickheads, and more. Drew is off today. I have seized the means of Funbagging and, as is my custom, forgotten to make use of them until the last second. With that in mind, let's get to... Your dang letters:
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Kansas City Chiefs
Some people are fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: It’s over.
David Ellison’s Bid To Control Warner Bros. Hits The Rocks
Until a month ago, everything was going great for David Ellison and his plan to control American cultural production . He'd successfully made Paramount an outer arm of the Trump administration, with all the lucrative sinecures and harrowing moral and journalistic compromises that come with such an arrangement. Ellison's smooth ascent to power took a little bump when he lost the initial bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, but his father is Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world,...
Reality Has Set In For The San Francisco Giants
Maybe we've been viewing Harrison Bader all wrong. Not that he hasn't behaved like a Thanksgiving ham in a batting helmet , but he may have spurred his soon-to-be former employers to accept their current situation with a clearer eye and purpose. And with some gelignite . The San Francisco Giants have been freefalling all season long, which if nothing else marks a refreshing change from their decade of mediocrity in stasis. The amazing thing about their season is that they still haven't ch...
The Right Has Created Its Perfect Trans Athlete
A lot of people in and around the WNBA are talking about trans women. In the aftermath of Indiana Fever role player Sophie Cunningham's negative comments about trans people playing sports in an ESPN profile , transphobic right-wing grifters and small groups of protesters have made a show of themselves at her games. In response, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was suspended by the league for telling off a couple of Cunningham boosters, while coaches like Cheryl Reeve and Natalie Nakase ha...
If Baseball Is Ruined, Show Me The Ruins
The Los Angeles Dodgers got Tarik Skubal , damn them. Damn them for having money; damn them for being too damn good; damn them for ruining baseball. That they got Skubal, the hottest commodity on the stove at the trade deadline, for relative peanuts, well. In this case, you damn everyone else. This trade will ostensibly impact the Dodgers' odds through the 2026 World Series, though that's the least relevant part of the picture. All anyone can think about, at least as it pertains to the Dodg...
Trade Season Kicks Ass Until They Sell Your Beautiful Son
Who is ruining baseball? For me, today, it's the Washington Nationals. Games played by my home team make up a solid 90 percent of the baseball I watch in a given regular season. Like a lot of baseball fans, I was hoping Tarik Skubal would go to the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays instead of the Dodgers , but in a distant, uncommitted sort of way, the way that I might hope that my friends have favorable weather while they are taking a trip someplace. Skubal's trade destination is firmly...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: New Orleans Saints
Some people are fans of the New Orleans Saints. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New Orleans Saints. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: New Orleans Saints. Your 2025 record: 6-11, otherwise known as the record of the false dawn. It's a record that looks a lot better than 3-14, until you remember how easy it is for a bad team to scrape together three meaningless wins (or four, or five) at th...
The Crossword, Aug. 3: Lucky Stars
This puzzle was constructed by Eli Robinson , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Eli is the Chief Trivia Officer of Water Cooler Trivia. He has far more questions than answers, if you must ask. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C. 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 . The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sam...
Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Believes The Many Can Defeat The Money
DETROIT — It’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, just one week from Election Day, and Abdul El-Sayed’s Detroit office is standing room only. The front and back of the room are packed with volunteers eager to hear the Senate hopeful speak before they go out and canvass the nearby neighborhoods. Many of them are still coming off the high of what they saw as a stellar performance from El-Sayed in the candidate debate that aired the night before. “He was so good, so good,” Lisa, a woman from Grosse Pointe ...
Gaelic Football Legend David Hickey Wants War Profiteers Out Of His Sport
DUBLIN — David Hickey was built for Gaelic football, the sport that can’t stick to sports. Hickey, who was a two-time GAA all-star and four-time All-Ireland winner as a half-forward for Dublin, used football’s biggest weekend as a platform for protests. First, Hickey loudly refused to show up for a so-called Legends Lunch at storied Croke Park on July 24, where he was to be honored alongside other members of the Dubs’ 1976 championship side . Hickey’s boycott was aimed at the Gaelic Player...
Kelsey Plum Is Back At The Center Of A Head-Scratching Trade
Weird trade. They must think they can re-sign her. This is more or less what I said before the 2025 season , when the Los Angeles Sparks traded for a year of Kelsey Plum. In a three-team deal that also sent Jewell Loyd to Las Vegas, the Sparks gave up the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft to Loyd’s former team, Seattle. Plum was the best player in that deal, and in Los Angeles, she did kind of prove what she wanted to when she sought an opportunity to lead her own team, out from the shadow of A’j...
Sydney Taylor Is The Undrafted Rookie Making Sky Games Fun
The “heartbreaking endings to 2026 Chicago Sky games” montage that CBS showed in the final minute of the Sky’s Saturday matinee against the Las Vegas Aces hinted at how this game might unfold. One of the endings was from a game against the New York Liberty in late June, the same game 25-year-old undrafted rookie Sydney Taylor debuted in Chicago’s starting lineup. On the possession after Taylor hit a go-ahead three with 15 seconds left, the Sky let Sabrina Ionescu waltz to the rim for a layup...
By Bunt Or By Blast, The Red Sox Keep Winning
The Boston Red Sox enjoyed a 15-game win streak that vaulted them back into the playoff picture last month, and they've stayed upright in the days since. Holding a four-game edge over the third and final wild card slot, Boston's preserved their flame with a series of games in which they've simply, pardon the cliché, found a way to get the victory. Whether they're smashing the ball over the fence or knocking it just a few feet beyond home plate, the Red Sox are proving very tough to handle. ...
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