UEFA Euro 2008, the latest recycling of code base from EA Sports, is your typical soccer game. (In fact, it’s basically FIFA ‘08 with a few minor additions and new players.) However, the nationalistic aspect has been played up. You can fight for the opportunity to captain your country’s team. You [...]

• MR. IRRELEVANT believes that the Wizards signing Gilbert Arenas to a $126 million deal is worth the mountain of moolah.

• DC SPORTS BLOG learns that cute young girls love to have their pictures taken with Clinton Portis, even if they don’t know who he is.
• JOE SPORTS FAN changes the channel, as ESPN dedicates [...]

We enjoy getting the MAXIM-um fun out of NFL cheerleader photo shoots.
• We wish a happy birthday to Bolivian basketball babe Claudia Porras!

• Manny Ramirez socks the Sox’s traveling secretary over ticket troubles.
• A conservative website runs news of sprinter Tyson Gay by referring to him as Tyson Homosexual.
• Spain’s Euro 2008 success was bad [...]

• LARRY BROWN SPORTS flips through the channels, and finds FOX cameras catching the Cubs’ Kerry Wood flipping the bird in the bullpen.

Wood really shouldn’t be doing that – such hand gestures might land Kerry right back on the DL.
• Stephanie Stradley of AOL FANHOUSE floats along rumors of Cedric Benson joining up with [...]

Congratulations once again to the Spanish national soccer team, or “La Furia Roja,” as they’re known in their home country, for shaking off the years of frustration, failure, and choking since their last Euro win in 1964.

But that success took its toll in parts back home: the International Erotic Film Festival of Barcelona reported a [...]

• The NEW YORK TIMES volleys up the tale of one obsessive AVP fan.

• SIGNAL TO NOISE serves up SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s lead tennis writer defending Justin Gimelstob’s little anti-Anna Kournikova rant.
• ESPN’s Pedro Gomez discovers the stadium that hosted Sunday’s Euro 2008 final also once hosted Jewish inmates as a World War II Nazi [...]

So remember when we told you that today offered some of the best spectacle an American soccer fan could hope for and that you should drop everything and tune in for the day? We remember it like it was this morning. Yeah. We’ve discussed this before, but we’re kind of an idiot.
In the [...]

• DEADSPIN tells us about the marriage of the year (if the year was 1982): Chris Evert and Greg Norman.

• We now know how to tell if she’s got real ones or fake ones. Unfortunately, it involves NFL jerseys. Still, good to know.
• David Stern shaking hands == Tiger Woods giving [...]

UPDATE: Groin pounding from the MLS game after the jump.
In a few hours, the Euro 2008 final will commence in Vienna with Germany and Spain renewing a rivalry that… okay, has never really existed. Both teams will be missing perhaps their best player (Michael Ballack for Germany; David Villa for Spain), leaving the outcome of [...]

Remember when you heard as a kid that lemmings will follow each other off a cliff without any thought just because the herd in front went off the cliff? Then remember when you found out Walt Disney shoved them all off the cliff for better film? Didn’t you feel a bit betrayed?

(This is [...]