Two years ago I posted about a sexual abuse allegation leveled against Danica Patrick’s husband, Paul Hospenthal.

(New Danica Shoot - Not Her Husband)

Hospenthal, a physical therapist, was accused in 2007 of having sex with a 16-year-old patient multiple times while he was 33-years-old. KTVK-TV in Phoenix reports the complaint from the woman to the Arizona State Board of Physical Therapy was resolved when …

Hospenthal was issued a public reprimand — six months probation — where he’s stays on the job and attends classes on patient boundaries.

He did not appeal.

Patrick and Hospenthal were married in November, 2005. She first met Hospenthal when (surprise!) he was giving her physical therapy for a yoga injury. She was 24, he was 40 at the time. They were married shortly thereafter.

(Danica Patrick Marries Paul Hospenthal)

Recently, Liz Mellott of NATIONAL SPEED SPORT NEWS followed up on Hospenthal’s sordid professional past - which actually goes beyond his reprimand for underage sex with a patient:

Under the Pennsylvania Department of State Health Licensing Boards Disciplinary Actions in October 2007, the story continues.

“Paul E. Hospenthal, license no. PT001940E of Scottsdale, Ariz., agreed to a permanent, voluntary surrender of his license because he had a license disciplined by the proper licensing authority of another state.” (09-27-07) So, now no longer on probation, he has no license.

Then, to add more soap to the opera, “The Board then discussed ordering Mr. Hospenthal to submit to a psycho-sexual evaluation. The motion carried by a unanimous roll call vote.” Wow, when the whole Pennsylvania State Board thinks you need a psycho-sexual evaluation, you would think it would be hard to get a date, much less marry an IRL star.

Mellott also reports that Hospenthal had another complaint lodged against him by a young patient in Arizona:

In the Arizona State Board of Physical Therapy records, there is another complaint that in 2000 he seduced another woman while she was his physical therapy patient and that they had a consensual sexual relationship for four years during which time she “periodically received physical therapy care from Mr. Hospenthal both in and out of his clinic.”

That complaint was dismissed, but I can only imagine Patrick’s reax to all of this.

(OK, I guess it’s not as bad as this shot of Tom Brady’s wife)

That might explain why Patrick has kept a very low public profile on her marriage. Non-existent is more like it. She has flown solo at virtually all of her high-profile public appearances and to my knowledge has never discussed the sexual allegations made against her husband by the underage girl in Arizona - and the subsequent reprimand.

 (Thankfully, Danica has experience w/ flame retardant tops)

Add in this recent, sexy photo shoot of Patrick with a dude who isn’t her husband and you wonder what is going through her mind these days.

More pics after the jump with larger versions of the photos. Read more…

Love it or hate it, you’ve gotta admit that NASCAR has been a pretty successful enterprise here in the good ol’ US-of-A these past few years. As recently as 20 years ago it was the nearly-exclusive domain of southern rednecks; the only names in racing I really heard as a kid were names like Unser, Andretti, and Foyt. Back then, kids outside the trailer park grew up dreaming of racing in the Indy 500 rather than the Goody’s Headache Powder 500.

A generation later, however, open wheel racing in the USA is on life support. Formula 1 has all but abandoned the country and if it wasn’t for Danica Patrick, nobody would even remember Indy racing exists. The races are boring, there’s no passing, and the sport’s governing body is clueless. Or rather, was clueless. But all that is about to change, now that the Indy Racing League has introduced the greatest innovation in auto racing since the internal combustion engine - TURBO BOOST!

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• T.O.’s Twitter-based lobbying must have worked, as Michael Vick has been reinstated into the NFL - if any team wants him.

• O.J. Simpson is having a swell time in prison - except that he thinks his cellmate is ready to kill him.

• While the real Canadian Open gets washed out, Canadian soldiers hold their own golf tournament in sunny Afghanistan.

• Hank Aaron wants steroid “cheaters” out of the Hall of Fame, but wants Pete Rose in.

• Michael Strahan’s new Fox sitcom looks terrific - terrifically bad.

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The CANADIAN PRESS catches up to Danica Patrick to get her obligatory reax to the Erin Andrews peephole videos  - and the results are truly spectacular. Patrick starts us off by assuring us …

“It’s not going to go away any time soon, probably not as long as I’m exposed in public and racing.”

OK, she probably didn’t mean it that way, but has a response ever been more unwittingly appropriate?

Her second remark though was spot on - providing she soon takes up residence north of the 38th parallel. Read more…

There’s been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the overcoverage of certain sports figures, something we’ve sometimes engaged in as well, surfers of the tide of news we may be. But when you hear things like “Breaking news: Brett Favre is weeks away from a decision” parroted unironically on SportsCenter, well, it gets to be a little overwhelming.

So it’s time to set an accord. Whoever wins this poll, we’re not talking about for a full month. Obviously, we reserve the right to break radio silence if Athlete X, say, rolls his four-wheeler and disintegrates his spinal column, or Sportsbabe Y cuts off all her hair and takes an umbrella to an SUV - but otherwise, we’re the oasis in a desert of hype. One calendar month of total silence about the most annoying camera magnet in sports. You have our word on this.

A brief word about each ignore-eligible candidate after the jump.

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Christina Romer is an IRL fan? Who knew?

(Breaking: Man v. Food guy to feature Danica at St. Elmo’s in season two?)

Just swallowed my own sick. On the bright side tho, was able to breakout little-used “Unnecesary Photos” category on this one.

While sifting through some recent photos of Anna Kournikova at a charity event yesterday, I happened upon this photo:

Kournikova over the past decade is one of the most photographed women in the world, but I don’t recall ever seeing that monster tramp stamp. Turns out I was a little late to the party - her body art has been all over the web for some time now.

Remembering that Kournikova posed for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Swimsuit Issue in 2004, I went back to see if her ink had been Danica’d. (SI infamously airbrushed out Danica Patrick’s tramp stamp in some of her SI Swimsuit Issue photos.)

And thankfully, the 60-somethings running the show at SI didn’t let us down. Read more…

The Lakers are already the defending champs, and while the Cavs are adding an over-the-hill Shaq and Boston is making overtures to the shell that once housed Rasheed Wallace, the champs may have made the biggest splash of all — adding the insane, yet extremely talented, Ron Artest.

(Odds Ron’s going to forget he’s Kobe’s teammate and gets a flagrant 2 on him? About 2-to-1.)

The news came somewhat out of nowhere last night, as ESPN was still reporting during the early evening hours on the east coast that LeBron James had been reaching out to Artest in an effort to get him to Cleveland. ESPN expert Chris Broussard went on Sportscenter downplaying that situation, and within a couple of hours Artest was in ESPN’s L.A. studio announcing his intention to sign with the Lakers for the mid-level exception.

This is all fine and dandy, but does nobody remember about this?

Although, to be honest, Artest is just about the only guy in the league who could do this and then ask Kobe to go out to Applebee’s afterward. This guy doesn’t exactly go about things the normal way. I mean, we are talking about a guy who once tried to work at Circuit City in the offseason to get the employee discount.

Here’s what Ron-Ron had to say about coming to L.A., according to CBS SPORTSLINE:

“L.A. is what it is,” Artest said. “I’ve been here for the whole summer, and it’s pretty good. It’s good for me. I know Lamar Odom, so that’s pretty cool.”

Awesome, they can totally ride bikes together and eat toooooons of gummy bears.

All the clamoring for the Lakers to pony up the cash to keep Trevor Ariza sure went away quickly, considering that Artest is accepting the mid-level (which will be under $6 million next year) while Ariza was looking for something in the $7 million+ range. And now word is out that Ariza will be taking Artest’s place in Houston, and will in fact accept the mid-level (though over the full term of five years).

(”Here’s how many titles I’m going to win in Houston.”)

I’ve seen baseball games delayed for a wide variety of reasons (I was at Shea Stadium once when the sprinklers came on unannounced, or there’s that one time a plane crashed beyond the left-field wall), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game get derailed by bees. In the ninth inning of yesterday’s Padres-Astros game at Petco Park, a swarm overtook a jacket that was draped over a chair down the left-field line (the coat belonged to a ball girl).

Apparently, the swarm’s queen bee took up residence inside the coat, which led to thousands of workers, or drones, or whatever they are, descending on the area around the jacket. It was nearly an hour before a beekeeper arrived on the scene to take care of the bees. He dove right into the jacket, sprayed the bees (which were in a mass about the size of a soccer ball) with some sort of agent, then shoveled the presumably dead bees into the jacket (PETA is already preparing to complain about this I’m sure), which was put into a plastic bag and carried away. Eyewitnesses report that the beekeeper received the biggest ovation of the day, as the Astros cruised to a 7-2 win.

Now, while you watch two guys named Andy battle it out on Center Court, here’s some links to get you through your Friday:

• The Phoenix Lifelock Mercury’s Diana Taurasi got a DUI early on Thursday morning. It’s about time WNBA players start acting like real athletes.

• A suspected rapist who was attempting to assault a woman yesterday in San Diego was fought off successfully by the woman, then he tried to run away from her. Which might have worked…if the woman wasn’t a marathon runner. Let’s just say the future’s not looking too bright for this guy right now.

• I’m a big 1964 Topps baseball card guy, partly because of the multiple laughable errors made throughout the set by Topps’ editorial staff, which seemed to exist of a five-year-old with a learning disability. And Keith Olbermann delivers us the most ridiculous error in the set (if you’re not getting it, just read Dave Bennett’s bio again):

• The World Series of Poker’s main event starts today at the Rio in Las Vegas, and among the thousands registered to play over the next few days is none other than Barack Obama. No, the Prez didn’t buy in himself — a poker pro named Richard Sklar (who also happens to be an ex-con) put up the $10,000 to enter him into the event. Sklar then made a number of bets with other pros that Obama would show up to play at least one hand. Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Phil Gordon are among the pros who said they’d pony up big cash for charity if he does show. GAMBLING ONLINE has details, as does this thread at poker site TWO PLUS TWO.

•  The CFL has indeed fined Toronto WR Arland Bruce, who posed as Michael Jackson’s corpse in the end zone after scoring a touchdown on Wednesday.

•  In 1990, Family Feud had an entire episode pitting five Major League players against five umpires. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Rick Sutcliffe rocking the Cubs jersey tucked into jeans and the late, great Eric Gregg saying “what’s your name, baby?” Here’s Part 1 of 3 (thank you UNI WATCH for the tip):

• GAME ON says the rumors that the Texas Rangers had to borrow $15 million to meet payroll are not true, though there is a framework in place if they do need to borrow money. That’s comforting.

• New Grouch Chairman of the BCS Overlord Oversight Committee Harvey Perlman on the idea of a college football playoff (courtesy of the WIZ OF ODDS):

“If you look at college football now, it’s the greatest sporting event spread over September, October, November, December and a little bit of January that the country has. A playoff would seriously diminish the regular season, as it has in college basketball… This isn’t basketball. This isn’t March Madness. Football’s a different game, different environment. We have different traditions. It’s hard to see why a playoff is a good idea.”

I’m with you, Harvey. I don’t even know why any of these silly sports with their useless playoffs even have a regular season. An arbitrary, invitation-based system guided by a perplexing computer formula is obviously the way to go for any sport that wants to be taken seriously.

• Mariners prospect James McOwen (who honestly wasn’t much of a prospect prior to this year) extended his California League-record hitting streak to 39 games with a 3-for-4 night in the High Desert Mavericks’ 6-2 win over the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes at the most awesomely-named park in all of baseball — The Epicenter.

• Danica Patrick might want to stick to the GoDaddy stuff, and steer clear of the Elton John glasses:

We were all excited when Anna Rawson at long last made her televised debut as a spokesbabe for GoDaddy.Com. Although it was great to see Anna bust her commercial acting chops, some questions still remained.

For example, what happened next in the ad? In order to do so, you have to go to GoDaddy’s site to see the exciting conclusion. So check it out, and make sure you hold your sides firmly to keep them from splitting from hilarious laughter.

But the real question is - who’s Anna’s good-looking golf partner?

(Mystery answered plus plenty o’ photos after the jump.)

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Is Danica Patrick played out? It seems sudden, being that she’s still on the rise in her young IRL career and her commercials are still popular. But lo and behold, there’s two ladies in the latest GODADDY.COM commercial… and neither of them are her.

(Oh! Oh! They’re looking at each other like that! Something might happen!)

On the left is… some random GoDaddy eye candy. More importantly, on the right is the lovely Anna Rawson, a fixture of the LPGA & newest GoDaddy Girl. In a commercial that was supposed to air today before Bethpage Black was turned into the bottom of the ocean, Rawson and her ladypal are playing golf, when all of a sudden… oh, just watch for yourself on the video, which we’re pretty sure you can’t find anywhere else on the Internet yet (okay, technically, DEVIL BALL GOLF beat us by a day) after the break.

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