We talkin’ ‘bout practice.

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Disturbing photos of the aftermath of Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy's alleged assault on his ex-girlfriend, Nicole Holder, were obtained and published Friday by Deadspin.

The 48 photos were not previously public, but the NFL viewed many of them earlier this year during an investigation into the allegations against Hardy.

Hardy was arrested May 13, 2014, after allegedly assaulting and threatening his then-girlfriend, Holder, at his North Carolina apartment. He was with the Carolina Panthers at the time.

In a statement to police Detective Faye Strother, Holder said Hardy began a fight that escalated.

I tried to get up, he pushed me...then I started fighting back, he threw me into the bathroom, I hit the back of the shower wall and fell into the bathtub where he pulled me out...dragged me into the bedroom, picked me up again, threw me down on his futon that had guns sitting on it so I landed on the guns, which is why my back looks the way that it does...and then I fell from there onto the floor where he stood above me and strangled with two hands.

He told me...he should kill me and I said go ahead...I'm not scared, just do it so I don't have to...and when I said that you could see it in his eyes that he snapped back and that he...he jumped off me, he instantly reached in his pocket, pulled out his cell phone.

Hardy called 911, and told police he had "a welt on my face, she just hit me twice."

A photo of the bruises referenced by Holder was published by Deadspin Friday, along with many others.

Courtesy of Deadspin

Hardy was found guilty of assault and communicating threats by a North Carolina judge on July 15, 2014, but the NFL star appealed the decision and requested a jury trial.

The NFL listed Hardy on the Commissioner's Exempt list on Sept. 17, 2014, which placed him on paid leave through the season.

In February 2015, charges were dropped against Hardy after Holder allegedly stopped cooperating with the investigation, likely as a result of a settlement.

Hardy was signed by the Dallas Cowboys in March. Upon signing Hardy, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said:

Our organization understands the very serious nature of domestic violence in our society and in our league. We know that Greg has a firm understanding of those issues as well.

The NFL, however, now has the authority to conduct its own investigations into player issues. Upon examining "medical and police reports, expert analyses, and photographs," along with other witness testimony, the league suspended Hardy for 10 games.

On appeal, an arbitrator reduced Hardy's suspension to four games, saying the original punishment set a disproportionate precedent. And with that, the NFL's ability to further punish Hardy was concluded.

In another high-profile domestic violence incident, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice last year first for two games, then once again, when video of his violent outburst on then-girlfriend — now wife — was released. It was later determined, however, that Goodell had acted beyond the NFL's power.

[Police photo of injuries to Holder.]

Courtesy of Deadspin

After sitting out the first four games of the 2015 season, Hardy has done little to keep a low profile.

Hardy told reporters he was ready to "come out guns blazin'," despite being accused and once found guilty of throwing his then-girlfriend onto a pile of guns. His first game back was against the New England Patriots, and Hardy told reporters he "love[s] seeing Tom Brady. You seen his wife? I hope she comes to the game. I hope her sister comes to the game."

When asked about Hardy's comments by Sports Illustrated's Melissa Jacobs, Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones said:

“Well, you’re not allowed to have guns on the football field. We all know that’s just a way of expressing yourself. I hope his guns are ablazin’. [...] When I saw him marry her [Gisele], Tom went up in my eyes 100%. She’s very very attractive and it shows what an outstanding individual Tom is."

On Oct. 25, Hardy was seen on the sideline shoving a special team's coach and shouting with Cowboys star Dez Bryant. In response, Jones called his troubled defensive end a "real leader."

Well if signing, I would say they said that when I signed him. So you begin right there.

We all know that the same ones who had the idea, and I really do understand completely their perspective, and they know, I don't need to say it again, but in no way is anyone anything but against any type of domestic violence.

The most comments I got on enabling was when we signed him. They said it looks like you're basically condoning domestic violence, which is not the case.

The photos of Holder released today by Deadspin are new evidence only to the public.

In a statement to the New York Daily News on Friday, Jones said the team did not have access to the photos prior to the Deadspin story.

We as an organization take this very seriously. We do not condone domestic violence. We entered into the agreement with Greg fully understanding that there would be scrutiny and criticism.

We have given Greg a second chance. He is a member of our team and someone who is grateful for the opportunity he has been given to move forward with his life and his career.

Meanwhile, the NFL deferred to the news release announcing the result of their investigation and initial 10-game suspension.

On Thursday, Hardy's record of the alleged assault was expunged.

“Finish What Katrina Started.”

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“I wanted to help him because it meant so much to him.”

Thousands of runners took part in the Rock 'N' Roll marathon in Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday morning, amid extremely testing conditions.

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"We did implement a comprehensive heat plan, which included water misters, sponge stations, and air-conditioned cooling buses along the course," marathon staff said in a statement. "Unfortunately, these tough running conditions were deemed excessive and dangerous."

Despite the heat and the diverted track, a lot of runners were still able to cross the finish line.

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Some, though, required a little extra assistance: When one runner took a tumble in the final stretch, a local cop ran with him to help him achieve his goal.

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Players for the Mizzou Tigers have joined a weeks-long student protest against university officials’ handling of alleged racism on campus.

The head football coach at the University of Missouri says his team is refusing to return to practice unless the school's president resigns, as they are angered by his administration's perceived failure to combat racism on campus.

Twitter: @MizzouLBC

"We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students' experiences. WE ARE UNITED!!!!!"

The message was shared online by a school group called the Legion of Black Collegians (LBC).

The players included Kentrell Brothers, the leading tackler in college football, according to the Columbia Tribune. Other notable players included defensive end Charles Harris, running backs Russell Hansbrough and Ish Witter, and several other starters, the newspaper reported.

The LBC said that they didn't coerce the players to take a stand.

"While we strive to be the leading voice for all black students, the players did not make their decision on behalf of anyone but themselves," the group said.

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On his way to Chelsea?

Former Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has been spotted in London, according to a number of people on Twitter.

The Northern Irish manager was sacked by Liverpool in October, and replaced by German Jurgen Klopp, but football fans on Twitter claim to have seen him on the London Underground this morning wearing a suit and tie.

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A landmark report from the World Anti-Doping Agency said Russia should be banned from international competition and five athletes should face lifetime bans.

Russia should be immediately suspended from competing in international athletics due to evidence of "widespread doping", according to a report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Former International Association of Athletics Federations president Lamine Diack (L) shakes hands with Lord Coe, his successor, in August 2015.

Getty / Lintao Zhang

The report, the result of a 11-month commission led by Dick Pound, a former WADA chief, found evidence of "widespread cheating through the use of doping substances and methods to ensure, or enhance the likelihood of, victory for athletes and teams".

The 335-page report said also "it would be naive in the extreme" to say that this could have happened without the involvement or tacit approval of the Russian state.

The report said:

• Russian athletes took part in the London 2012 Olympics when they should have been banned and the games were "sabotaged" as a result.

• A laissez-faire attitude to doping by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency was responsible for ineligible runners being entered into competitions.

• Lifetime bans should be handed down to five Russian middle-distance runners and five Russian coaches and administrators. The athletes singled out by the report are: Ekaterina Poistogova; Anastasiya Bazdyreva; Mariya Savinova-Farnosova; Kristina Ugarova and Tatjana Myazina.

• Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko issued orders to "manipulate particular samples".

• 1,400 test results were destroyed by Russia's anti-doping laboratory in Moscow. The report called for the removal of the laboratory's accreditation and for its director to be fired.

The report raises huge questions and challenges for Lord Sebastian Coe, the current head of the IAAF, who has previously described allegations of systematic doping as "a war on my sport".

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Claire Harvey hauled herself 49 rows by using the aisle seats to pull herself forward.

British Paralympic athlete Claire Harvey has claimed she was forced to haul herself off a Qatar Airways flight after being left on the plane at the end of the journey.

Harvey, a discus and javelin thrower, had injured her shoulder competing at World Athletics Championships in Doha.

She was returning home from the competition on a Qatar Airways flight and says she was left on the plane after all the other passengers had departed, and that she was forced to "drag" herself 49 rows to the front of the plane, where her wheelchair was located.

Despite having an injured shoulder, she used the aisle seats as monkey bars to pull herself through the plane.

Francois Nel / Getty Images

After waiting 15 minutes for an air steward to bring her wheelchair to her seat, a steward approached and told her she had to get off the flight – without her wheelchair.

"He started to manhandle me and said I had to get to the front of the plane, bearing in mind I was 49 rows back," she told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme.

"I was dragging myself to the front of the plane with him behind me pushing me to go faster."

Harvey claims her wheelchair was located at the front of the plane, but had suffered damage during the flight.

But after the flight, Harvey found the brakes on her wheelchair were damaged, and the frame was bent.

Harvey's experience was an isolated incident, but she claims it could have been a lot worse if she wasn't a regular traveller.

"I'm very independent and I'm used to travelling," she told Radio 4.

"If I was someone who was nervous or was travelling for the first time on my own as a disabled person it would have been a horrendous experience."

Francois Nel / Getty Images

As the official air carrier for the World Championships, Qatar Airways transported 1000s of Paralympic athletes to and from the games, and told BBC Radio 4 that its staff were properly trained.

Qatar Airways told Radio 4 they are carrying out an internal investigation, and Harvey is pursuing the company for damages to her wheelchair.

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BuzzFeed News has reached out for a statement and we will update the story when we receive a reply.

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“A googly is when you see a female and you get, like, a special sensation in your body.”

The good people at Cricket Huddle uploaded a video where Americans tried to figure out some of the terms used in the sport of cricket.

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Although they didn't quite hit the spot, some of them got super innovative with their guesses.

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Playing like a girl since 1890.

When Shannon Szabados — at only 16 years old — became the first woman to play in the Western Hockey League.

She played 4 pre-season games for the Tri-City Americans. And the starting goaltender that season? Carey Price.

Some ~perspective~.

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And continues to fight, and shut down, all the sexism strewn her way.

Twitter: @mpah

O, and you might have heard of a little-known player named Hayley Wickenheiser.

Arguably one of the best in the WCHL, if not the best.

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But ruthlessly efficient.

Football superstar, underwear model, and animated wax doll Cristiano Ronaldo is not only very photogenic, he's also one hell of a selfie taker.

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Just look at that ruthless selfie efficiency.

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The Golden Boot winner was in London overnight for the premiere of Ronaldo, a documentary about the superstar's life.

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Several national soccer organizations on Monday announced sweeping changes aimed at reducing player concussions among youth players.

According to a joint statement issued by the organizations, U.S. Soccer will enact a comprehensive Player Safety Campaign in the coming months in an effort to reduce the number of concussions among youth players who continuously head the ball. It will also address other health and safety initiatives, such as heat-related illnesses and injury prevention.

Two highlights of the Player Safety Campaign are the elimination of heading for children younger than 11, and limitations placed on heading the ball in practice for players aged 11 to 13.

The new initiative follows a lawsuit filed against U.S. Soccer and several other national organizations. The plaintiffs in the case, represented by attorney Steve Berman, never sought financial damages. And in the joint statement, Berman said that in light of the upcoming campaign, his clients would not pursue further legal action.

Citing the original lawsuit, the New York Times reported that in 2010, nearly 50,000 high school soccer players were diagnosed with concussions. That figure was more than the combined concussions sustained by high school baseball, basketball, softball, and football players.

U.S. Soccer CEO and Secretary General Dan Flynn said in a statement that the organization worked with its medical science committee, "which includes experts in the field of concussion diagnosis and management," as well as technical advisors and youth members to develop "a true consensus-based program."

Increased awareness and education of concussions among players, parents, and coaches, as well as revised substitution protocols for players with head injuries, will also be addressed in the campaign.

Details of how the organization plans to implement the new rules will be announced in the next 30 days, according to U.S. Soccer. As noted by NBC Sports, youth soccer clubs are scattered throughout metropolitan, suburban, and rural areas of the U.S., which could pose a challenge in the implementation of the new rules.

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Track and field athletics is back in the news — for all the wrong reasons. On Monday, an independent commission convened by the World Anti-Doping Agency concluded that Russia should be suspended from international competition, after finding evidence of systematic doping.

But this isn’t a story of sports being as dirty as they ever were. In fact, a quiet revolution has taken place over the past few years, as anti-doping scientists have begun to look for the way in which the human body responds to doping, rather than trying to find traces of the drugs themselves.

Experts say that this new approach — dubbed the athlete biological passport — has created a more level playing field, putting the drug cheats on the defensive after decades of dominance. But while the passports have reduced the doses that cheats can take without getting caught, statistical uncertainties mean they can’t catch all the dopers. So expecting science to clean up sports is an approach that is ultimately doomed to fail — especially if the corruption that allowed Russian athletes to cheat is not rooted out.

“There is no technological way out of this,” Michael Joyner, an exercise physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told BuzzFeed News.

For decades, anti-doping science was based on detecting traces of banned substances in athletes’ urine. But that meant the testers were playing a losing game of catch-up: As soon as a new test became available, the athletes would ditch that particular performance-enhancing drug and move on to a new one.

These drugs fall into three main categories. Best-known are anabolic steroids that mimic the male sex hormone testosterone, building muscle. Growth hormones are similarly thought to increase muscle and reduce body fat. Drugs such as erythropoetin, or EPO, meanwhile, boost the blood’s ability to carry oxygen — which explains their use in endurance sports like cycling.

The idea behind the biological passports is not to look for banned drugs or their breakdown products, but instead to regularly monitor athletes’ physiology for abnormalities that indicate cheating — regardless of what drug is responsible. The World Anti-Doping Agency introduced the blood-doping module of its biological passport in 2009, and followed up with a module for anabolic steroids in 2014. A module for growth hormones is still being developed.

For EPO and other forms of blood doping, testers take regular samples and record various measures of red blood cells and the overall concentration of the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin. Over time, a profile for each measure is composed for every athlete, and statistical tests are used to detect deviations from the athlete’s norms that indicate a doping violation.

The International Cycling Union led the way with the blood doping biological passports, introducing them in 2008. And they seem to have helped clean up a sport that had a terrible reputation for doping — even before seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace.

From 2001 to 2007, blood samples taken from elite cyclists indicated that around 10% had “extreme” numbers of immature red blood cells, suggesting that they had taken a drug like EPO. But by 2009, scientists with the International Cycling Union found that this number had dropped to less than 3%.

Abnormal biological passport results usually trigger conventional testing for prohibited substances. But even without a positive result for a known drug, a passport violation is enough to secure a ban. The current list of almost 300 track and field athletes banned from competition for doping violations, for example, includes 20 who were sanctioned solely on the basis of biological passport results.

Javier Soriano / AFP / Getty Images / Via gettyimages.com

No one knows for sure how many elite athletes are doping — and the numbers will vary widely from sport to sport and from country to country. However, a study of German elite athletes from various Olympic sports, using an anonymous survey carefully designed to draw out truthful answers, put the figure who doped in the 2005 season at between 20% and 39%. A follow-up study in the 2008 season produced similar results.

So why aren’t biological passports doing a better job of catching the cheats? One answer is corruption: Monday’s report into Russia’s systematic doping (which the Kremlin contests) concludes that coaches illicitly obtained details of suspicious biological passport tests against their athletes.

But there’s a more fundamental limitation, which can’t be avoided so long as biological passports are used to impose stringent sanctions for doping offenses.

Thresholds for a suspicious test are set high, to make false positives decreasingly rare. Although the test would catch most of the cheaters by lowering the threshold, Joyner said, that would also mean that up to 3% of the passport results flagged as suspicious would implicate athletes who had not actually doped.

Athletes know this, and take advantage of it. “I think the days of industrial-strength doping are over,” said Joyner. But it’s been replaced by what drug testers call “microdosing,” in which cheats use smaller doses of performance-enhancing drugs, confident that this is unlikely to cause a problem with their biological passport.

“People are trying to come under the radar by administering minute doses,” Joris Delanghe, a clinical chemist at Ghent University in Belgium, told BuzzFeed News.

When the difference between gold and silver is measured in fractions of a second, even a small performance boost can make an important difference. The potential for continued cheating was demonstrated in 2011 by a team from the Science and Industry Against Blood Doping consortium in Queensland, Australia. They injected 10 volunteers twice weekly with small doses of EPO for up to 12 weeks, boosting hemoglobin levels by 10%. Yet none of the participants would have been flagged as suspicious by a biological passport, given current thresholds for detection.

An example of biological passport results.

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Ironically, the scientist who pioneered the concept of biological passports never actually intended them to be used to impose lengthy bans from competition. In 1999, Jim Stray-Gundersen, who is today sports science adviser to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, developed a similar blood-testing protocol called Safe and Fair Events, or SAFE.

The original idea, Stray-Gundersen told BuzzFeed News, was to bar athletes with suspicious results from competing in individual events, framing the effort in terms of their own safety. (Blood doping is dangerous because boosting numbers of red blood cells increases the risk of clots, heart attacks, and stroke.)

Although Stray-Gundersen initially set the thresholds high, he aimed to reduce them over time, as athletes came to trust the program, and saw that it reduced the prevalence of doping. “I wanted to get away from the cops and robbers game,” Stray-Gundersen said.

At the time, most sporting federations weren’t interested, and only the International Skating Union introduced the SAFE program.

Even though biological passports have departed from his original vision of subtly encouraging good behavior, Stray-Gundersen believes that they have curbed the drug cheats’ worst excesses.

“Now the clean athlete does have a chance,” he said.

LINK: Kremlin Says Claims Of State-Sponsored Doping In Russian Athletics Are “Groundless”

LINK: Russian Athletes Should Be Suspended Due To “Widespread” Cheating, Says Anti-Doping Agency

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called for an internal probe into sensational allegations that the nation's athletes had engaged in widespread, state-approved doping.

Addressing Russian Olympic Committee members in Sochi, Putin said the Ministry of Sports needs to to give accusations made in the report issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) "very close attention."

"We need to have our own internal investigation of the issue, and create the highest level of transparency and openness and professional cooperation with international anti-doping agencies," Putin said, according to an interpreter's translation of the meeting. "Here in Russia, we need to have those questions addressed. We need to shield our athletes from doping, for their own sakes and for fair play."

His remarks come one day after a spokesman for his government called the accusations in the WADA report "groundless."

"Whenever any charges are made, there must be some evidence they rely on," Kremlin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said. "As long as there has been no proof, it is hard to react to any accusations, which look rather groundless."

When asked the Kremlin's opinion on why WADA had made charges against Russian sports stars, Peskov said: "It’s none of our business to ponder over the causes of such scandals," Russia's TASS Agency reported.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko had earlier told Russian TV that the issues brought up by the WADA report surrounding a Moscow anti-doping laboratory were either correctible, or lacking in evidence.

WADA suspended its accreditation for the lab — where an alleged mass destruction of doping samples took place — on Tuesday, according to AP.

Mutko's ministry said Tuesday that Russia was "fully committed to the fight against doping in sport" and would work more closely with WADA, according to the BBC.

The ministry said it was "fully aware of the problems" in the lab, but added that the state did "not interfere with Rusada [the country's anti-doping agency] and anti-doping laboratory work."

Monday's 355-page report detailed “widespread cheating through the use of doping substances" among Russian athletes, and said that “it would be naive in the extreme” to assume that the state had not been involved or tacitly approved of the cheating.

LINK: Read the full report

LINK: Russian Athletes Should Be Suspended Due To “Widespread” Cheating, Says Anti-Doping Agency

LINK: Pressure Grows On International Athletics President Over Anti-Doping Report

Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow asked the IAAF president: “You were either asleep on the job or corrupt. Which is it?”

Lord Coe, president of world athletics governing body, is facing growing calls to explain exactly how much he knew about doping and corruption within the organisation and the sport in the last decade.

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An independent commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found that Russian middle-distance runners had used drugs to enhance their chances of winning.

The commission's report said that both the Russian anti-doping agency and the IAAF were guilty of a "laissez-faire" attitude towards doping.

Coe took over from longstanding IAAF president Lamine Diack in August and praised the Senegalese 82-year-old for his "shrewd stewardship" and said he'd remain the organisation's "spiritual president".

These remarks have come back to haunt Coe after Diack was arrested by French prosecutors alongside two others last week, amid allegations of a cover-up.

Coe served as Diack's vice-president from 2007 to this year, raising questions of exactly how much he knew about the organisation's alleged involvement in doping.

In a testy interview with Channel 4 News on Monday night, Coe faced a barrage of questions about his conduct and knowledge of any wrongdoing but maintained that his focus was on sorting out the problem.

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"My responsibility now is to create a sport that is transparent, accountable, and responsible. If there are failings in our anti-doping processes then we will fix them," he said.

"If there are corporate governances that should have been in place, particularly given the severity of the criminal allegations that were made at the beginning of the week, then yes, we all need to look at ourselves."

Coe said that the WADA commission found that "rogue elements may well have infiltrated the organisation" and this meant there may "not necessarily be a wholesale systemic failure of our systems".

In August Coe described allegations of suspicious test results from some athletes as "a war on my sport".

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Mixed Martial Arts champion Ronda Rousey is voting for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for president, she told Maxim Tuesday.

Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

The undefeated UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion said in an interview with Maxim that she is voting for Sanders "because he doesn’t take any corporate money."

"I don’t think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests,” Rousey said.

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

"If he doesn’t win against Hillary, then I’ll probably vote for a third party again,” Rousey said. "To be honest, in 2012 I was against both candidates and so I just picked any third party because I thought if more people voted for third parties then they’d have to take third parties seriously.”

This list shows some of the most unique celebrations ever performed on the field.

William Gay - "The Funky Chicken"

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Odell Beckham Jr - "The Whip"

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Le'veon Bell - "The Carlton"

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Victor Cruz - "The Salsa"

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Can you crack the codes and prove your football knowledge?

It’s never too early to start training!

There’s a phooljhadi and everything!

Premier League club Arsenal just released an adorable video of its players celebrating the festival of Diwali.

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Here's Aaron Ramsey nailing the traditional greeting like a boss while Santi Cazorla gleefully lights up a diya.

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And Mesut Özil beaming away in a kurta, with a phooljhadi in hand, is all we need to see.

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