(Video game trailer or marital aid advert? You make the call.)

Right, no idea.

Yesterday, a week after the official unveiling of the game, a racy promotional trailer featuring Serena Williams and actress Rileah Vanderbilt suddenly appeared online. The cover story pushed by 2K Sports to various gaming sites was that actress Vanderbilt had deliberately leaked the video after 2K Sports decided not to distribute the ad.

From the site Joystiq.com:

An advertisement for Top Spin 4 has made its way onto the internet, but it’s not what one would call “official.” Featuring Serena Williams, the ad was definitely made with 2K Sports’ money and effort. We’ve attempted to get an official statement from 2K Sports, but the company doesn’t appear to want to talk until it’s eliminated every instance of the video from the internet.

The ad was originally posted on YouTube by the actress featured in the commercial — apparently she wasn’t satisfied with 2K Sports’ decision to cancel the public release.

Update: 2K Sports’ official statement: “As part of the process for creating marketing campaigns to support our titles, we pursue a variety of creative avenues. This video is not part of the title’s final marketing campaign and its distribution was unauthorized.”

Translation: 2K Sports deliberately created an absurdly racy ad to drum up interest in the game but didn’t have the courage to officially endorse the commercial because of possible public backlash.
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Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are among the politicos included in the game, which EA Sports President Peter Moore addressed during a FOX News segment.

FOX News Host Jenna Lee: “Is this a bipartisan game, though, Peter, because I read that the president has some special skills; do any of the Republicans have any special skills?”
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Two years ago Pitcock was entering his second year in the league as a member of the Indianapolis Colts when - out of nowhere - he quit football.

Something wasn’t right. Something was missing. And a day later, that something missing was Pitcock himself, who went underground after never showing up at Colts’ camp.“I’m introverted. I cast myself away from everybody and became almost a hermit,” Pitcock said Thursday after his first practice with the Seahawks, who are giving him a chance at a comeback. “I was a hermit for a year. No one knew where I was at. I just sat in my apartment and did nothing.”

Actually, that isn’t a totally accurate description. Pitcock became addicted to video games. (more…)

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(Thanks to BlackSportsOnline.com)

My favorite was gleaning some expertise about Kobe’s game from his dad Joe Bryant (above).

And what could be more exciting than the spot-on commentary from ABC’s Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown? (more…)

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(Wake up Lasorda)

The vid looks about as spontaneous as infomercial audience reax. But like all you Billy Mays¹ fanatics, doesn’t mean I ain’t buying.

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“I’m of that generation that believed in karma. If you do a good mitzvah, maybe you can eliminate some of those things. Do you think that Sterling’s done enough mitzvahs to eliminate some of those? How about all those other incidents that we have on file?”

Wait, then what would you attribute Sterling’s generous dispensation to this young lady to? Perhaps that anonymous (attempted at least) act of generosity is what gifted the Clips Rumpledstiltskin.

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EA Sports recognizes this, and has decided to do something pretty cool about it - giving advance copies of Madden 2010 to a group of submariners deploying just before the game’s August 14 release date. As far as supporting our troops, this beats the hell out of a magnetic made-in-China ribbon.

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(FEDOR FACT: punching people in the face is awesome.)

With his stature and the seeming dearth of serious UFC competition for fellow destruction machine Brock Lesnar, it seemed like Emelianenko was a natural fit for moving to the UFC. As a matter of fact, the LOS ANGELES TIMES cited sources close to the situation in a report that Fedor would be signing with UFC by Friday.

Um, about that. Whoops.

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(NBA 2K10: “This time…we are talkin’ bout practice!”)

Fast forward seven years. The world is a very different place. Athletes communicate via Twitter instead of press conferences. Allen Iverson is a grizzled journeyman at the end of his career. And 2K sports just announced plans to create an entire freaking video game devoted to practice, “2K10: Draft Combine.” The world has gone completely mad.

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Houshmandzadeh (“championship!”) appeared on Colin Schrutebag’s show on Monday and waxed eloquently on a variety of subjects, including the fact that Seahawks coach Jim Mora invited Houshmandzadeh to climb Mount Rainier with him. But the most head-scratchingly funny moment came when he discussed the Madden ‘10 video game: (more…)

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