4:44 PM Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner is reportedly interested in hiring Mike Holmgren to run his team, a la Bill Parcells with the Dolphins. Other names mentioned include ex-Giants GM Ernie Accorsi, ex-Packers GM Ron Wolf and current Falcons president Rick McKay.
4:34 PM The creamsicle unis worked! Tampa Bay earns its first win of the season with a come-from-behind 38-28 victory over Green Bay. Raheem Morris gets his first win as Bucs coach & gets the game ball from his team. And the NFL is now free of any winless franchises this season.
4:20 PM Early games recap: Colts stay perfect with 20-17 win over Texans; Jumping out to a 31-7 halftime lead, the Cardinals hold off the Bears 41-21; Bengals beat Ravens 17-7; Patriots defeat Dolphins 27-17.
Amid yesterday’s unmentionable unfortunateness was vindication for FOX SPORTS’ Jay Glazer. When he’s not being Michael Strahan’s little bobo and riding around on his back, Glazer’s making a name for himself as the best reporter in the NFL, consistently sonning ESPN’s cadre of mic-holding talking heads.
(This? This is his fightin’ beard!)
That dynamic came to a head earlier this weekend when ESPN was showing preseason games and the announcers began trying to mock and marginalize Glazer for his reports that Minnesota was still going to sign Sports Voldemort. Obviously, that blew up in their faces, but the sentiment wasn’t lost on Glazer. His totally reasonable response? “Why don’t you say it with your fists!”
Yesterday on ESPN both Chris Mortensen and Ed Werder reported that the Minnesota Vikings and head coach Brad Childress had set a deadline of Friday for Brett Favre to decide whether or not he was going to come back again and play for the Vikings. Since Favre is just coming off of arthroscopic surgery on his throwing shoulder word is he would like to wait a little longer before deciding. In other words, he wants to wait until training camp is a few weeks old so he doesn’t have to go through it.
I mean, we all know he’s going to come back at this point because why else would he have the surgery on his shoulder? So it doesn’t hurt when he throws a football in his next Wrangler commercial? So if Favre isn’t “ready” to make his “decision” yet and the Vikings want one by Friday, does that mean he’s not going to be back this season? No, because according to Sirius radio host Pat Kirwan the boys over at ESPN are making this whole deadline thing up.
The discerning reader prefers the news (and most foods) wrapped in bacon and liberally salted with panic. Therefore, we provide your Thursday morning sports-centric swine flu stories to better arm you at the water cooler to pass along the latest gossip mumbled through your faux designer mask:
Arizona and Illinois (among other states) are monitoring the situation. In other words, both high school sports organizations happen to own televisions, thanks for asking.
Also in possession of a television for monitoring purposes: the NBA and legendary Dodgers trainer Stan Conte. That’s why he’s the best, ladies and gents.
However, Club America (a Mexican side) played the Chicago Fire in Bridgeview, IL, last night with nary a concern. That is, if installing hand sanitizers everywhere was just a promotional stunt. Which it wasn’t.
Whew. That’s a lot of abject terror sensible precaution for one morning. Please add any additional sports-related swine flu stories to the comments below so the few remaining survivors have a record of these final days.
Thankfully, our few remaining moments left as a functional species can be well-represented by the following people tellin’ it like it is and keepin’ it real with the kids, assuming your kids take Don Rickles’ routine at face value:
Geno Auriemma spoke to the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford after visiting President Obama earlier this week and explained to the assembled that “… there’s not a lot of difference between Italians and Jewish. Same part of the world and trust me, my mother and every Jewish mother I’ve ever met have a lot of characteristics in common.”
Unfortunately, this theoretical driver wouldn’t be very welcome to an Australian football club’s “All White Night”, complete with a picture of Klansmen on their Web site.
(Emergency vehicle sized appropriately to emergency)
Finally, a false alarm (possibly a fire alarm) in the eighth inning could not shake the New York Yankees from barely holding onto a 8-6 lead at Comerica Park over the Detroit Tigers last night despite holding a 7-1 advantage late in the contest. As Joe Girardi put it, “In this day and age, that’s a little scary.”
Usain Bolt wrecked his Beemer with his brother and “a female companion” inside and would have walked away unscathed, except he hurt his foot stepping out of the car.
Farewell to the excellent NASCAR writer, David Poole, who passed away at age 50 on Tuesday.
The Detroit Lions’ seventh-round pick holds a serious grudge against all the teams that passed on him. We assume he also holds 6/7ths of a grudge against the Lions themselves.
So much for more than two decent NBA series. Just when it looked like a Chris Paul-led New Orleans team might be primed for a run, the Nuggets come out and put a near-record licking on the bugs … in New Orleans. How bad was it? Bad enough that the Nuggets led by nearly 60 points in the third quarter, and the Hornets fans who packed the arena for tip off were already busy down on Bourbon Street.
How could New Orleans possibly have had that bad a game, and played that poorly at home? It’s an incredible mystery. What isn’t a mystery is just how bad the Hornets were. New Orleans turned the ball over an astounding 27 times, and it shot only 30 percent from the field. The 58-point loss tied the all-time NBA playoff mark, matching a Minneapolis Lakers win over the St. Louis Hawks. That’s pretty much all you need to know: Neither one of those teams still exist in that context. After all, L.A.’s a heck of a lot warmer.
In fact, as FANHOUSE points out, the Nuggets’ margin of victory in Game 4 alone nearly matched the entire series worth of margin of victory in Cleveland’s dominant, four-game sweep of the Pistons.
Empty seats, thy name is New Orleans. Now, about moving that team if they don’t get a new arena …
Meanwhile, there was one other loss that was equally ignominous as the one New Orleans put out there. With their season on the line — again — the top-seeded San Jose Sharks, winners of the President’s Trophy for best regular season record, bowed out to the Anaheim Ducks, the final seed in the West. What’s more, the game wasn’t even close.
There was buzz that, after forcing a Game 6, San Jose finally might come into its own in the playoffs. Instead, the Sharks capitulated the only way they know how: By failing to play any defense after they got an early lead. The Sharks scored first, halfway into the first period, then they never scored again. In fact, they only kept that lead for two minutes.
From there out, it was all Ducks, which has been a pretty strong recurrent trend for the Sharks in recent years. Funny how that used to happen with the Bruins when Joe Thornton was stalking those sidelines, isn’t it?
There were two other games in the NBA last night — the Lakers finished off the Jazz while the Hawks tied up their series with the Heat — but the other big basketball story was all about a team that isn’t even in the city where the turmoil rages on.
That’s right sports fans, the Sonics aren’t walking back through that door. In fact, any chance of a resurrection in the Pacific Northwest officially went out the window when the city of Seattle turned down an opportunity to re-make Key Arena by paying only 25 percent of the cost. The rest of the funds would have been brought in by hotel taxes, area businessmen and, most significantly, from the team’s personal anti-christ himself: Clay Bennett.
That’s right, Seattle had a chance to avenge losing the Sonics by making the man who stole them away pay for the upgrades that would land the city another team. Instead, they turned down the opportunity solely because it would have raised the tax cost of hotels and rental cars.
Is it short-sighted? You better believe it. Then again, it’s also probably a statement of just how rough the economy is. When a city turns down a Big Mac of revenge to save $0.99 of taxes that tourists, not they, will pay, you know that people are afraid to spend money on anything.
Lou Lamoriello has practically run every facet of the Devils for almost two decades now. All of sudden, he may not be quite so involved come next year, if this report from STREET & SMYTH’S SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL, via the NEWARK STAR-LEDGER, is true.
The coach of Bahrain’s national soccer team came up with a clever way to ensure his goalie was emotionally invested in practice: Make him defend his car.
You only thought you’d seen the last of Hideki “Fat Toad” Irabu. Little did you know that he’s back, and he’s pitching in America. Too bad it’s in the Golden Baseball League, which is just about the lowest level of the independent minors possible.
Did Ozzie Smith cop a feel on Alyssa Milano? You decide with the pics below, courtesy BUGS & CRANKS:
Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair’s son, Reid, is an even bigger party boy than his Dad. In fact, the 21-year-old is really in trouble, after cops found heroin in his car.
It’s been suggested in the past that ESPN has a slightly askew sense of proportion when it comes to its own place in the news. To wit: it can often seem to consumers that ESPN is the monolith and you don’t know Jack Manure unless you walk up and touch one of its many incessantly cross-promoted facets.
Of course, it would really help squelch that image of the Worldwide Leader if their prized NFL reporter, Chris Mortensen, would avoid emotionally charged late-night emails to the AP when questioned about his journalistic methods (say, not contacting the Raiders for comment on a story) that state, in part, “… the Raiders have lost the privilege with me of running stories past them for comment.”
Someone’s getting his own bullet point in the ombudsman’s column sometime in 2009… oooooooh… Read more…
Perhaps Chris Mortensen is still sore from being burned by BFF Brett Favre, and has decided to attach himself to a malevolent force instead of one that’s just ignorant, but Mort seems to have the inside news from New England an awful lot these days. The latest scoop from Foxborough has the Pats’ video department saving DT Vince Wilfork from an unpaid vacation.
Wilfork was fined $35,000 for a helmet-to-helmet hit on Jay Cutler two weeks ago. Due to “a history of illegal hits” (how’d you like to have that on your resume?), Roger Goodell was set to suspend Wilfork. But he forgot the old adage that behind every man is a good woman and a CIA-style surveillance unit.
Al Davis didn’t even wait for the blood to dry on Lane Kiffin’s chair before finding someone to replace him. NFL.COM’s Adam Schefter is reporting that the Raiders will name offensive line coach Tom Cable as their new head coach at a press conference later this afternoon. As for Kiffin? Chris Mortensen is reporting on ESPN.COM that he was fired over the phone - and without pay. In fact, Mortensen said that the Raiders don’t intend to honor Kiffin’s contract, which he said “happens occasionally. It happens mostly with Al Davis.”
(New Raiders Coach Tom Cable also familiar with stiffing players - @ UCLA)
Cable was one of several candidates THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS reports interviewed for the job last night, including offensive coordinator Greg Knapp and Raiders special consultant Paul Hackett. The fact that Davis interviewed Hackett, who singlehandedly almost destroyed USC, tells you all you need to know about the direction the Raiders are heading.
In news that came as a surprise to, well, Matt Leinart and that’s about it, Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt has named wily veteran Kurt Warner the starting quarterback.
This is the latest disappointment for Leinart, the team’s 2006 first-round pick, and apparently, he’s very, very sad about it all.
