Tommy Craggs, Deadspin

Tommy Craggs

Deadspin

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Past:
  • Deadspin

Past articles by Tommy:

Real tales of mike lupica News, Video and Gossip

Mike Lupica's ego is to sportswriting what Milton Berle's cock is to comedy. It is an occupational totem, around which colleagues spin fantastical-seeming yarns that just so happen to be true. Here are a few such tales. → Read More

The Case Against "The Case Against Lance Armstrong"

Maybe you've heard about Sports Illustrated's exciting new Lance Armstrong feature. At bottom, it's a story about a corrupt man who gets away with cheating because the people who'd ordinarily police it have decided to look the other way. → Read More

How Deadspin Fucked Up The Cory Gardner Story

On Wednesday, Deadspin published a story questioning the football bona fides of U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican who's running for the Colorado Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Mark Udall. We fucked up. After the story was published, the main source we'd relied on reversed himself on a key point, and the central thrust of the report turns out to have been wrong. For that we're… → Read More

Leaked NFL Documents: While Owner Cried Hardship, Carolina Panthers Had $112 Million Profit Over Two Years [UPDATE]

In 2010 and 2011, as the NFL prepared for and staged a lockout of its players, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was among the hardest of the hardliners, urging his fellow owners to "take back our league" by demanding a more management-friendly collective-bargaining agreement. → Read More

Has Peter King Read His Own Reporting On The Ray Rice Fiasco?

On July 29, SI.com's Peter King, who covers the league from the centermost pleat on Roger Goodell's khakis, reported that "NFL and some Ravens officials" had seen unreleased security-cam footage of the Ray Rice altercation from within the elevator. At the time, it was important for the NFL to establish that it was taking great pains to investigate the incident. Here's how King wrote it up: → Read More

Video: Ray Rice Knocks Out His Fiancée In An Elevator

Below, via TMZ, is the punch that got Ravens running back Ray Rice a two-game suspension from the NFL. The woman on the other end of that left hook is Janay Palmer, who is now Rice's wife. → Read More

Hey, ESPN Sorta Asked Bob Bowlsby If He Works Harder Than His Secretary

This is pretty cool. On Thursday, I offered a leather-bound edition of Das Kapital to any reporter who asked Bob Bowlsby just one little question. Bowlsby is the Big 12 commissioner who, in an act of face-melting chutzpah, decided to wrap himself in Marx's labor theory of value as intellectual cover for not paying revenue-sport athletes. "If you apply any form of the labor theory of value," he said… → Read More

The One Question To Ask The Commissioner Of The Big 12

Here's the commissioner of the Big 12, Bob Bowlsby, owning the absolute shit out of what's become the NCAA deadenders' Marxism of convenience: → Read More

What About The Maturation Of Peter King?

The first item in Peter King's latest MMQB column is about Panthers quarterback Cam Newton and "maturation." Specifically, it is about how one of the NFL's most important figures refuses to set aside childish things and instead wallows in a state of doltish adolescence. When, the reader is left to wonder, will Peter King finally grow up? → Read More

Bryant Gumbel Says Smart Things About Tony La Russa And Mark McGwire

We'll take any allies in the war on the war on PEDs, even if that ally is the most self-satisfied broadcaster on television, a man who makes Bob Costas look like Woody Allen. Listen to Bryant Gumbel here. He speaks truth. → Read More

Tony Dungy Is An Insufferable Shit

"If I'm Reggie Bush, I give back the trophy," Tony Dungy said yesterday in his capacity as football's freelance moral compass. This is all he does anymore: intone some insufferably pious crap that's just aching to be cross-stitched onto a decorative pillow. → Read More

Mark Whicker Leaves The Yard

I do not say this lightly: What you're about to read is the single worst piece of sports journalism ever committed to the page. → Read More

How The Media Abuse Hank Aaron

On Tuesday, the Braves celebrated the 40th anniversary of Hank Aaron's 715th career home run, and the mindless debate over who is baseball's "true home run king" sprang idiotically to life. Barry Bonds "has more home runs," Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci wrote, "but true greatness and authenticity belong to Hank Aaron's record." Aaron was once again being celebrated as much for his usefulness as… → Read More

The Brilliant Dirty Tricks Behind Esquire's Famous Ted Williams Profile

Below you'll find Alex Belth's fun story about the making of Richard Ben Cramer's famous Esquire profile, "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" We shared this over earlier today, but I wanted to draw your attention to one section in particular. It's about Cramer's efforts to restore 1,500 words that had been cut from his story, which required several heroic acts of editorial subversion. → Read More

Mankind's 10 Stages Of Drunkenness, According To Our Best Sportswriter

In honor of his new book (and in grudging acknowledgment of Frat Boy Thanksgiving), we give you Dan Jenkins's famous list, from Baja Oklahoma: → Read More

Sources: ESPN First Take Boss In Talks With NBC To Produce Today Show

ESPN vice president Jamie Horowitz, the midwife of Bristol's "Embrace Debate" era that made us all a little dumber, has been approached by NBC to take control of the Today show, according to two sources. A deal appears likely, we're told, though Horowitz still has to extract himself from his contract with ESPN. At the moment, one source says, ESPN president John Skipper is trying to coax a sizable… → Read More

Bye, Candlestick

[They played one last regular-season football game at the unlovable old pile in an unlovable corner of America's most overrated city. San Francisco's Candlestick Park—like most sports arenas, with the notable exception of the one replacing it—began life as a million-dollar swindle, and it seems only fitting that a building born of windy public bullshit would be escorted to its death by the likes of… → Read More

Rearrange the letters in MANDELA and you have LEAD MAN #RIP #Leadership— darren rovell (@darrenrovel

Rearrange the letters in MANDELA and you have LEAD MAN #RIP #Leadership— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) December 5, 2013 → Read More

The Best Story Ever Written About Losing

In keeping with the day's theme, below is a classic Esquire profile of Floyd Patterson after his second devastating loss to Sonny Liston, which we reprinted a year ago on The Stacks. No athlete has ever talked so frankly about his own shortcomings as Patterson did with author Gay Talese. He confesses at one point to having worn a disguise after his first loss to Liston—fake mustache, fake beard, glasses,… → Read More

Len Bias Still Makes Everyone Crazy

Twenty-seven years later, we're still losing our shit over Len Bias. → Read More