5:16 PMMike Shanahanspent 7 hours late Monday/early Tuesday talking with the Bills about their coaching vacancy. NFL.com's Jason La Canfora adds that Shanny could also be interested in any openings with the Texans, Redskins, Bears or Cowbnoys.
4:52 PMStephen A. Smith Tweets: "Breaking News......Breaking News: Allen Iverson's folks just called to inform me Iverson has announced his RETIREMENT. I'll blog later today." Like you, I can't wait.
4:48 PM Despite an earlier report from the Chicago Sun-Times, Mike Martz denies that he's joining the Bears' coaching staff: "This is the first I've heard of that....No. They've got an offensive coordinator right now. And he's a good one. I have not talked to Lovie (Smith)."
4:30 PM WHDH-TV in Boston reports that gambler Jimmy "The Sheep" Battista had contact with as many as 13 NBA referees involved in the betting scandal that sent ex-ref Tim Donaghy to prison.
You probably know that Isiah Thomas has been hired as the head basketball coach at Florida International, a Sun Belt school that has made the NCAA Tournament just once and hasn’t had a winning season since 2000. Well, today Thomas was introduced officially as coach, and while he made a nice gesture by pledging to donate his salary back to the school (although he’s still got $12 million coming to him from the Knicks), any goodwill he garnered during the day was derailed by a bizarre interview on SportsCenter earlier this afternoon.
Chris McKendry was charged with interviewing Thomas, and she wasn’t interested in skirting any issues. She asked Isiah directly about his sexual harassment allegations, and then grilled him about his rumored suicide attempt a few months ago at his home in New York. Isiah’s answers were awkward to say the least, and honestly kind of strange and disturbing. He had several opportunities to deny attempting suicide (McKendry outright asked him), but he never did.
There’s a new aria in the never-ending soap opera that is the relationship between guard Stephon Marbury and the Knicks. After weeks of agitating for playing time under new coach Mike D’Antoni, the team finally seemed to acquiesce with Friday’s trade of Jamal Crawford. Perfect fix right? Well, according to ESPN.com, now Marbury doesn’t want the minutes created by Crawford’s absence, even though New York was forced to play with a depleted bench after sending out three players and waiting for the arrival of their replacements.
(One of these guys no longer is in New York. The other is in the same seat.)
Welcome to Madison Square Garden, where solutions create more problems because you can’t get rid of enough misogynistic egomaniacs to function as a reasonable sports franchise. While Isiah Thomas has been busy throwing his daughter under the bus for his own attempted suicide, Marbury’s been agitating to get out of town, then insisting he’s staying, and then blabbing about a need to play only to insist he isn’t going to.
So, the Phillies didn’t win the World Series last night. But the Rays didn’t win the game, either. Yup, that’s baseball for you. What almost turned into a clusterf*** of epic proportions conveniently became much easier to deal with when Carlos Peña drove in B.J. Upton with the tying run in the top of the 6th inning.
Had the Rays not scored in the inning, who knows how long the umpires would’ve insisted that the debacle continue. The field became basically unplayable in the 4th inning, but the umpiring crew didn’t want to face the wrath of Philly by bringing the tarp out then, and forcing the game to be wiped off the books and replayed from scratch when the Phillies were leading. But at the time, what we didn’t know was that Bud Selig was going to actually make a good decision, and force the game to be played in its entirety no matter the score and inning. FOX’s Ken Rosenthal was shocked at what transpired.
According to MLB.COM, Selig informed officials from both teams earlier in the series that every game would be played to its conclusion. Rule 3.10(c) allows the umpires (or commissioner) to wait as long as necessary to resume a game, even if it takes days. This rule is rarely, if ever, used in the regular season because of the nature of scheduling and the necessity to get games finished and move on. But with no other games on the schedule, it is well within the rules to wait a day to end a rain delay. The Phillies won’t be able to use Cole Hamels when the game resumes, but he’ll be OK since he gets to go home to her every night:
Thankfully, a quirk in the rules was cleared up in 2006. By the old rules, if the game was suspended at this point, Tampa’s run in the top of the inning wouldn’t count and we’d have to go back and start the 6th inning all over again. Skip Bayless‘ head would’ve exploded on “First Take” this morning.
As it looks now, it’s going to be raining all day today in Philadelphia, but the weather may be clearing up a bit by the scheduled resumption time of 8:00. It’s still going to be miserable, with temperatures likely in the upper-30s and wind gusts as high as 40 miles per hour.
The NBA season kicks off tonight, but the biggest news comes from off the court. Charles Barkley was making the interview rounds yesterday, and in his stop at CNN with Campbell Brownhe announced that he’s going to run for governor of Alabama in 2014. And he even manages to throw a zinger in at two of his neighboring states:
Brown: So are you going to run for governor?
Barkley: I plan on it in 2014.
Brown: You are serious.
Barkley: I am, I can’t screw up Alabama.
Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view?
Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.
Chuck then appeared on Conan O’Brien last night and called out Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan for being “cheap.” Yeah, he’s gonna do great in politics.
The Titans beat the Colts 31-21 last night, driving Indy a little further into oblivion. It seems like this shouldn’t be it for Peyton Manning as a dominant quarterback, but things aren’t looking good this year. He has nine interceptions and a passer rating of just 79.0. That’s just better than Dan Orlovsky and below great signal-callers like Matt Cassel and Kyle Orton. The Titans, meanwhile, look like the team to beat, especially since they got rid of that Vince Young dude.
• Darryl Hall was supposed to sing the national anthem at last night’s World Series game in Philly, but he got sick. Plan B? Like you had to ask:
Apparently, Oates was just chilling at home in Aspen when he got the call on Monday morning. So he hopped on a flight (he had to sit in a middle seat) and made it in time to fill in. Now that’s dedication.
• Big NASCAR founder-type guy Junior Johnson is supposedly a big Obama guy, according to DAILY KOS. For comparison, this is kind of like if someone like Colin Powell suddenly endorsed…oh, wait.
• Nate McMillan’s choice to leave Seattle three years ago to move to Portland seems like a pretty good one now, says the SEATTLE TIMES, since his old team isn’t there anymore and his new one is rejuvenated.
• Bill Cosby has completely lost it:
The Chitlin’ Legs have had a rough year.
• Juice Williamsdoesn’t want Illinois fans to get discouraged, according to the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. At least you can take some solace in not having to get destroyed by USC again this year in the Rose Bowl.
• Jung hit his caddy so hard with a golf ball that he necessitated seven weeks of hospital treatment. The caddy was behind him. About eight yards behind him. No wonder K.J. Choi’s the only male golfer who’s made it out of Korea. (REUTERS via YAHOO!)
• Looks like TMZ just has someone who follows David Beckham around all day. Becks got pulled over, got a “talking to” about his tinted windows, but didn’t get a ticket. Yes, this is news.
• This is just another Isiah Thomas story, from the NY DAILY NEWS, but it contains this great nugget of info: “Isiah Thomas’ son said the ex-Knicks coach will be back at work Monday.” What work? What does he do? He can’t talk to the players or make any decisions. Is he the IT guy now?
In the latest twist of this silly, stupid soap opera, Isiah Thomas’s story is now that the 911 call was for his 17-year-old daughter. First of all, capital move, Zeke. Father of the Year type stuff there.
“It wasn’t his daughter,” Harrison Police Chief David Hall told The Associated Press. “And why they’re throwing her under the bus is beyond my ability to understand.”Read more…
The New York media has been breathlessly reporting all day thatIsiah Thomas overdosed on sleeping pills, which caused a visit by police and a trip to the hospital.
(Ahhh, Isiah’s happier, fashion mishap days)
The NEW YORK POST caught up with Thomas this afternoon to ask him about the situation, and the former Knicks coach didn’t exactly confirm what had been previously reported.
