Posts by Michael Weinreb

June 4, 2013
In Memoriam: Deacon Jones, 1939-2013

It is rare that an athlete is so good at his job that he inspires an entirely new quantitative measure, but this was the case with David “Deacon” Jones, who died of natural causes yesterday at the age of 74. Jones was a 6-foot-5, 270-pound behemoth, a flamboyant man who spoke plainly about his own […]
March 21, 2013
The Second Act of Akron Coach Keith Dambrot

The first time I spoke to the current head coach of the Akron Zips, he told me, “I’m never coaching Division I basketball again.” This was in 2000, and Keith Dambrot was coaching a local high school team after years of not being able to find a basketball job at all; he spent his weekdays […]
March 18, 2013
The Kings of Q*bert

Why do we play arcade games for hundreds of hours?
March 5, 2013
Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech, and the Elements of Style

I have never been to Lubbock, and therefore I have never visited Chrome, the clothing store owned by Texas Tech alum Stephen Spiegelberg, who became the source of mockery this week when a rather fervid marketing memo he sent to a deputy athletic director at the school was forwarded to Deadspin. Here is what my […]
February 26, 2013
A Proposed Solution to Recruiting Middle Schoolers to Play College Football

Last Saturday, Nick Saban offered a scholarship to an eighth-grader. Saban is the best coach in college football because he is also its most zealous authoritarian, and yet, in this case, what Saban did is not quite as Machiavellian as it sounds. For once, he was actually playing catch-up with a trend: The eighth-grader in […]
February 20, 2013
Hurry Up and Wait

Jim Crutchfield’s West Liberty University is the fastest offense in college basketball — and they win. So why isn’t anyone else trying to catch up?
February 6, 2013
Ole Miss and the Pack Mentality of National Signing Day

1. I should declare up front that I am firmly entrenched in the strata of college football fanatics who find National Signing Day to be a weird and discomfiting phenomenon, and that I do not frequent any message boards, and that I believe that the hat dance has really run its course. I am of […]
January 24, 2013
The Many Lives of Donald Westlake

On the man who created Parker and the quest for the perfect character.
January 9, 2013
The Shadow of Nick Saban

After yet another Alabama national championship, how much longer can this go on?
January 2, 2013
The Beef O’Belk Bowl Season Power Rankings (to Date)

1. Jadeveon Clowney Until the year 2013, if you had asked me to cite off the top of my head the greatest defensive play in college football’s recent annals, I might have noted this, or made a blatantly homerish reference to this. But that era has ended, because I have been told by a seismographer […]

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