We start with the return of the NFL. That’s right: Professional football is back this week; on Thursday, the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Houston Texans, who just locked down quarterback Deshaun Watson with a contract extension that nearly matched the per-year record of his Week 1 opponent, Patrick Mahomes. […]
We begin by continuing to reflect on the NBA strike that began last Wednesday and ended with games resuming over the weekend. The strike is a hard thing to judge for several reasons. First, athletes don’t have the power to fix systemic racism — nor is it their responsibility to do so — so the […]
In a breaking news episode, Sara, Neil and FiveThirtyEight senior sports writer Chris Herring reflect on the wild events that have rocked the sports world in the past 24 hours and contextualize the players’ strike that began with the NBA and spread to the WNBA, MLB and MLS, among other leagues. This is a historic […]
We begin with the first round of the NBA playoffs, since they started this week, and which teams and players seem to be in good shape. While Neil is looking more prophetic, for the moment, for picking the Los Angeles team that he did, the Hot Takedown crew hasn’t lost faith in LeBron James quite […]
We begin, in fine Hot Takedown tradition, by talking about something that happened shortly after we recorded this week’s episode. The Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences have canceled college football for the fall, with the hopes of trying to play in the spring. We knew it was coming. But what’s interesting about where college football […]