• It was a big day for grainy video of youth football controversy. First, some high school kicker abused the the goal post support, Phil Dawson-style (but didn’t get the call). Then, some youth coach just flat-out abused an opposing player.

• Paraguayan javelin-thrower Leryn Franco is nippin’ out on the runway. She’ll use the photo for her Christmas card like Elaine Benes did.

• Don’t expect a closing baseball stadium to just let you stroll in and scoop up your dead father.

• Brett Favre’s home in Wisconsin has decided it’s time to move on, and is going forward in finding a new owner.

• Lions fans should be pretty excited that they’re still going to go 12-4, according to Roy Williams. The Cubs are also going to be the only team to come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-five series.

• Just when you thought we’d gotten rid of Kevin Costner once and for all, it’s time for a Bull Durham sequel. Read more…

Fresh off their first postseason appearance in 26 years, the Brewers reportedly want to keep the momentum going. And that means they might throw their hat into the ring for the services of CC Sabathia, who nearly single-handedly pushed the Crew into the playoffs.

SI.COM’s Jon Heyman says that the Brewers may even be willing to go over $100 million to keep Sabathia, though it seems unlikely they could compete for him if the bidding gets into the Johan Santana range ($137.5 million for six years). The Yankees, with their fancy new job-creatin’ ballpark, are seen as the prohibitive favorite to land CC because they can essentially give him a blank check.

Read more…

If you’re looking for beer, its quantities are not limited but its availability is going away fast. The Milwaukee Brewers are out of the playoffs, eliminating all teams with alcoholic-related mascots from the playoffs. Chicago Cubs fans’ privileges to drink after the 7th inning of games is gone because, well, there are no more 7th innings on the North Side. But there’s hope.

The White Sox are still enjoying that liquor ban reprieve of their own by besting the Rays, 6-4. (There was a planned blackout at U.S. Cellular Field, which is safer than your typical drunkard’s unplanned blackout.) The Red Sox, meanwhile, supported leaving people loaded by doing just that with the bases in the crucial 10th inning, before the Angels’ Francisco Rodriguez saved the day (and his own butt) by pitching out of a jam. And even though the Halos extended the series to a Game Four with a 5-4 win, that just means more spirits per inning for the Bay State.

So all is well. No need for mafias, moonshine stills or speakeasies. Unless, y’know, you’re into that.

(Yay, Tennessee Titans! You guys are … 0-5? Oh, wait, Keith Bulluck. You got that backwards.)

(There. Proving once again there’s nothing Flip Horizontal can’t fix.)

Time for a monstrously-gargantuan obscure parallel, if I may. The two remaining unbeaten teams in the NFL are also monsters which appear in Exodus: Ultima after you reach Level 3: the Giants and the Titans. (Maybe if Buffalo was called the Golems instead of the Bills, they wouldn’t have gotten Cardinalized.)

Home to both the Titans and the Commodores of Vanderbilt, the city of Nashville could feature more unlikely 5-0 football teams than anywhere. Ever. But enough about surprising unbeatens. How about some unsurprising beatens?

(Wearing this was the only way they let Joey Harrington back in Ford Field.)

Quietly having an MVP season at quarterback in the NFL is the amalgamation of every quarterback who faces the Detroit Lions. On most days, years, and alternate universes Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, J.T. O’Sullivan, and Kyle Orton are not the kind of signal callers who will set the league on fire. The four QBs have a combined rating of 121.51 — 10 points higher than Favre’s league-leading 110.8. The Rams might also have similarly pathetic numbers, but three of their oppositions’ throwers? Eli. McNabb. And Hasselbeck. It’s not a good sign when the Rams can look to the Lions and find reasons to feel good about themselves.

What makes us feel good about ourselves, strangely, is seeing what other people are doing by peckin’ away at their keyboards and hitting publish:

• Good thing they didn’t need Ace Ventura on the case, namely because we don’t need more sequels: BLEACHER REPORT gets to the bottom of stolen George Mason Final Four rings on eBay. Here’s a hint to aspiring burglars: don’t steal rings with someone’s name on it, then publicize it. From “pawned” to “pwn3d.”
• For the sympathetic co-worker of a fervent Cubs fan, EPIC CARNIVAL has ten phrases you should avoid around them.
• UNC Tar Heels fans at THE FIFTH CORNER take umbrage with ESPN.com’s Heather Dinich’s explanation on why the 22nd-ranked Heels aren’t rankworthy.
• Almost perfect timing, TIMES OF TRENTON’s Mark Eckel notes in Philly celebrating the Phils and jeering the Eagles.
• Michael Phelps — remember him? — comes home to Baltimore and is greeted by a parade of thousands, and WBOC-TV is there. Which just begs the question: it took Phelps this long to go back home to Baltimore?
• Let the Oklahoma-Texas hype begin … now. The NORMAN TRANSCRIPT examines the Sooners-Longhorns matchup in the Red River Not-Shootout-But-Instead-Rivalry-Because-Guns-Are-Bad.
• CC you next year? Sabathia tells the WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL he could possibly return to Milwaukee in ‘09.
• NEW YORK TIMES baseball blogger Ray Schreiber says maybe it’s time for the Cubs franchise to embrace Steve Bartman. Spoken like a true non-Cubs fan.
• After a crazy day at Talladega Speedway, VIRGINIAN-PILOT’s auto racing writer Dustin Long goes into why Regan Smith thought he beat Tony Stewart, and why NASCAR said Stewart won even though he finished second.
• And finally, whatever you do, gentle readers, whatever your homerist tendencies, wherever you may roam, please do not root for a Red Sox-Dodgers World Series. The unimaginable storyline of Manny Ramirez is just too much to bear. It would make “Jerome Bettis is from Detroit” look like “Can the Spurs defend their title?” Just … just root away from that, by all means necessary. And good morning!

If you want to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as MLB Commissioner, you might not want to throw out the first pitch before a home playoff game of the team you used to own. But that’s exactly what the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL says Bud Selig did before Game 4 of the Brewers’ NLDS game against the Phillies. (Not that I trust the Commissioner to have the brains to fix a flat tire much less a playoff series, mind you.)

And he was cheered, loudly, by the fans after he threw a strike. Thus disproving the notion that he’s been such a clueless Commissioner that he would get booed out of any stadium in baseball. Unfortunately, after suspicions were aroused by his throw, he was subject to a random urine sample and found to have been doping by cutting his Metamucil with creatine.

Read more…

In a way, the Trix Rabbit is very much a metaphor for the American Dream. Every red-blooded American wants that shiny pot of gold, or cereal. And the Trix Rabbit, God bless him, never gets it.

Much like the New York Mets, who wanted those tickets to the postseason so badly last year, but never got it. And this year, plus Johan Santana, the same fate has been bestowed on Those Ovarachievin(?) Amazins.

(Bright Side: Mets owner launches comedy career on heels of team’s collapse)

One man who seems to be eating plenty of cereal, CC Sabathia, was mostly the reason the Mets’ loss sent them out of the Wild Card hunt. His complete game sent Milwaukee (Algonquin for “the playoff land”) to their first postseason series since 1982 (and set off a Prince Fielder postgame celebration that inspired Japanese porno aficionados long-suffering Brewers fans):

Meanwhile, I think the Detroit Tigers have had just about enough cereal. They’re full, but MLB is force feeding them breakfast foods as they have to travel to Chicago and make up their 162 game against the White Sox to determine the AL Central winner.

If the Soxo Blanco win, they force another bonus game, this time against Minnesota, with the victor earning a playoff spot against Tampa. If they lose — against former Sox pitcher Freddy Garcia, no less — then Minnesota wins outright, and hopefully we can stop talking about Detroit baseball altogether. (Although I surmise they’ll force them to keep playing meaningless baseball games against the Indians until November.)

Your playoff pairings, sans Tampa:
Red Sox-Angels, starts Wednesday at 10 p.m. (Josh Beckett)
Brewers-Phillies, starts Wednesday at 3 p.m.
Dodgers-Cubs, starts Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

But could playoffs be in the future of this man?

Yes, that’s Kerry Collins, of the Tennessee Collinses. At a robust 36 years old, he’s led the Titans to a win over the Minnesota Vikings and a 4-0 record. One other team has a perfect 4-0 record, and it’s the Buffalo Bills. So maybe it’s not so impressive if Buffalo can do it too.

Denver would have been 4-0, but the Hochulian karma finally caught up to them as they dropped a sulfurous egg in Kansas City, losing 33-19 to the Chiefs. Strangely, this puts Mike Shanahan — with ALL those career wins — at 3-11 in games at Arrowhead Stadium, notes KSNT/TOPEKA.

Dallas might also be 4-0 were it not for the fervent Washington Redskins, who never trailed past the second quarter, who prevailed 26-24 over their Cowboyish rivals. As the DALLAS MORNING NEWS points out, football genius/wide receiver Terrell Owens knows why his team lost: it’s because he didn’t get the ball enough. Never mind that of the team’s 60 plays, 20 of them were either touched by or thrown to him. Honestly, if it was just Romo, T.O., and nine linemen out there, nobody could beat them. Marion Barber had 26 yards on eight carries, which was 26 yards that Owens could have accumulated instead. What a selfish running back, always thinking about himself.

Also: Brett Favre never threw six touchdowns in a game before? Seriously? Next thing you’re going to tell me, Hank Aaron never knocked three dingers in a game.

We’ve always shared ten links in the SbB Speed Read, but don’t let that stop you from thinking this is our career high:

• THE SPORTS HERNIA finds out who Mets fans think are No. 1.
• In non-bird flipping news, Jeremy Cothran of the NEWARK STAR LEDGER recounts the final depressing day at Shea
• THE DUGOUT struggles with the NL Cy Young winner, finding out playoff berths won’t be a factor.
• Rob Parker of the DETROIT NEWS has no problem with Tigers pitching coach Chuck Hernandez standing behind Matt Millen in Michigan’s unemployment line.
• DEUCE OF DAVENPORT catches wind of San Francisco’s battle to remove Tommy Lasorda from their local Italian-American parade — because he’s not a local boy.
• Gary Shelton of the ST. PETE TIMES depicts Buccaneers kicker Matt Bryant’s extremely heartbreaking week.
• Who’s #1: Alabama or Oklahoma? The TUSCON CITIZEN’s Anthony Gimino is seeing Crimson in his eyes over the AP voter’s pick of the Sooners.
• Move over, Kevin Johnson. Former Pistons Hall-of-Famer Dave Bing has his eyes on a mayoral bid, in this case, Detroit. Hey, anyone has to be an improvement over Hizzonor, Kwame Kilpatrick.
• They may have finally won a game, but after a sloppy win over the Bengals and headed into a bye week, Bob Hunter of the COLUMBUS DISPATCH is calling for Brady Quinn to start their next game against the Giants.
• Day old news, but it really needs mentioning. The career-ending injury of Ball State’s Dante Love last week showed up in unrequited love, support and fundraising from Cardinals fans during their 41-20 win over Kent State, the MUNCIE STAR PRESS reports. As an aside: At 5-0, and given their weak schedule from here on out, you might look no further than Muncie, Indiana as the home of year’s undefeated team that will not make the BCS.

Another night, another Mets collapse: this time they blew a four-run lead before falling 9-6 to the Cubs in 10 innings. Combine that with CC Sabathia pitching a gem on short rest to lift the Brewers to a 4-2 win over the Pirates and you’ve got a tie for the NL Wild Card. Instead of buying seats as souvenirs when the season is over, Mets fans might just be ripping them apart in disgust after another late-season collapse.

The Phillies lost, too, but even more troubling, as the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS reports, was this: the Philadelphia Police Department bomb squad blew up the hot dogs the Phillie Phanatic shoots into crowds between innings, after someone called in about a suspicious package. They were hardly a danger to the public, unless you count the nitrates, fat and sodium. But this is Philadelphia, the home of the cheese steak - when it comes to food leading to heart attacks, hot dogs are the least of their concerns.

Former Virginia starting QB Peter Lalich strikes me as a fan of cheese steaks. And hot dogs. And whatever else he can find when he’s hammered. Even though he was just kicked out of school for underage drinking, COLLEGE FOOTBALL TALK notes that it didn’t take long for him to land on his wobbly feet: he’s already enrolled at Oregon State, and will be eligible to play next season.

Why did Lalich choose the Beavers? Perhaps he thought that Dennis Erickson was still the head coach and he needed a new drinking buddy. Or maybe OSU wanted some advance scouting for their game against USC tonight, since he started against them the opening weekend. Although I’m guessing any notes he gave to Coach Mike Riley weren’t very useful:

“Dear Coach: Their defense hits really hard. It hurts to play them, especially when you’re nursing a wicked hangover from Dollar PBR night at Snooker’s.”

Also landing on his feet quickly: fired Lions GM Matt Millen. Actually, it’s more like “gently floating to Earth on a golden parachute” as MLIVE.COM reports that Detroit could be on the hook for the his entire $50 million contract after letting him go. Judging by this photo found by DEADSPIN, you would hope that he could afford a riding lawnmower with that giant wad of cash.

• WITH LEATHER has designs on the world’s first underground stadium, currently being built in Qatar. No truth that the rumor that the Raiders’ home field of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum is underground: it’s just the coach who is being buried six feet under.
• CBS 4 DENVER has Broncos’ lineman Kenny Peterson trying to get a side mount on reporter Kathy Lee. Don’t get any ideas, creeps - they were learning Jiu-Jitsu for a story. Needless to say, he fared better against her than the black belt trainer.
• T.J. Simers of the LOS ANGELES TIMES highlights some good deeds by Manny Ramirez - and pimps this very site!
• WASHINGTONIAN.COM interviews Trader Joe’s cheese buyer turned DC SPORTS BOG writer Dan Steinberg, who gives his opinions on everything from Gilbert Arenas to Jim Zorn’s magic dust to beer.
• Is Andy Pettitte done as a Yankee? The NEW YORK DAILY NEWS wonders that after the team announces he’s done for the season with a bum left shoulder. If only there was some way he could take something to help him get stronger and recover faster between starts…
• The DALLAS MORNING NEWS reports about an ex-women’s basketball player at SMU who is suing the school and head coach Rhonda Rompola for pulling her scholarship after she complained about inappropriate comments and questions the coach allegedly made about her lesbian sex life.
• MMA EXPERTS BLOG is ready to take Gina Carano to the mat for calling a press conference to complain about all the attention she’s receiving. Because posing for men’s magazines while wearing practically nothing and starring in American Gladiators while … well … wearing practically nothing is a great way to avoid being noticed.
• MOUTHPIECE SPORTS notes that even though none of the players from the original RBI Baseball Nintendo game are still playing, seven of the teams are still playing in the same stadiums. Of course, every stadium in RBI Baseball looked like a more generic Three Rivers Stadium, so take that at face value.
• HOME RUN DERBY wonders if the Cubbies aren’t tempting fate by already having World Series tickets printed up.
• The Oakland A’s haven’t decided to unveil new uniforms to court the alternative lifestyle crowd in the Bay Area: SF GATE reports that the rookies were forced to dress in drag for the team’s final road trip to Seattle. Almost but not quite as nightmare-inducing as the Padres as Hooters girls, but close.

Hot dogs plus the bomb squad might be a mess, but is the pinnacle of exploding goodness?

• Darren Rovell of CNBC shouts out word that Dennis Green’s “They were who we thought they were” rant has become quite the cash cow for the ex-Cardinals coach.

Maybe Mike Gundy can make the same kind of mad moolah.

• WALKOFF WALK isn’t buying Jason Giambi’s excuse for his bruised eye - “I walked into the bathroom door at the hotel and split it open.”

• THE SCORES REPORT sadly says to CC Sabathia, “No no-no for you!”

• DEADSPIN gets Hollywood on the phone, as former NBA big man Mark Eaton has a screenplay to sell.

Read more…

• The Florida Panthers are on the prowl for some new Ice Dancers.

• A minor league hockey player scores a hat trick of rude behavior on a flight, and gets a 527,040-minute penalty.

• If the Rays win the World Series, free pizza for the whole wide world!

• A trio of Cubs fans brutally beat a fan of a rival team. This is not a repeat.

• This is the only way people will pay attention to a Pirates game: West Virginia basketball players in the stands fighting with police.

Read more…

It’s no secret that CC Sabathia is a big, big man. Large and in charge, if you will. In all likelihood, he enjoys scarfing down whole pizzas in single sittings, and may or may not be partial to family/buffet style.

But all of that largeness also brings heat on his fastball. Which is cool. And it makes him jolly and jovial and, apparently, thankful. Via Pat Lackey at FANHOUSE comes word that CC has gone so far as to take an ad out in the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER to thank the fans for all their support while he was in Cleveland. Oh. And he would also like to thank “Time to Dine”.

The full ad can be seen after the jump. Read more…

Mark Heisler of the LOS ANGELES TIMES has more details today on Elton Brand’s escape to Philly. Heisler notes that the Clippers tried to offer Brand a contract of $81M, but Brand’s agent David Falk stopped returning the club’s calls. Brand eventually accepted an $82M deal from the Sixers.

Heisler surmises, as we did here last Friday, that Falk is most likely behind Brand spurning the Clippers. Keep in mind though that Heisler’s sources on the matter are likely Clippers-affiliated, and the club is presently in full damage control mode.

Not many saw the Philly move coming, but two ESPN 950 radio hosts in Philadelpia, Harry Mayes and Dan Schwartzman, browbeat Brand on-air about joining the Sixers as early as June 5 (audio).

Meanwhile, Jonathan Abrams of the Times reports that Baron Davis’ agent has confirmed his client is still hip to clip.

USA TODAY reports that NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson endorsed John McCain yesterday at the National Press Club: “I’d have to pick (John) McCain. I think our core fan base, being Republicans like they are, that will be their first choice.”

FYI: NASCAR’s home state of North Carolina is currently represented in Congress by seven Democrats and six Republicans.

(We avoided Charles Woodson’s wine stains, but not this - thankfully)

When I was at the Playboy Mansion recently, they were pouring samples of a wine called “24.” No idea what it was at the time, but now the DETROIT NEWS reports that the vino is the handiwork of noted vintner Charles Woodson.

The Chicago Bears official website has plenty of fun with the fact that when Jim McMahon visited the White House in 1996 as a member of the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, he actually wore a Bears jersey.

Excerpt: “When the Packers were honored at the White House, McMahon wore a Bears jersey, enraging Green Bay fans. McMahon explained that he did it because the Bears never got a chance to visit the White House after winning Super Bowl XX. Their trip to Washington was canceled after the Challenger space shuttle blew up.”

God I miss that dude.

Paul Lukas of UNI WATCH BLOG has a bone to pick with the Brewers.

Seems he’s not too found of the club’s penchant for on-field advertising: “Can’t they leave this sh– off the field of play?“

Conveniently, that quote can also be attributed to when the Royals next visit Miller Park. Read more…