2025-12-12 06:45:38
Audi Crooks wastes no time. Eleven games into Iowa State’s season, the 6-foot-3 junior forward is the nation’s leading scorer, averaging close to 28 points per game while playing less than 26 minutes per game. Her best performances can somehow be both clinical and overpowering.
Earlier this season against Valparaiso, Crooks set the Cyclones’ single-game scoring record with 43 points in just under 20 minutes. The low playing time was because of a stomach bug she was dealing with that night, but as she’s wont to do, she kept it moving. “The night didn’t start so well for me,” she explained afterward. “I came out in the first quarter and had to ditch my pre-game meal.” When she checked back into the game, she made up for lost time. Her pregame meal ditched, Crooks packed another 33 points into her final 14 minutes. It was no surprise that she waited just a couple weeks to break the record again. On a cool 19-of-25 shooting, she put up 47 points against Indiana. Fair enough. Why wait?
2025-12-12 04:49:22
Podcasting is a "next man up" business. Not in the way that the NFL is—no one is actually getting injured out here, although thinking about human-induced climate change after last week's Peter Brannen episode did bum me out a little bit—but the show must go on even when the booked guest calls in feverish and groggy on the day of the show. Luckily, Drew is on a texting basis with Matthew Coller of Purple Insider, which meant that we not only could still talk NFL this week, but could do so with one of the elite emergency podcast quarterbacks, a returning champion guest whose football knowledge goes far beyond the grim NFC North team which he and Drew care about the most. We barely even mentioned the Vikings in this one, because there was too much other ball to talk.
2025-12-12 02:50:56
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.
This is not the best Buffalo Bills team of the 2020s. They’ve gotten dusted by the likes of Atlanta and Miami. They have a negative turnover differential. Their passing game is often inert, especially in the face of oncoming blitzes. They still don’t have a viable WR1, cycling through a gallery of slobs—Brandin Cooks, Mecole Hardman, Curtis Samuel—in a fruitless attempt to get more production out of that room. They’ve lost two vital interior defensive linemen to IR. They even lost their kicker for the season. Everyone still hates the offensive coordinator, and no one trusts the head coach.
2025-12-12 00:35:40
Halfway through the second quarter of a Dec. 1 game between the Phoenix Suns and the hosting Los Angeles Lakers, the Peacock streaming network broadcast returned from commercial and threw to Robbie Hummel for an update. Hummel, a Purdue University legend who briefly played in the NBA before turning to broadcasting, reported from the Suns bench that coach Jordan Ott had spent the previous huddle telling Mark Williams to continue to "win the race" against his man every time. Hummel delivered his report while wedged next to the actor Austin Butler, whom play-by-play man Noah Eagle razzed Hummel for not knowing about before checking in with Derek Fisher from the Lakers bench.
2025-12-11 23:57:36
There's a new documentary about Diddy in the wake of his recent criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to 50 months in prison after being found guilty of procuring sex workers. The documentary, titled Sean Combs: The Reckoning, has gotten a lot of buzz due to the fact that it was executive produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, who has had a longstanding public beef with Diddy. How we get to a point where a documentary account of Diddy's criminal behavior gets produced by fellow rap mogul 50 Cent is quite convoluted. There's women involved, business interests, and competition mixed in, and maybe just a hint of gay panic.
Regardless, 50 Cent has been open about his personal disdain of Diddy for years. That animus, and 50 Cent's well-known trollishness, makes it easy to dismiss the documentary out of hand as a hit job from one rapper against another. But is that actually the case? The Reckoning is a four-part docuseries on the ascent and fall of Diddy and his empire, and all the women and men who were abused and discarded in the process. The actual filmmaker, Alex Stapleton, talks to a number of people who were around during Diddy's rise and fall, some with real grievances and some with just a lot of contempt. While there's plenty of footage and verifiable facts to support the doc's dark portrait of Diddy, it's a work full of conjecture and insinuations. Did Diddy pay the Crips to kill Suge Knight and 2Pac? Did he play a role in Notorious B.I.G.'s murder? Did he make Biggie's estate pay for his own funeral? Was he abusing the mother of his own children? Did he kidnap his assistant so they could try to murder Kid Cudi? The doc doesn't prove any of it, but simply posing the questions in this format is suggestive. Listen to that music, he's evil!
2025-12-11 23:14:08
University of Michigan head football coach Sherrone Moore was arrested Wednesday, hours after the school issued a statement announcing he’d been fired for what was termed an "inappropriate relationship with a staff member.”
Details of exactly what crimes Moore, 39, is accused of committing remain vague at this time. According to The Athletic, cops in Pittsfield Charter Township, Mich., were summoned to the home of a “female Michigan football staffer” yesterday afternoon. The Pittsfield police issued a statement last night to ESPN and others, saying the officers were “investigating an alleged assault” at that address. Moore, who was not named in the statement, was subsequently arrested by police in the nearby town of Saline. The Athletic story says the arrest was part of the same assault investigation, and Moore was handed over to Pittsfield law enforcement.
