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Ball hits frozen finger, finger breaks.
FOX
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CW
This week’s Alternative Table is all about net spending in the transfer window.
Each week, BuzzFeed will be producing an alternative Premier League table, but with a catch. We'll give you the stat the table is based on, and you have to put the teams in the right order.
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Beijing is now the first city to host both the summer and the winter Olympics.
President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach announcing the winning bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games at the 128th International Olympic Committee session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Friday.
The International Olympic Committee has picked Beijing, China, as the host city for the 2022 Winter Olympic games. The committee came together in Kuala Lumpur, Friday, and picked Beijing over Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The bids were voted on by a group of 85 participants. Beijing's bid received 44 votes, Almaty's received 40 votes, with one abstention.
Beijing is now the first city to host both the summer and the winter Olympics.
"China is a reliable partner because we always honor our commitment," Wei Jizhong, a senior consultant for the Beijing bid, told the Chinese news agency Xinhua before the vote. "The Beijing 2008 Summer Games are a perfect example."
The International Olympic Committee also chose Lausanne, Switzerland, as the host city for the 2020 Youth Winter Olympics on Friday. Lausanne beat Brasov, Romania for the chance to host the Youth Winter Olympics.
Last month, the committee announced that Pyeongchang, South Korea, will be the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
“Here’s the confusion, unconfused: I don’t know what I’m going to do about Rio next year,” the U.S. Women’s soccer star said during a community event at Citi Field.
"How old do you think I am?" Abby Wambach asked an auditorium filled with 6 to 12-year-olds this morning before throwing out the first pitch at Citi Field. This was the World Cup Champion's very last stop on her WWC victory media blitz before leaving for a much needed vacation, her bags packed and ready to go by the door. The kids in attendance at the Citi Kids event called out their guesses, ranging from 24 to 35 — the correct answer.
"I am soooo old," she joked after revealing the truth. Wambach then asked the room if she should play in the 2016 Rio Olympics next summer. The auditorium's resounding response? "Yes!"
USA Today Sports / Reuters
Liz Clayman/CitiKids
Just minutes before, Wambach was downstairs speaking to the press about that same question. The USA striker responded to the speculation surrounding her Rio decision head on.
"Here's the confusion, unconfused: I don't know what I'm going to do about Rio next year in terms of deciding on whether or not I'm going to go for it. In my mind, I have to believe that if I'm asked to be on the team, I don't know if I can say no," she said. "A lot has to happen between now and then," she added, referencing conversations with coaches and family. The most important thing to happen between now and Rio? A vacation.
"I need to take a vacation, I get to go on vacation tomorrow — actually I get to go on vacation in about an hour and ten minutes [...] I'm excited to just get away, maybe turn my phone off for two weeks which would be amazing."
Olympics or no Olympics, Wambach seemed satisfied that either decision would be her final one. "If and when I make a decision, if I were to not play I would be sure about it. If I were to play, I would be sure about that too. So, whatever I decide I will be happy. Very, very happy."
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Incredible is an understatement, tbh.
Bailey, who has cerebral palsy, completed a 100 metre lake swim, a 4,000 metre bike ride, and a 1,300 metre run as part of the Castle Howard Triathlon in North Yorkshire. But it was the last 20 metres of the race where this little champion really made his mark.
“You can see his little face when he came round and saw everyone," Bailey's mum, Julie Hardcastle, told the Yorkshire Post. "That was his way of finishing in style and showing everyone what he could do. It was the response from the crowd that pushed him to do that.”
Test your knowledge with our quiz here.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
I mean they all look EXACTLY alike. How are you supposed to separate the metal chair with the padded seat, from the other metal chair with the padded seat?
Whether you're already an exercise-machine pro just looking to test your knowledge or a fitness newbie looking for some gym education, this quiz will help you learn the names of the machines and what they do.
Before you start, keep in mind that some of the machines work multiple muscle groups depending on your form and what type of exercise you're doing. The answers for each question will be the primary muscle group or groups the machines are supposed to target.
Arsene, paint me like one of your French loan targets.
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The comedy duo eviscerate sports culture in support of the people who really deserve a signing bonus: public school teachers.
Via imgur.com
Via someecards.com
It's called "TeachingCenter," and it imagines a world in which teachers are treated the same way (and paid the same) as pro athletes are now via a version of SportsCenter centered on teachers.
Comedy Central / Via youtube.com
THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE.
Comedy Central / Via youtu.be
The network is packaging its TV commercials and digital ones together for the first time ever.
David J. Phillip / AP
Super Bowl 50 will be a milestone for the big game, and for advertisers as well.
CBS will for the first time stream the flashy commercials that accompany the event live online, the network said today, confirming news that was first reported by Variety.
That's big news for connoisseurs of the annual Super Bowl commercial extravaganza, and for the advertising industry as well. Previously, on-air ads and live stream ads were sold separately, and advertisers weren't required to buy both. Now CBS is changing that.
The conflation of TV and online commercials could send Super Bowl ad spot prices to record highs. Variety reports that 30-second national spots could rise to $4.7 million. For the 2015 Super Bowl — broadcast by NBC — 30 seconds cost $4.5 million, but the online streaming ads were sold separately, and at a lower rate. The rates were different because NBC only had 2.5 million unique viewers online, as opposed to the 114 million that watched live on television.
However, that 2.5 million was up 9% from the 2014 Super Bowl, and was a 19% jump from 2013. And with online streaming becoming more increasingly more commonplace, it's likely to grow even larger by Super Bowl 50.
Variety reports that advertisers will not be allowed to opt out, and some — like Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch — are already committed to sponsoring the broadcast.
The British media would look very, very different each summer.
BBC / BuzzFeed
Daily Mail / BuzzFeed
Twitter / BuzzFeed
Calm down, Barry, it's going to be okay.
Guardian / BuzzFeed
Patriots owner Robert Kraft delivered an explosive statement about Tom Brady’s punishment Wednesday morning. He was followed by coach Bill Belichick.
Patriots
Kraft, a longtime friend of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, said he found yesterday's decision to uphold Tom Brady's four-game suspension "unfathomable."
Coach Bill Belichick, who appeared in his signature hoodie, declined to answer questions regarding Brady. He told reporters most of their questions had "already been addressed," and that they'd just heard from Kraft, so they should "go back and check their notes."
Kraft twice apologized to Patriots fans for accepting the league's $1 million fine and loss of a first-round draft pick, explaining that he believed it would push the NFL to soften on Brady's suspension.
"It is routine for discipline in the NFL to be reduced upon appeal in the vast majority of these incidents," he asserted. In most of those cases, the league has "tangible evidence" to support the sanctions, and "still the initial penalty gets reduced."
"Six months removed from the AFC Championship Game, the league still has no hard evidence of anyone doing anything to tamper with the game balls," Kraft noted.
“I will not allow my unfair discipline to become a precedent for other NFL players without a fight.”
Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
After the NFL announced on Tuesday that it would uphold Tom Brady's four-game suspension for his alleged involvement in the deflation of footballs, the New England Patriots quarterback responded to the decision with a lengthy Facebook status update.
"I am very disappointed by the NFL's decision to uphold the 4 game suspension against me," he wrote Wednesday morning. "I did nothing wrong, and no one in the Patriots organization did either."
Brady said that despite having participated in "hours of testimony" over the course of six months, Commissioner Roger Goodell decided not to change his four-game suspension on the grounds that he was "generally aware" of his misconduct.
"The fact is that neither I, nor any equipment person, did anything of which we have been accused," Brady wrote.
His defense was detailed; Brady wrote in several paragraphs that he was disappointed with Goodell's decision, and said that allegations of his wrongdoing went seemingly unchallenged.
He explained in great detail the issue of his cell phone; the NFL believed Brady deliberately destroyed it in order to hinder investigators' access to his text messages and other relevant information surrounding the alleged deflation.
"To suggest that I destroyed a phone to avoid giving the NFL information it requested is completely wrong," he wrote.
Brady added that he submitted "detailed pages" of his cell phone records and emails that had been requested by investigators in order to "try and reconcile the record and fully cooperate with the investigation" after the NFL first handed down his game suspensions in May.
"There is no 'smoking gun' and this controversy is manufactured to distract from the fact they have zero evidence of wrongdoing," he wrote.
The quarterback acknowledged that he respected Commissioned Goodell's authority, but said that he needed to respect his rights as a private citizen.
"I will not allow my unfair discipline to become a precedent for other NFL players without a fight," he wrote.
The four-time Super Bowl champion has lost his appeal against his four-game suspension for his alleged involvement in the deflation of team footballs to gain a competitive advantage.
Jamie Squire / Getty Images
Tom Brady's four-game suspension for his alleged involvement with the deflation of footballs used during the 2014 AFC Championship Game has been upheld, the NFL announced today.
In the NFL release on the decision, the league said that Brady "destroyed" his cell phone after the investigators had requested "access to text messages and other electronic information" from it. The league cited this as "important new information" that informed their decision to uphold the suspension.
"Rather than simply failing to cooperate," Commissioner Roger Goodell said, "Mr. Brady made a deliberate effort to ensure that investigators would never have access to information that he has been asked to produce. Put differently, there was an affirmative effort by Mr. Brady to conceal potentially relevant evidence and to undermine the investigation. Mr. Brady's conduct gives rise to an inference that information from his cellphone, if it were available, would further demonstrate his direct knowledge of and involvement with the scheme to tamper with the game balls prior to the AFC Championship Game."
In a meeting, Brady claimed that he periodically instructs his assistants to "destroy" his cell phones for privacy reasons.
The NFL Player's Association and Brady reportedly intend to take their case against the NFL to federal court.
Brady was suspended — and the Patriots were fined $1 million — after an NFL-commissioned report by attorney Ted Wells concluded that Brady was at least "generally aware" that two locker room attendants, John Jastremski and Jim McNally, had allegedly used needles to deflate Patriots footballs to give the team a competitive advantage. The Wells Report also suggested that Brady was not only aware, but might have orchestrated the scheme.
The report did not find Patriots owner Robert Kraft or coach Bill Belichick to be involved in, or aware of, the goings on. Brady, for his part, has denied involvement since the time the investigation was announced. He immediately appealed the suspension.
The Patriots released an annotated rebuttal to the findings of the Wells Report, asserting that its findings are "at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack[ing] context." The team claimed that the Wells Report had not properly interpreted the science behind weather-related air pressure and that text messages between Jastremski and McNally had been taken out of context and assigned intent and tone without evidence. One text message, in which McNally referred to himself as "the deflator," was explained as a reference to his attempts to lose weight. That suggestion was widely mocked, and quietly removed from the rebuttal because it had "detracted" from the overall purpose of the review.
In June, Brady met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for ten hours at League headquarters in New York to appeal his suspension. Prior to the meeting, the NFL Player's Association, on behalf of Brady, had requested that Goodell recuse himself as the sole arbiter of Brady's final suspension. Few, if any, details of Brady's meeting with Goodell have leaked to the media — a rare event.
Speculation that Brady's suspension would be reduced intensified after Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy — who allegedly assaulted his then-girlfriend and threw her onto a pile of guns — had his suspension reduced from 10 games to four.
That’s right. You’ll be able to play as the Terminator in the upcoming WWE 2K16 video game.
Schwarzenegger was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame back in March.
Vroom, vroom!
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Toxa Avdeyev / Via youtube.com
Early Monday, Mayor Marty Walsh said he would not sign a contract that would have taxpayers pay for budget overages.
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Early Monday, Mayor Marty Walsh announced he would not sign a contract that would leave Boston taxpayers responsible for excess costs to host the Olympics until he had a better understanding of the proposed budget of hosting the events.
By Monday afternoon, it was reported that Boston would no longer pursue hosting the Olympics. The AP reports the United States Olympic Committee had the final say in the decision.
The potential to host the Olympics was unpopular amongst Boston residents. Los Angeles could take Boston's place as the US bid to host.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates and follow BuzzFeed News on Twitter.
Last year, 19-year-old Indian sprinter Dutee Chand challenged the international rules banning her from competing in women’s races because of her naturally high testosterone. Monday’s landmark ruling in her favor is dividing the scientific and athletic communities.
Rafiq Maqbool / AP
On Monday, the so-called "Supreme Court of Sport" ruled that 19-year-old Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, as well as all other female athletes who test positive for naturally high levels of testosterone, cannot be excluded from competing in female athletic competitions.
Chand was banned from competing last July, after winning two gold medals at the Asian Junior Athletics Championship in Taipei. Although she tested negative for doping, the Athletic Federation of India asked that her hormone levels be tested after growing suspicions around her "masculine build" and athletic ability.
Chand's tests showed that her blood possessed very high levels of natural testosterone, a hormone that helps with things like muscle strength, bone density, and the production of red blood cells — possibly giving her an advantage on the track field.
According to rules adopted in 2011 by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's global governing body, as well as the International Olympics Committee, female athletes must have testosterone levels under 10 nanometers per liter — the lower bound of what's considered normal for males — in order to compete.
The regulations stated that women who exceeded this limit must undergo hormonal treatments or surgeries to lower their bodies' natural production of testosterone, or otherwise be excluded from competing.
Chand, whose blood testosterone exceeded IAAF's limit, chose to do neither. "I want to remain who I am and compete again. I have lived my life as a girl," Chand told The Indian Express last year.
Last September, she appealed her case and also sought a much bigger target: overturning the international rules dictating which women can compete.
On Monday, a three-member panel on the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland ruled in Chand's favor, on the grounds that limiting female competitors based on testosterone has not been shown as necessary for ensuring fair competition.
The CAS has given the IAAF two years to compile scientific evidence establishing that high testosterone is enough to confer a significant advantage to female athletes as compared to their peers.
But for now, the ruling means that all women — regardless of their natural hormone levels — will be allowed to compete.
"Dutee took a huge and courageous risk with her decision to challenge a policy she felt was unfair to her and to all women athletes," Katrina Karkazis, a bioethicist at Stanford University who studies gender and athletics, told BuzzFeed News by email. "It's a policy that affected all women so [its] suspension is an historic victory for women's equality in sport."
Chand, on the left, after winning a silver medal on the 200-meter race at the Asian Athletics Championship in 2013.
Manjunath Kiran / Getty Images
"Testosterone certainly matters biologically in the performance of athletes," Alice Dreger, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, told BuzzFeed News by email.
"That said, to limit women to a certain level of testosterone, and not men, is to act as if testosterone naturally belongs to men and not women," Dreger added. "That's weird. And I'm not sure why it isn't also sexist."
Things get murkier in the case of elite athletes, where extraordinary biology is the norm. For example, although just 1 in 20,000 women in the general population are born with a Y chromosome (typically the marker of a man), in elite female athletes that number is closer to 1 in 420, according to Eric Vilain, a medical geneticist who researches disorders of sex development at UCLA.
As scientists learn more and more about the many ways in which biological sex is a messy spectrum rather than a tidy binary, it's become increasingly difficult to determine where — and whether — to draw a gender line in sports.
The problem has been around since the 1930s, when female athletes were subjected to physical inspections in the nude, to root out so-called "sex impostors."
In the late 1960s the IOC began a "more dignified" testing for sex based on chromosomes, but perplexingly, XY females cropped up all over the place, and the protocol was ditched in 1999. Since 2011, testosterone was the only marker used to differentiate between the two sexes in sports.
"It is an imperfect marker in the sense that it does not explain all the sex differences in performance," Vilain told BuzzFeed News via email, citing other physiological differences, such as skeletal shape, that can confer an athletic advantage. But, he says, "it is one of the best markers we have that is both relevant to athletic performance and very different between men and women."
For Vilain, who advised the IOC on its testosterone policy, the rules are there to help the majority of women trying to compete on a fair playing field. "Separating men and women in sports competition allows women to win," he said.
Chand's win will "push authorities to rely on declaration of gender," Vilain added. "And that would be a disservice to the vast majority of women who want to compete on a fair basis."
Forget everything you know about the Bills.
Just ask Marcell.
Quarterbacks don't have time to think, let alone make their reads and pass.
Tom Szczerbowski / Grant Halverson / Tom Szczerbowski / Rick Stewart / Getty Images
This list is voted on by the players. Who knows better than the pros?
BuffaloRumblings.com / Via buffalorumblings.com
Da'Norris Searcy will surely be missed in Buffalo. But here's a silver lining: he was out with an injury in week 15. In that game, his backup, Bacarri Rambo, picked off Aaron Rodgers twice. Here's the kicker: Rodgers only threw five interceptions all season.
Side note: Buffalo also lost Kiko Alonso. But for argument's sake, Kiko Alonso didn't play a single snap last year.
Rick Stewart / Getty Images
Where’s the best place to enjoy America’s past time?
Team: Tampa Bay Rays
Capacity: 31,042
Food Highlight: Rays Cuban Sandwich
The fixed roof seriously detracts from the ~feel~ of a baseball game: No view, no breeze, and there are lots of obstructed views. It's lacking pretty much everything that makes the sport great for fans, so sadly it takes the bottom seed.
EaglesFanInTampa / Via en.wikipedia.org
Team: Oakland Athletics
Capacity: 35,067
Food Highlight: A slice from West Side gastropub
It's pretty bold for a stadium that barely fits 35,000 to call itself a 'coliseum'. The concourses are super narrow, making the place extra claustrophobic, and an entire section of perfectly fine seating is covered in tarp and reserved for Raiders games.
Kai Schreiber CC BY-SA / Via Flickr: genista
Gregor Smith CC BY-NC-ND
On 27 July 2012, Bradley Wiggins rang the bell that signalled the start of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Three years later, we asked BuzzFeed UK readers for their memories of the games.
Stu Forster / Getty Images
"From the second the kid started singing 'Jerusalem', I was a goner! I loved every bit of it, and cried out of pride throughout the whole thing. It gave me a spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, we might just have a good games!"
Submitted by Joolz
"Just feeling so proud to be British – which I think can be difficult in this country."
Submitted by Jo
"It was SO GOOD! J.K. Rowling reading, massive Voldemort puppet, the Queen jumping out of a helicopter with James Bond, Shakespeare, and Ken Branagh! It was just the epitome of British creative eccentricity!"
Submitted by Anonymous
"The opening ceremony was fantastic, the torch itself was simply stunning. It was a very British ceremony which was understated in a way that knew it couldn't compete with Beijing – however, there was undeniably a feelgood factor provided."
Submitted by Meg
"I was round my boyfriend's house and we had a get-together. There was wine and family and friends. I remember getting emotional when the last Olympic ring was 'crafted' and rose to join the others. But the most emotional moment was Team GB entering the stadium to 'Heroes'. I felt this swell of patriotic happiness. What an entrance!"
Submitted by Alice
"The giant Voldemort was legitimately the best thing I have ever witnessed in my whole life. Also, Rowan Atkinson."
Submitted by Anonymous
Pool / Getty Images
