2:40 PM Toronto Globe & Mail reports, "an OpinionWay poll for French state television said 81 percent of French people did not think their national team deserved to go to South Africa given their unconvincing performances throughout the qualifying stages."
2:36 PM Texas' opponent in the Big 12 Championship game, Nebraska, is unranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.
2:20 PM "Minus the 30-percent tax take by the US Internal Revenue, the $1-million trainer?s fee of Freddie Roach, plus other trainers? and conditioning fees, cost of accommodation, airline tickets, food, allowances and miscellaneous expenses, (Manny) Pacquiao could end up netting around $10 million."
2:16 PMWashington Post columnist Mike Wise Tweets: "I'm no George Clooney, I know. But (Tony) Romo's facial hair looks way too manicured, like he sprayed it on. It's chia-pet hair. Just disappointing."
• Novak Djokovic delights the Monday night US Open crowd with his manic impression of John McEnroe - only to have Mac come down & reclaim his honor in an impromptu tennis match.
For a couple days now, Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari has been teasing fans with a #44 jersey, asking them to figure out where he’s sending it. If it were a recruiting ploy, it would be fantastically popular - and, of course, riotously illegal in the NCAA’s eyes. So that wasn’t it. Who’s getting el double cuatro, then?
(Um, Mr. Calipari, you may want to “vacate” this decision.)
Oh, him. Yes, Barack Obama is our President, and how you feel about his job thus far probably directly coincides with your party allegiance. And unfortunately for Calipari, he now coaches in the middle of Kentucky, and if there’s one thing they hate, it’s some Barack Obama. Commence Internet meltdown!
I have always thought it’s weird when people bring up the idea of removing steroid-era numbers from baseball’s official record book, as if history can be fixed simply by ignoring it. Say what you want about Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire, but every single home run they hit counted in a real-life Major League Baseball game.
For those of you scoring at home, that’s twice now that John Calipari-helmed teams have seen Final Four runs erased from the books, although in 1996 UMass was only forced to give up its 4-1 NCAA tournament record, and not its entire season, due to Marcus Camby’s indiscretions with an agent. In this case, Memphis’ whole season is being invalidated and Calipari is about to find his coaching resume to be 38 wins lighter.
(This didn’t happen either.)
I suppose it makes sense on some level. If Rose shouldn’t have been eligible to play, then how could any of the team’s wins be valid? But ultimately, this is just a big fat case of “who cares?” Michigan vacated its two runs to the title game with the Fab Five, but what did that accomplish (other than banning the team from the postseason in 2003 for things that happened a decade earlier)? It’s not like they’re giving up anything tangible. The memory of what happened will always be there. Chris Webber isn’t suddenly off the hook for that timeout thing.
“Honestly, I don’t care,” former Memphis guard Antonio Anderson said. “We know what we did. We didn’t do anything wrong, but it is what it is.”
And he’s got a point. The rest of the team didn’t do anything wrong. Even Calipari, it seems, didn’t do anything wrong here. Derrick Rose did allegedly do something wrong, but it’s unlikely that anything is going to happen to him. He, like Camby and Webber, will go on to make tons of money in the NBA while their former teammates are told that their dream college seasons didn’t even happen.
Of course, thus far, only teams that didn’t win the title have had such sanctions levied against them. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA is willing to strip a team of a title and hand it to the runner-up if something like this happens in the future.
(This…yeah, this happened.)
So, remember how (insert contending team here) was crazy not to give up half their team to get Roy Halladay a couple of weeks ago? Well, there are at least two teams that are feeling pretty good about their decision not to mortgage the farm for a short-sighted chance at success.
Last night in Toronto, Clay Buchholz — one of the players rumored to be headed to the Jays in a proposed Halladay deal — outpitched the man himself in a 6-1 beatdown at Skydome Rogers Centre. The win, coupled with a Texas loss, put the Sox back into the Wild Card lead by a full game.
Meanwhile, the Phillies’ “Plan B” when attempts to get Halladay failed, Cliff Lee, ran his record to 4-0 with a two-hit, 11 strikeout, complete game win over the Diamondbacks. Lee has pitched 33 of a possible 36 innings in his four starts with Philly and has a 0.82 ERA. Looks like he might be the 2009 version of CC Sabathia in Milwaukee, only for a much, much better team.
• Warner Robins, Georgia, won the Little League Softball World Series last night, crushing W’s favorite team from Crawford, Texas. Warner Robins is the first Little League to produce both a softball and baseball world champion (the boys won in 2007).
• English soccer team Burnley, playing its first Premier League home game ever (and first in the top division in 33 years), did the unthinkable last night, shocking Manchester United 1-0 on an awesome volley by veteran Robbie Blake:
• Here’s more details on the odd case of Caster Semenya, who won the women’s 800 meter run by a ridiculous 2 1/2 seconds at the World Championships. She is undergoing what is reportedly an “extremely complex, difficult” set of tests to determine whether or not she is actually a she. A gynecologist is involved, so I imagine that “extremely complex” is an understatement.
“We thank all our friends in the Albuquerque baseball community for their support and well wishes during this unfortunate circumstance where no one comes out a winner.”
Whoa, hold on there. I can think of at least nine people who probably think they came out a winner.
To gawkers and passers-by of a total NCAA compliance train wreck, embarrassing details are the icing, sprinkles, syrup, and cherry on top of the sanction sundae. Kind of like the reports that Tim Floydpersonally delivered at least $1,000 to a recruit at USC; there’s a schaudenfreudic glee to throwing up your hands and just asking how a coach is going to do that.
(Whoops.)
And then, oh, Memphis. Currently embroiled in their own NCAA mess, the Tigers should probably be actively endorsing the strength of their compliance department. We’re not sure what the first step of that process is, but it can’t possibly be taking the page down.
I guess it just wouldn’t be a Magic-Cavs game in Cleveland if the home team didn’t blow a 20-point first half lead. And not only did their early 34-12 lead vanish, it went away nearly as quickly as it came about. By the time the Magic had finished scoring the first nine points of the second half, they had a 64-56 lead and it looked like Nike was going to have to commission a Hedo Turkoglu puppet.
(The most impressive part is that LeBron literally carried Wally for the entire second half)
(Don’t worry Orlando, you still have this very calm, collected man running your team)
ABC counter-programmed against the NBA game with the gripping finals of the National Spelling Bee. Fortunately, they had the good sense this year to keep Mike and Mike away from it, instead going to “Dancing with the Stars” host Tom Bergeron, who was joined during the proceedings by Brooks‘ favorite gymnast, Shawn Johnson. The winner was Kayva Shavishankar of Olathe, Kansas, who got bonus points for having a name that was harder to spell than any of the words on the championship list. She spelled “laodicean” right to win the title, taking home the big trophy and $40,000, which will pay for nearly one year of college. This article says she’s a “budding neurosurgeon,” which leads me to believe that she’s actually already done brain surgery. Props to her if that’s the case. The favorite, Sidharth Chand, flubbed “apodyterium” and finished fourth, joining the 292 other spellers who have ultimately just wasted a whole lot of time studying for this. Anyway, this is all just an excuse to post the video of that one girl screaming the last word back in the ’90s again:
• The BOSTON HERALD says that Terry Francona got so upset about getting ejected from yesterday’s Red Sox-Twins game that he received medical attention in the clubhouse afterward for elevated blood pressure. Tito’s only 50 years old, but has been a walking heart attack waiting to happen for several years. Let’s hope he lives to see David Ortiz go deep again.
• For years, baseball stat-types have been looking for a way to quantify Derek Jeter’s bad defense. Well, the HARDBALL TIMES’ Colin Wyers came up with a metric that does just that. According to the new SZR (Simple Zone Rating), Brooks Robinson is the best fielder ever (which sounds about right) and Jeter is the second worst (foiled by Eddie Yost).
• Here’s your Stanley Cup preview from USA TODAY. This is the first rematch since the Islanders and Oilers played back-to-back Cup finals in 1983 and 1984. The Isles won in ‘83 (their fourth title in a row) but the Oilers unseated the champs the next year. That means it’s now been 25 years since Gretzky and Messier won their first cup. And what a scene it was when it happened (fans with goofy signs were on the ice before the game ended. They’d be tasered these days):
• Speaking of the Stanley Cup, the first two games will be played on consecutive nights this weekend, the first time since 1955 that Cup games have been played two days in a row. And why? No, it’s not Yanni’s fault this time. It’s actually Conan O’Brien’s fault. DEADSPIN says that NBC wouldn’t air weeknight games because if they go into overtime, they could’ve pre-empted one of O’Brien’s first shows as host of the “Tonight Show.” The finals weren’t orginially supposed to start for another week, by which time the world would’ve forgotten about hockey altogether.
• The World Series of Poker got underway yesterday with a special 40th-anniversary hold ‘em tournament. The buy-in: $40,000. About half of the field of 201 has hit the rail, and this special tourney (a who’s who of pro players) will conclude on Sunday. The $10,000 main event doesn’t start until early July. For now, here’s a picture of Phil Ivey getting an arm massage as he casually leaves a giant wad of $100s just sitting on the floor:
• Could Joe Torre have a bigger horseshoe up his butt? Manny gets suspended for 50 games, and somehow Juan Pierre turns into Ty Cobb (uh, except for the racist part). Pierre, who is widely known to be one of the worst offensive players this decade (stealing bases doesn’t make you good), is hitting .440 since becoming the starting left fielder for the Dodgers. L.A. won again last night, 2-1 over the Cubs in Chicago.
• I have to admit that I never thought I’d see the day when John Salley and Patti Blagojevich would be interviewed together, but GOOD DAY L.A. had them yesterday morning as they promoted their new TV show about getting stranded in the jungle. And YOU BEEN BLINDED has the video, which includes Steve Edwards asking the married Salley about his “girlfriends,” which didn’t amuse John at all. Salley also defends Patti by calling our country “communist.” Good times all around.
• BLOOMBERG has a good look at Sonia Sotomayor’s influence in ending the baseball strike nearly 15 years ago. Sotomayor grew up just a couple of miles from Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx, which also happens to be the country’s poorest congressional district. But hey, at least they have a shiny new stadium with $2,500 tickets!
• Now that Shea Stadium has been blow’d up, Tom Glavine has decided it’s safe to pitch again. He threw five scoreless innings in a AAA rehab start last night, and may pitch for the Braves next week. Still, expect something to “flare up” if Glavine’s turn in the rotation comes up when the Braves are in New York.
I’m not quite sure why this isn’t in the national headlines today, but there’s some huge news coming out of Lexington, Kentucky, concerning new UK coach John Calipari.
The LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER is reporting that a group of men armed with chainsaws showed up at the house Calipari has bought (but not yet moved into) on Sunday morning. They stayed there until 6:30 in the evening … cutting down a tree. Yes, this is news in Kentucky. Welcome to Lexington, coach.
It’s hard to blame John Calipari for leaving the Memphis Tigers to take the head coaching job with the Kentucky Wildcats. Sure, he had a lot of success in Memphis during his nine years there, turning the program into an NCAA powerhouse, but it’s the Kentucky Wildcats. One of the premier programs in the history of college basketball, and they backed up a truck full of cash to Calipari’s front door. Frankly, to say no would have been downright idiotic.
Tell that to the people of Memphis, though. They’re the Jennifer Aniston to UK’s Angelina Jolie right now and they’re still feeling a bit betrayed and probably will be for a long time. Which is why when Calipari showed up to his annual “Coach Cal & Friends” charity event on Monday night, he came through the door with a couple of bodyguards.
