Don’t try this at home.

ESPN said the NFL had directed money from a $30 million gift to Foundation for the National Institutes of Health away from a particular researcher.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell

Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images

The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health released a statement Tuesday disputing an ESPN report Tuesday morning that the NFL revoked funding for a study on "the relationship between football and brain disease."

"The study seeks to capture what has been described as the holy grail of concussion research: the ability to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in living patients," ESPN reported.

The ESPN report said the NFL vetoed the use of funds from a $30 million gift to the foundation — a charity created by Congress to raise funds for the National Institutes of Health — in 2012 for a particular study to be conducted by Boston University researcher Robert Stern.

ESPN's sources said the NFL "raised concerns about Stern's objectivity, despite an exhaustive vetting process that included a 'scientific merit review' and a separate evaluation by a dozen high-level experts assembled by the NIH."

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told ESPN the unnamed sources were wrong, stating: "The NIH makes its own funding decisions."

On Tuesday, McCarthy tweeted that the "ESPN story is not accurate. NFL did not pull any funding. NIH makes its own decisions."

McCarthy later told BuzzFeed News the league "has no 'veto power' as part of its unrestricted $30 million grant to NIH."

A few hours after the ESPN report was published, the foundation released a statement saying the "NFL was willing to contribute to the Boston University CTE study headed by Dr. Stern. NIH made the decision to fund this study in its entirety."

The NIH's statement appears to dispute the basis of the ESPN report.

ESPN's report was written by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, whose book and corresponding PBS documentary "League of Denial" presented some of the earliest comprehensive reporting on the NFL's handling of concussions and brain injuries.

The report was published three days before the release date of Sony's feature film Concussion, starring Will Smith. The film depicts how a Nigerian-born neuropathologist discovered CTE, a neurodegenerative brain disease with symptoms similar to dementia, in the brains of deceased NFL players, and the NFL's attempts to stifle his research. The film draws heavily on reporting done by Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada, though that is not explicitly mentioned. If the NFL revoked funding for the CTE study, it would have appeared consistent with the NFL's previous attempts to deny the correlation between football and long-term brain injury.

An ESPN spokesman told BuzzFeed News the report "has been updated to reflect the content of the just-released FNIH statement and we stand by our reporting."

The full FNIH statement is below:

Through the Sports and Health Research Program (SHRP) —a partnership among the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Football League (NFL), and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH)—multiple studies have been and will continue to be funded to examine traumatic brain injury in athletes. The NFL funding commitment to SHRP remains intact. NFL was willing to contribute to the Boston University CTE study headed by Dr. Stern. NIH made the decision to fund this study in its entirety and to issue a Request for Applications (RFA) early next year to support an additional study on CTE using funds from SHRP, which will double the support for research in this area.

Jonah Hill in Moneyball as Peter Brand, a character inspired by Paul DePodesta, former assistant general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Columbia Pictures

The statistics whiz who helped change the way baseball does business, as chronicled in Moneyball, now wants to do the same for medicine.

As assistant general manager for the Oakland Athletics from 1998 to 2004, Paul DePodesta approached the game with a data-crunching mindset that helped lead the cash-strapped team to the playoffs four times. Today, he’s vice president of player development and amateur scouting for the New York Mets — and soon, he announced Monday, he’ll be assistant professor of bioinformatics at Scripps Translation Science Institute.

It’s an unlikely pairing, and DePodesta, who inspired Jonah Hill’s character in the 2011 Oscar-nominated film, doesn’t have any formal scientific training. But he says he sees a lot of parallels between the baseball diamond and the prestigious biomedical research institution, which is known for trying to tailor medicine to individuals by studying genetic causes and potential treatments for various diseases, as well as using wireless technology to monitor patients’ health.

The traditional research paradigm worked like this: Scientists start with a hypothesis and conceive of an experiment to determine whether or not it holds true. These days, researchers have access to huge digital data sets — from smartphones, medical records, genetic tests, wearable devices, social media, clinical trials, and other sources — that can be crunched computationally to reveal patterns and trends. This practice of mining so-called “big data” for health insights has captured the attention of investors like Andreessen Horowitz (a BuzzFeed investor), and falls in DePodesta’s wheelhouse.

“One of the things I’ve had to do in my career is use all this past data to predict what’s going to happen in the future,” DePodesta told BuzzFeed News. “It’s certainly far from perfect; there’s a lot of gray areas. I’m really interested in that predictive quality of the data — whether that be in genomics or wearables, or whether it comes from some mix of the two or even other areas.”

Dr. Eric Topol (left) and Paul DePodesta.

Scripps Translational Science Institute

DePodesta became fascinated with the medical world last year after reading The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands by Dr. Eric Topol, the institute’s director, about how smartphones, social media, and other new technologies are digitizing medicine. The two had lunch in La Jolla, California, where DePodesta lives and where the institute is located, and found that they were interested in tackling the same kinds of issues. So far, Topol said, DePodesta has helped the Scripps team rethink a study that involves sequencing and analyzing the DNA of adults, children, and infants who die suddenly, after seeming healthy, and whose deaths cannot be explained by medical examiners. The hope is to find a common underlying cause between them. A lot of the victims happened to be young athletes, and DePodesta was the one who suggested collecting data about what kinds of sports they had participated in, as well as other parameters that Topol said the team hadn’t previously considered.

“There’s no question we can capture ginormous amounts of data,” Topol told BuzzFeed News. “But we’re horrible at analyzing it. All we do is hoard it. Any ideas about analyzing data better are going to be more than welcome. That’s really what his real gift is.” Other Scripps researchers are trying to identify genetic mutations associated with atrial fibrillation (a type of irregular heartbeat) and a variety of serious, rare diseases.

Topol isn’t fazed by DePodesta’s lack of a medical background. After all, he didn’t play professional baseball before joining the A’s — he’d just studied economics at Harvard and worked for the Cleveland Indians for a few years. Then, at the A’s, he led the charge in figuring out that on-base percentage and slugging percentage were better metrics of success than traditional metrics like batting average, and picked players accordingly.

DePodesta, who officially starts his side gig on Jan. 1, likens the current role of big data in science to “late 1990s internet, in terms of, ‘Boy, people really see the potential.’”

“I think there’s a common belief we’re going to look back in 10 years and the world’s going to be fundamentally different in this space,” DePodesta said. “How we’re going to get there is what’s definitely unclear. But I think the direction is very clear, if that makes sense.”

Columbia Pictures / Via youtube.com

In Concussion, Dr. Joe Maroon — the NFL’s Head, Neck, and Spine Committee concussion expert — says: “If only 10% of mothers in America begin to conceive of football as dangerous, that is the end of football.”

Women — who are mothers and wives of football players as well as dedicated fans — are at the center of the sport’s concussion crisis. Yet in Sony’s Concussion, released Friday, the stories of female characters are used mostly as tools to support the film’s David vs. Goliath narrative.

Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu in Concussion.

Columbia Pictures / Everett Collection

Based on a true story, Concussion stars Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who forced the NFL to confront the link between football and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repetitive sub-concussive hits to the head. Symptoms “include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidality, parkinsonism, and, eventually, progressive dementia,” according to lead researchers at Boston University.

The film is powerful, and is likely to change the way many Americans engage with football. But wives and mothers of players suffering from CTE are shown only in passing or as a contrast to the NFL’s attempts to keep the link under wraps.

An hour into the film, former Steelers lineman Justin Strzelczyk is shown worked up in a rage at his home, the only player whose home life viewers see in Concussion. He smashes a framed Strzelczyk jersey and gets physically violent with his wife, Keana McMahon, in front of their children.

Justin Strzelczyk, no. 73 of the Pittsburgh Steelers, on the sideline during a game against the New York Giants at Three Rivers Stadium on Oct. 14, 1991, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

George Gojkovich / Getty Images

In the film, McMahon screams at him to get out — and is next shown hysterical in their driveway as Strzelczyk drives away in his truck to his eventual doom in a highway accident. (In real life, Strzelczyk died in 2004 while recklessly driving his car at 90 miles per hour the wrong way in traffic, though not right after an argument with his wife.)

McMahon told BuzzFeed News that Concussion’s director, Peter Landesman, consulted with her on her character and her husband’s life. “I think the only thing I changed in the script was Justin’s nickname,” McMahon said.

Courtesy Keana McMahon

In reality, Strzelczyk was physically abusive with McMahon once, when he ripped an item of clothing off her in front of company. Knowing that her children would see the film — and Landesman’s depiction of their father hurting her — McMahon knew she would have to explain it to them. “What the director had to do was show the personality of five different men in one character,” she told BuzzFeed News she told her children. “I was lucky with your father, but there are other women that aren’t.”

“The biggest thing that stuck in my mind is that Sony can get this information out there on a level that I never could by myself,” McMahon told BuzzFeed News. “I’m coming at this issue as a mother. When I say mothers, I mean all mothers: If you’re a 55-year-old woman and your son plays professional football, you need to know this. I now get emails and text messages from women I knew 15 years ago that are going through what I went through with Justin. They tell me, ‘He’s abusive, he has a drug problem, we can’t pay the mortgage.’”

Her husband, she said, “was never diagnosed with one single concussion.” But she noticed a change in his personality when their daughter was born in 1997.

Courtesy Keana McMahon

“The first thing I thought after he was diagnosed with CTE was: I have a why,” McMahon said. “I knew that even though my kids were small, they were gonna grow up, and I had an explanation for them. If we had just thought he had bipolar, my kids would have worried, and now they know they’re not at risk. So for me, the biggest relief was that I had a reason to sit down with the kids and tell them why this happened.”

McMahon offers this advice to the women who reach out to her: ““When you’re married to someone 6’6,’’ 300 pounds, you have no choice but to protect yourself.” She added, “Protect your children. God forbid if he would have picked up my children in that truck, they wouldn’t be here. It’s really about making people aware that something’s not right.”

“My biggest concern,” she said, “is the safety of the women and children.”

Prema Mutiso (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the eventual wife of Dr. Omalu, speaks only about her husband’s life — her personal suffering is used as plot points to emphasize the NFL’s scare tactics. While she has the most prominent female role in the film, it’s largely flat. References to personal trauma — a vague “assault” and a miscarriage — are used as conflicts to heighten drama and progress the film plot.

In Concussion, Mutiso and Omalu begin as roommates — she is new to America and their pastor has asked Omalu to help her get on her feet. She serves largely as a sounding board for him to discuss, and therefore display, his research into the prevalence of CTE in football players. She watches football on his small living room television, which he admits he does not watch, but owns because “that’s what you do in this country.” Eventually, a romantic relationship between Mutiso and Omalu becomes a subplot.

Prema Mutiso as Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Concussion.

Columbia Pictures / Everett Collection

After Omalu has discovered CTE in another player’s brain and published his findings in a scientific journal, he sits down with Mutiso along the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. Omalu’s experience with the NFL’s intimidation tactics have soured his views of the dream of American prosperity. “I am the wrong person to have discovered this,” Omalu said.

Mbatha-Raw gets her largest speaking role in this scene — speaking vaguely of an “attack” that occurred shortly after she arrived in America, but quickly saying the details are “better left unsaid.” It was an opportunity to add complexity to her character that was portrayed instead as a hurdle she overcame — suggesting Omalu should overcome the NFL’s scare tactics.

As Mutiso and Omalu begin to build a life together, the intimidation from the NFL intensifies. Omalu receives hostile phone calls from NFL-affiliated doctors and fans. The culmination of this stress on the family is depicted as Mutiso suffering a miscarriage after being followed by an indistinct car. The pair weep in the hospital; in the scenes following the miscarriage, only Omalu’s emotions are given screen time. (A request to speak with Landesman about the use of a miscarriage in Concussion went unanswered.)

Concerned mothers are the concussion issue’s biggest watchdogs — women who have lost a partner or son to CTE-related deaths have formed highly active support groups that exist in email threads and on Twitter. These dedicated mothers keep some of the most comprehensive records of football and concussion–related deaths. (A spreadsheet called “Suicides and Football” was started this year to track football-related deaths of high school players.)

The film, though, uses women’s stories only for narrative convenience — instead of showing the damage CTE can wreak on a player’s home life. In doing so, Concussion misses engaging with a segment of the audience that could have the biggest impact on the NFL.

Nebahitachiini Nez (#75), football player at Navajo Pine High School in New Mexico on the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation.

Brian Leddy for BuzzFeed News

On a cold October night in Navajo, New Mexico, William Nez and his wife, Trina, and daughter, Morgan, pull up to Navajo Pine High School in their Toyota 4Runner and find a spot in the small lot close to the school’s track and football field.

Morgan, 9, bounces out of the backseat and is promptly stuffed into a purple snowsuit and handed a blue foam finger. Her father, William, zips a black fleece jacket over his Navajo Pine Warriors T-shirt, and he and Trina each grab a handle of a watercooler and head into the stands.

Navajo Pine High School is located on the Navajo Nation, a windy 40 minutes north of Route 66, and near the border of New Mexico and Arizona. Behind the field are enormous red rocks facing west that glow pink as the sun sets, just before the Warriors’ game. It is their last home football game of the season, and the last time 17-year-old Nabahitachiini Nez, William and Trina’s son, will suit up in his Warriors football uniform in front of friends and neighbors.

With 33.5 quarterback sacks during his senior season, Nez leads the nation in sacks, according to high school football website MaxPreps.com. At 6-foot-6 and 298 pounds — “not 300,” Nez clarified — he towers over his teammates and rivals, the youngest of whom are still in the eighth grade. In early weeks of his senior season, Nez was averaging a whopping six sacks per game, but as word traveled about his threatening size, players began to double cover him, and his production slowed down. In early December, Nez was named the Navajo Times Defensive Player of the Year.

During the game against the McCurdy Bobcats — who traveled four hours across New Mexico to play the Warriors — Nez plays on the offensive and defensive lines, and sometimes as a fullback. He is comically bigger than every other player on the field, and the Bobcats put two defenders on him on many plays, stifling his productivity as a pass rusher. The Warriors have only 24 players on their full roster, requiring Nez to play on nearly every snap.

The Warriors allowed McCurdy to take a quick lead, but in the stands, the Nez family is loud. William brings a pink stadium horn, which gets quickly swiped by Morgan, but his and Trina’s voices are the loudest in the hundred-person crowd gathered at the only event in town.

“Get your guy, Bona!” William screams onto the field. In conversation, the Nez family refers to Nabahitachiini as Bona, a nickname he earned as a child when his older brother, William Jr., could not pronounce the 14-letter name.

In addition to a head coach, McCurdy has a half-dozen assistant coaches dressed in red and blue in tow. The Warriors have only their head coach, Michael Hawley, who joined the team last-minute at the beginning of the 2015 season. Because of financial strain, Navajo Pine has turned over a new head coach on an annual basis. For the season, Hawley is paid $4,900.

Nez’s school, Navajo Pine, is part of the Gallup-McKinley County public school district. In 2013, only 12.9% of Navajo Pine students were reading at their grade level, with only 5.7% of male students meeting the benchmark. The scores for math proficiency were not much better. Navajo Pine graduated only 69.1% of its students in four years in 2013, with only 53.8% of males earning their diploma on time. Most high schools on the reservation in New Mexico receive similar assessments to Navajo Pine; schools in border towns and away from the reservation score higher on state benchmarks.

The caveat to Nez’s football statistics — which are self-reported by Warriors coach Hawley — is that the quality of competition from opponents and teammates likely influence and inflate his numbers. As Nez wraps his last season with the Warriors, and his family meticulously prepares for his future and education, college recruiters have not contacted them, nor have their requests for recruiters to visit their son been fulfilled. It is Nez’s hope that he will find a spot to play the game he loves in college, but for him and his family, football is a distant priority from the family’s most obvious priority: getting him a college degree.

Brian Leddy for BuzzFeed News / Brian Leddy / Epic Rides

For many child athletes who grow up in underserved parts of America — as many reservations certainly are — sports can often be framed as a way out of the community. The Nez family sees football not as an escape or necessity, but as a tool to help the pursuit of the best possible education for their son.

Trina and William, self-described helicopter parents, are deeply involved in their children’s lives, including decisions about college: “You have to get an overall understanding of what our tribe is experiencing in order to validate the decisions we're pushing on our kids,” William explained.

The Warriors lost by mercy rule to McCurdy, 58–8, with three minutes left in the third quarter. McCurdy had scored 30 points during a disastrous second quarter for the Warriors, but the crowd — excluding a few players’ parents — was mostly unbothered as goodbyes were exchanged. Nez finished the game with one sack, five solo tackles, and ten assists.

As the crowd headed home, the team took a knee near the end zone, and the seniors spoke harshly to the younger players who had bickered on the field and skipped that week’s practices.

In tears, Nez stood to address the team. Instead of reprimanding his teammates, as his fellow seniors had done, he pleaded with them to invest more, try harder. “Next year, when I am gone, I want to come back here and see you win.”

The Navajo nation is a vast and varied reservation located in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. Most of the land’s 27,000 square miles are in Arizona and New Mexico, but it pokes into the southernmost region of Wyoming as well. Across the reservation, red rock formations loom large along rolling hills and mountains, and on a clear day, you can look dozens of miles into the expanse. The Chuska Mountains run through the reservation, with a forest made up of pine, spruce, and fir trees at the base of their climbs.

The original land of the Navajo people — or, in their language, the Diné people — was between what they call the Four Sacred Mountains, which form a large slanted rectangle just east of where the tribe mostly lives today.

The Nez family now lives in William’s childhood home in Navajo, New Mexico. Most of the homes in Navajo are small and rectangular, clumped together in close pockets along small highways.

Twenty minutes north of the tribal capital, Window Rock, Arizona, Navajo was once a bustling town with an economy and job market stimulated by a local logging company. Navajo environmental activists, however, discovered that the company’s work was endangering spotted owls, and the logging company was shut down in 1994. Today, Navajo is a town of 2,000 people, and the only businesses in town are a grocery store and a gas station.

The nearest restaurant to the Nez family home is a Denny’s 20 minutes south of Navajo in St. Michael’s, Arizona. Nabahitachiini’s knees nearly scrape the underside of the table as he sits before ordering a T-bone steak. Over lunch, William and Trina speak openly about their children, themselves, and the struggles of their community, often weaving in historical context of Navajo culture.

Trina says opposing teams have singled out Nez for as long as he’s played football. “I had to bring his birth certificate with me to his games when he was just a kid,” Trina recalls. “I was getting so many questions, I realized I needed the proof that he was the same age as everyone else on the team.” Enough doubt was cast on his age relative to his size that she learned to carry his birth certificate with her to each of his games with the youth Tony Dorsett Football League, where Nez, starting at age 8, learned to play tackle football.

Nez says he is now used to being singled out, by supporters and rivals alike. Though he speaks proudly of wearing out the players assigned to cover him, Nez places sportsmanship well above competitiveness on his list of priorities.

“You have to get an overall understanding of what our tribe is experiencing in order to validate the decisions we're pushing on our kids.”

“When a guy tries to tackle me, sometimes it will be illegal contact,” Nez explains. “So I'll explain to the opposing team how to grab me. Most of them are probably shorter than me, so what they're used to doing might get them disqualified. But I don't want them to get disqualified, either."

Trina’s younger brother, Alonzo Yazzie, was a star high school football player for the Hopi High School Bruins. Large and strong like his nephew, he helped teach Nez about the sport and encouraged him to stick with it. He is the football player — NFL stars included — that Nez says he looked up to the most. Yazzie died in 2011 at age 31, after what his family says was a “sudden accident.”

Tearing up, Nez recalls his uncle's wisdom: “Me and him, we were... we were like two peas in a pod. I lost a lot of support at that time. I thought of even quitting football sometimes because of that. But I thought of what he used to tell me: ‘If you feel like quitting, don't quit. Because I will always be out there, cheering you on.’”

“It was especially hard when we lost him because some of my brothers saw in my son the same playing talent that Alonzo used to have,” Trina says. “I think that's the driving force of them wanting to drive three to four hours out and see him all the time and motivate him and say, ‘You know what, try harder. Zo — we called him Zo — played all of these positions. Make your uncle proud!’”

When Nez was a small boy, Alonzo and his other uncles often woke him before 5 a.m. and told him to get up and go outside for a run. Navajo culture prescribes early-morning runs facing east to face the deities, Trina explains. Shout as you run to make your reverence know, so they may bless you for a long and good life. Yell for the deity to hear you and bless you, no matter the hour or feeling of lead in the legs. Navajo elders pass down the tradition as a lesson of strength and endurance: Fight laziness, fight the cold to build endurance to prepare for the trials of life.

“My uncles always told me, ‘Life is gonna be hard for you,’” Nez says. “So it's best to face it right now to prepare to face it later on."

The Nez family describes themselves as lower middle class. William works for the human resources department in the Navajo Nation government, and Trina works for a utility company. Trina and William met when they were students at Diné College, and have been married 21 years.

When his and Trina's second son was born, William had the privilege of giving him his name, which, he says proudly, translates to “Tall Warrior of the Red Streak in the Water Clan.” Nez explains that while the first half of his name, Nabahi, means “warrior” in the Diné language, he sees the role as not just someone who goes out to fight in wars, but also as someone who knows when to stay put to protect the children and elders.

“It’s not just going to war,” he says. “It's not just going and killing people. It's just to protect the children of the future and elders, and also the women who carried the kids of the future. Even a warrior knows when not to go to war. He knows which fights not to fight.”

The Nez family’s top priority is education. Nearly every conversation regarding their three children can and will wind its way back to talking about education, particularly the kids earning college degrees immediately out of high school.

William graduated from the two-year college where he met Trina, and she is working on her four-year degree now. “We’ve learned from our experiences, and we know we want our kids to get their college educations earlier in life than we did,” William said.

Education on the reservation is a complex and fractured system. Three separate entities control schools on the land: state school districts (New Mexico, Arizona, and Wyoming public schools), the Bureau of Indian Education (U.S. government), and the Department of Diné Education.

Children on the reservation are subject to state-mandated curriculums, regardless of governing body, which DODE Superintendent Tommy Lewis says might not always make sense for the students. In addition, students who move from state to state, but remain within the boundaries of the reservation, are subject to different standards of education. Funding and quality of educators is another major concern on the reservation, which the DODE looks to overhaul in the next few years by implementing a reservation-wide standard that fits the students’ needs and meets state requirements.

“The reality is: The majority of students getting diplomas have reading and math scores at the fifth grade, so they can't even use those scores to get into higher ed,” Lewis says. “They can't score high enough on the ACT or SAT to get admitted. I say, ‘Golly, that's not right.’ They can't even use those diplomas to get to the job market anymore.” Using a statewide benchmark, Navajo Pine received an F grade for “College and Career Readiness” in 2013. That year, only 23% of students were successful in passing one of the three criteria outlined by the New Mexico Public Education Department. Nez is preparing to take the ACT in February.

Access to quality education is far from the primary, if only, challenge for students on the reservation. The Nez family speaks honestly, but with concern and not judgment about the many single-parent families in poverty in their community. In the 2010 Census, the number of families who identified as single-mother homes were nearly equal to the number of two-parent, male-female homes.

“For my son, the support system is there,” William said about his family. “I think what makes a person successful when it comes to Native Americans is having the full support first of all from both parents and grandparents, and then extended family like uncles. I can't speak for everyone — I can't say that none of his peers have this. Some don't. Unfortunately.”

At school, classmates often pick on Nez, calling him a nerd and mocking him because of his height. “As the captain of the football team, I know how to choose my fights,” Nez says.

His parents, despite trusting their son’s judgment in social situations, have placed a heavy restriction on their teenage boy: no school dances, no girlfriends. Not while he’s under their roof, and, preferably, not until he’s done getting his education. “I'm gonna come forward and say this was my idea," says Trina, "primarily because we've seen in our family a history of domestic violence. So when we had our boys, that was the one thing I wanted to not let them see. I made sure that my relationship with their father didn't have any domestic violence and that we talked about a lot of things. The kids see that if we have a disagreement, we talk about it.”

Wrestling can be ridiculous. But when it’s done right, it’s better than any show on television.

Chris Jericho vs. Neville: Beast in the East, July 4, 2015

Singles Match
Winner: Chris Jericho

Yes, Chris Jericho can still put on one hell of a match at the age of 45. Taking on rising superstar Neville, the two put on a highly entertaining match in Tokyo. It had everything from mat-based wrestling to high-flying maneuvers. It was a unique matchup between a well-respected veteran and a beloved rookie, and it delivered one of the best matches of the night.

Also, Michael Cole's commentary was on fire.

WWE/ network.wwe.com

Daniel Bryan (C) vs. Dolph Ziggler: RAW, March 30, 2015

Singles match for the WWE Intercontinental Championship
Winner: Daniel Bryan

After winning the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania, Daniel Bryan defended the title the following night on RAW against fellow fan favorite Dolph Ziggler. The match had incredible back-and-forth action with lots of counters and near pinfalls between the two superstars. Even though Ziggler lost the bout, the post-WrestleMania crowd commended both superstars. Rewatching this match will only make you miss Daniel Bryan, who's currently out with an injury.

WWE/ youtube.com

New Day (C) vs. The Usos vs. Lucha Dragons: TLC, Dec. 13, 2015

Triple Threat Tag Team Ladder Match for the WWE Tag Team Championship
Winners: New Day

WWE had a rough 2015. While stars have been dropping like flies due to injuries and bad creative booking, New Day has managed to rise to the top. Along with The Usos and the Lucha Dragons, the three teams delivered an explosive opening to an otherwise lukewarm TLC pay-per-view. While the match had some brutal spots and gave New Day the much-needed credibility as Tag Team champions, Kalisto delivering a Salida del Sol off the top of the ladder is a spot for the ages.

Also, Xavier Woods is damn entertaining on commentary.

WWE/ network.wwe.com

Charlotte (C) vs. Sasha Banks vs. Bayley vs. Becky Lynch: NXT Takeover: Rival, Feb. 11, 2015

Fatal Four Way Match for the NXT Women's Championship
Winner: Sasha Banks

This match was proof that NXT continued to deliver high-quality women's wrestling in 2015. You had four badasses putting their bodies on the line for the prestigious NXT Women's Championship. From the very beginning, the match was fast-paced and brutal. The viciousness kept viewers on the edge of their seats. In the end, Sasha Banks picked up a well-deserved win, crowning her the new NXT Women's Champion.

WWE/ network.wwe.com

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If you come at the King, you best not miss.

On Friday, the Cleveland Cavaliers played a Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland, California.

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

The Cavaliers' star player, LeBron James, was pretty frustrated with the refereeing, though. As the Chicago Sun Times reported, he repeatedly appealed to the refs throughout the game.

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

During a pause in game play, a Warriors fan sitting courtside mocked James for being a crybaby. But then this happened....

vine.co

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Dwayne Johnson should be the eighth wonder of the world.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson asking you to come and get it.

wwe.tumblr.com / Via WWE

Flying a damn helicopter in San Andreas.

Village Roadshow Pictures

Blinking really intensely.

WWE

Looking over his shoulder (maybe for you?).

I'm right here boo.

WWE / Via wwefannation.tumblr.com

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Al Jazeera reported that Manning in 2011 used human growth hormone, a claim that the NFL quarterback vehemently denied, as did the Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts.

An investigation by Al Jazeera released Sunday reported that NFL star Peyton Manning in 2011 used human growth hormone, a performance enhancing drug.

Titled "The Dark Side," the hourlong documentary followed former British hurdler Liam Collins as he went undercover to speak with pharmacists, doctors, and others who said they had been involved with supplying performance enhancing drugs to athletes.

youtube.com

Al Jazeera's report was based on a secret recording of an interview with Charlie Sly, who in 2011 worked at an anti-aging clinic that treated Manning after he broke his neck.

Sly first told Al Jazeera that Manning and his wife, Ashley, would receive IV treatments after hours at the clinic. Sly also said shipments of human growth hormone were sent to Ashley Manning, which he believed were actually used by her husband.

Sly later said that he did not know he was being recorded and his statements were false.

"I am recanting any such statements and there is no truth to any statement of mine that Al Jazeera plans to air," he said.

youtube.com

In 2011, Manning was treated at the Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine as he worked to recover severe neck injury and resulting surgeries.

In his recovery, Manning underwent a number of procedures — including reports of stem cell injections in Europe.

Manning told ESPN that he was treated at the clinic with the guidance of Colts' medical team. He said he received treatments in a hyperbaric chamber as well as receiving nutrients through IV — during business hours.

Any medication that may have been mailed to his wife was her private affair, he added.

"Nothing that's ever been sent to her or my wife has used have I ever taken," he told ESPN. "Absolutely not. I have my treatments that I do. She may have hers, and that's her business."

The Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine / Via guyerinstitute.com

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Pacheco playing for New York Red Bulls against Houston Dynamo in May 2009.

Mike Stobe

Former El Salvador soccer captain Alfredo Pacheco was shot dead at a gas station in Santa Ana in the northwest of the coutry, the Salvadoran attorney general's office said Sunday. He was 33 years old.

The shooting occurred at 3:30 a.m. Sunday local time (4:30 a.m. ET). Two people who were with Pacheco were injured in the incident, the attorney general said.

Pacheco was a defender who had played 86 times for his country — more than any other Salvadorian player — and scored 6 goals

However, he was banned from the sport for life along with 13 other players in 2013 after being found to have taken bribes to lose games.

He played 14 times for New York Red Bulls in the MLS in 2009. He also played for FAS, Isidro Metapán and C.D. Aguila in his home country.

Earlier this month, Honduran player Arnold Peralta was shot dead at the age of 26 in the city of La Ceiba.

Test your junior hockey knowledge in a major way.

Cleanthony Early, a 24-year-old forward for the Knicks, is in stable condition after the incident.

Cleanthony Early during a game on March 12, 2015.

Stephen Dunn / Getty Images

A New York Knicks player was shot in the knee Wednesday morning after three cars surrounded him after leaving a strip club, officials said.

BuzzFeed News confirmed with the Knicks that Cleanthony Early, 24, was one of the victims in the incident, which took place shortly after 4 a.m. in Queens, New York.

"We are aware of what occurred with Cleanthony Early this morning and are relieved that he is not in a life-threatening situation," a New York Knicks spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

According to the New York Police Department, which did not specifically identity Early, officers were called to the scene around 4:18 a.m. Two individuals, a male and a female, had left CityScapes Gentlemen's Club in Queens and got into an Uber car.

Minutes later, three vehicles surrounded the car and assailants burst inside, robbing the passengers of jewelry and an unknown amount of cash. In the midst of the scuffle, the male was shot in the right knee.

He was rushed to Elmont Hospital and is in stable condition, the NYPD said.

The police department did not comment on whether or not the male was targeted incident.

Early, a 24-year-old Bronx native, was drafted to the team in 2014. He is a small forward, and an alumnus of Wichita State.

How good is your (recent) memory?

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The first Australian hero of 2016 ‪#‎watermelonboy‬.

A boy brought a watermelon to Melbourne's Big Bash cricket derby, and became an instant legend.

Twitter: @tensporttv

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Police confiscated several sharp-edged weapons in the parking lot near Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.

Police arrested a man on Friday after recovering a stun gun, a meat cleaver, and several other sharp-edged weapons from the trunk of his car, which was parked near Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Foxborough police were alerted around 11 a.m. on Friday to suspicious activity in the employee parking lot of Gillette Stadium during the Winter Classic hockey tournament, a spokesman confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

The 48-year-old suspect, Matthew Bromson, was arrested after police found the weapons in his trunk. He has been charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, possession of an electric stun gun, and three charges of assault with a dangerous weapon.

A Foxborough police officer told BuzzFeed News that the incident was isolated, and that there was never a threat to people inside the stadium. The venue serves as the home to the New England Patriots football team, the Boston Bruins hockey team, and the New England Revolution soccer team.

This isn't the first time Bromson has run afoul of the law.

In September 2014, Bromson was arrested after he barricaded himself in his home during a nine-hour standoff with police, and threatened to shoot one of them, The Republican reported.

From Highbury to Ninian Park – did you visit these now-defunct grounds before it was too late?

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I am so proud of Sue.

My mum, Sue Beech, is not a football fan. The only football match she has been to was a pre-season friendly between Bristol Rovers and Leicester City about 10 years ago.

Me and my dad told her it'd be a fun day out, but she hasn't gone to a football match since...

(That's my mum at my graduation, by the way. My haircut was "of the time").

Richard Beech

Despite my mum's lack of interest in football, I asked her if she'd have a shot at beating the BBC's official "football expert" Mark Lawrenson in a game of Premier League predictions, for matchweek 20 of the season.

Premier League predictions, in case you don't know, involves trying to predict the score of every match in the Premier League on a given weekend. Each week, Mark Lawrenson takes on a famous celebrity or sports star in attempting to predict the football scores.

While visiting my parents over the holidays, I asked Sue Beech if she'd be up for the task of taking on Mark Lawrenson, and she was more than happy to oblige.

Lawro, as he is known in the football world (because men can only show affection to each other by putting vowels on the end of their names) was unaware that Sue "Beechie" Beech would be going head-to-head with him in matchweek 20.

BBC

So, now to tot up the scores. I decided to use the same scoring system as used by the BBC each week in their Premier League predictions game.

So if my mum was correct in predicting that Liverpool would beat West Ham, she would score 10 points, but if she was also right in predicting the score would be 2-1 to Liverpool, this would leap up to 40 points.

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England’s bowling coach said he was “certain” Matthew Hobden would have played for England.

Sussex cricketer Matthew Hobden has died at the age of 22.

Gareth Fuller / PA Wire

Sussex Cricket announced his death in a statement issued on Saturday night without giving a cause of death.

"Matthew was an exciting young cricketer with a big future ahead of him in the game. He was a fantastic individual who had progressed through Sussex's Youth and Academy ranks, having been born locally in Eastbourne," the statement said.

"Sussex would like to offer their deepest condolences to Matthew's family and friends at this difficult time. Players and staff will be offered as much support as is possible and we would like both Matthew's family, and everyone connected with Sussex Cricket, to be respected with privacy at this time."

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Huh.

Via sportslogos.net

Via sportslogos.net

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A review of the teams’ proposals will begin this week, the NFL said, and the relocation of a franchise requires approval by 3/4 of NFL clubs.

L.G. Patterson / AP

For the first time in more than 20 years, Los Angeles could have a professional football team — or three.

The St. Louis Rams, the San Diego Chargers, and the Oakland Raiders filed applications with the NFL to move their franchises to L.A. for the 2016 football season, the league announced Monday. The Rams and Raiders were both based in L.A. until the mid '90s.

NFL committees will begin to review each application this week and they will be presented to the league meeting for consideration next week. Franchise relocation requires approval from 24 of the 32 NFL clubs.

In a statement, the Chargers said they would respect the decision of the league.

"We have tried for more than 14 years, through nine separate proposals and seven different mayors, to create a world-class stadium experience for fans in San Diego," the team said. "Despite these efforts, there is still no certain, actionable solution to the stadium problem. We are sad to have reached this point."

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