• Tony Kornheiser has called it quits with his “Monday Night Football” gig. In his place will be ex-Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden.

• And we’re sure Chucky will get along great with his new employer, since he’s had so many nice things to say about the Worldwide Leader before.

• Hedo Turkoglu’s heroics help the Orlando Magic curse the Celtics to no title repeat this year.

• Padraig Harrington is now taking golf tips from “Happy Gilmore“.

• In response to the Matthew Johns group sex scandal, some are calling for the banishment of cheerleaders from Australian pro rugby matches.

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DeAngelo Hall has no ill will toward the Oakland Raiders; they did, after all, pay him $8 million last season even though he only played eight games. But Hall, now with the Redskins, isn’t above telling a humorous Al Davis story when prompted.

Hall was on WJFK radio in Washington, D.C. where, among other things, he told of the infamous press conference last year in which Davis outlined his grievances against fired head coach Lane Kiffin, and introduced Kiffin’s replacement, Tom Cable. One rather hilarious problem, however: Davis didn’t seem to know exactly who Cable was. Read more…

Let’s be clear right now - nobody would watch the NFL draft if every team drafted wisely. Just like car racing is only good for the crashes, which is unimpeachable fact, people really watch the draft for the lousy picks, the ones that leave the fans at Radio City agape in disbelief.

(Yes, howl in anger. Howl for my amusement.)

In that sense, then, our hats are off to Oakland, who just selected Darrius Heyward-Bey, a Maryland speedster who nobody figured was a top 10 talent. While he was still projected as a first-round pick, he was in no way the top WR on the board - that’d have been Michael Crabtree, who’ll be able to thumb his nose from San Francisco across the bay at the Raiders for years to come. Heyward-Bey, while supremely athletic, possesses all the qualities that add up to “epic WR bust,” mainly a lack of production in college, an inability to run a crisp route, and hands of stone. So he can’t run a decent square in, nor would he be able to catch it anyway. Sign that man!

Al Davis, who is a total cancer on his own team, wasn’t done wrecking the franchise once again. Read more…

It’s easy for younger generations to forget that before football analyst John Madden was a video game legend and a bumbling, blustering self-parody on NFL broadcasts, he was a Super Bowl-winning head coach with the Oakland Raiders from 1969-78. Younger generations would also be forgiven for forgetting that the Raiders once contended for Super Bowl titles with some regularity. Recent quality of work aside, Madden is clearly a man who has forgotten more about professional football than most of us could ever hope to know.

That said, it was surprising to see speculation in today’s SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE suggesting that Madden, who just retired from the TV booth, could be returning to the team that made him famous, the Oakland Raiders, and his old boss, Al Davis.

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Sense: Al Davis makes none. This is no longer up for debate; as the Raiders continue to redefine the word “backslide,” Davis has made increasingly peculiar personnel decisions, including jettisoning coaches at will and releasing an $8 million corneback… eight games into his career with the team. But it’s his decision to not pay the remainder of Lane Kiffin’s contract that’s finally bringing the Raiders’ institutional insanity into the light.

(”Coaching here was a very bad idea.”)

Kiffin, who’s a total loon in his own right, is understandably unimpressed with Oakland’s refusal to pay him and has filed a lawsuit to claim the last two months of salary from a 3-year contract he signed in 2007. Not only is Oakland fighting it–they’re holding a deposition on Monday in San Francisco–but Jeff Birren, a lawyer from the team actually sent a threatening letter to the University of Tennessee, claiming that Kiffin, among other things, may have been “actively supplying information about the team to opponents.” Honest to God, that’s what it says.

Oh, and there’s so much more. Read more…

Quiet night in sports as the NBA gears up for the All-Star weekend in Phoenix (first round of stories: “Hey, it gets cold in the desert!”).  Therefore, coverage this morning will be 20-25% less sports-y.  This is in honor of NFL Commisioner Roger Goodell taking a pay freeze this year and trimming his bonus from last year to drop his 2008 pay by roughly a quarter.

“The commissioner believes it will take a collective sacrifice of everyone to get through this difficult economic environment.” The commish is wise.  However, the commish will certainly have a better case for the uncapped year coming up and the next CBA negotiations by showing “fiscal responsibility” now.  Also, the layoff of 15% of league staff in NYC might be a little more palatable.

Darren McFadden, Bay Area savior and Al Davis’ last good idea, had his shoulder ’scoped last month, but no one knew his shoulder was injured.  Not only that, but he went back to his college doctor to have the procedure done.  We’re not suggesting this was a good idea, but Al Davis’ medical plan for the Raiders consists mostly of leeches and bromide.  Hey, it’s worked for him…

(ARISE AND BE HEALED)

Here’s something to chew on since you can’t chew on your world record fingernails anymore…

• Bobby Abreu to the Angels for 1 yr, $5m.  Apparently, deflation isn’t bad for every business in Anaheim.
• And the Brewers are saving money by only having to buy one color of skin paint for their bobbleheads in 2009.  (Seriously?  GM Doug Melvin gets a bobblehead?)
• The Denver Broncos fire the father-and-son team of Jim and Jeff Goodman as GM and other executive.  Mind you, they just fired their GM last season and, of course, their coach this offseason.  Who woke up Pat Bowlen and will this same person please check in on William Clay Ford?
• LenDale White has really been hitting the workout montage hard this offseason… four pounds lost so far.
• Fox is cutting back its Daytona 500 costs by trimming coverage… but they’re adding more costs by making Looney Tunes-esque cartoons around Digger the NASCAR rodent.  You know, maybe they still love the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons in NASCAR and they’re public domain now…



• Our favorite Tweet of the day, from the Phoenix Suns: “All-Star round table topics - Obama, race, education, HIV - were just interrupted by a birthday cake for Bill Russell.” The All-Star weekend is magnificently bizarre.
• As a reminder to All-Star attendees, the DUI task force is out in full force this weekend.  Sir Charles, J-Rich, etc… don’t make us write about you this weekend.  We’ll do it.
• Finally, Gallup thinks America’s cynical and believes Alex Rodriguez took steroids longer than three years.  Which leads us to our poll question…

If there was any question that the economic downtown is beginning to trickle down to professional sports, here’s the confirmation: The country’s most popular professional sports league, the NFL, is begging two of its franchises to share a stadium.

(This man and Mike Singletary in the same complex? Bedlam.)

OK, so the word they technically used was “urging.” Nonetheless, it’s a drastic step considering that the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders aren’t exactly on great terms. The SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS’s Mike Swift broke the story that the league is stepping up pressure on both teams, and views this stadium share as a potential duplicate of the way things have worked out for the Giants and Jets in New York, though talk of the project has been swirling for weeks, as we previously reported right here.

Still, while the idea might make fans of both franchises cringe, it has some serious merit, as both Swift and a report in THE SPORTING NEWS note. The teams would only have to “share” the stadium for a single preseason game every year, than a matchup between them once every four years. That’s five games every four years. No big deal.

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Ask anyone about the fathers of the modern NFL, and you’ll probably hear some familiar name: Halas, Lambeau, Lombardi, Leaf. One name any football enthusiast ought to get familiar with, though, is the founder, owner, and president of the Buffalo Bills, Ralph Wilson. Wilson, like semi-human horror show Al Davis, was one of the originators of the AFL, which eventually merged with the NFL in the mid-’60s. But as the new book, The Birth of the New NFL points out, that merger (and Super Bowl and half the NFL) almost didn’t happen without some financial heroics on Wilson’s part.

(Is Ralph Wilson frightening compared to his wife? Sure. But next to Al Davis, he looks… more like his wife.)

Take, for example, the beloved New England Patriots. Back in the AFL Era, they were still the Boston Patriots, and unlike today, they were not doing so hot. Their records were middling-at-best, not terrible, but they were not the class of the league. Worse, they were in dire financial straits. As the author, Larry Felser explains: “they were very rocky and probably about to close business and Ralph lent the owner Billy Sullivan a great deal of money to keep the team afloat.”

Another time, Wilson had to save a fellow team–and to bend the rules doing so. Read more…

I sure hope that Barry Melrose enjoyed going on that Toronto radio station last week and saying that he hopes the Tampa Bay Lightning - the team that fired him 16 games into his first season at the helm - “doesn’t win a game in the next year.” Because it looks like that while he might have fired the first salvo in a war of words with the team, the Lightning might have the equivalent of the atomic bomb left to drop.

ROGERS SPORTSNET is reporting that the team’s ownership is looking at filing a breach of contract charge against the Mulleted One, claiming that his comments violated terms of his deal. If the comments were enough to void the contract, that would mean that the Lightning would be off the hook for the rest of the $2.25 million they owe him.

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PETA doesn’t want you to have that hot dog at the game. They don’t want you to set up a grill to tailgate in the parking lot. Basically, they don’t want you to have any fun at a football game. And now to make it easier for you to not have fun, they’ve ranked the top five most vegetarian friendly NFL stadiums. And with a combined record of 25-34-1, it’s not hard to wonder if those five teams are getting enough protein.

Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego took the top spot, for their “bean burritos, veggie sushi rolls, vegetable wraps, veggie hot dogs, and Gardenburgers.” I’m not surprised that San Diegans are watching their figures; most just use sporting events as an excuse to get a base tan. But the other ones on the list, including two perennial contenders for the fattest city in America, leave me scratching my head.

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