8:00 PM CSN Baltimore has video of Marcus Smith, a U.S. soldier who dressed as a minor league umpire to surprise his children at a Bowie Baysox game with a home visit from Afghanistan.
7:45 PM A Japanese Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was swept out to sea during last year's tsunami washed up on a shore in British Columbia last month. The bike's owner asked that the motorcycle be displayed at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee as a memorial to the tsunami victims.
7:30 PM Buffalo Bills receiver David Clowneytweeted the results of his HIV test which came back negative. And to the critics of his decision to share his results, Clowney added: "Some people are Ridiculously stupid ... And can't see the bigger picture about things that are important in this world."
• The Pepsi Center double-books a Nuggets-Lakers playoff game & WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” on the same night. Of course, Vince McMahon is going to have lots of fun with this Denver Debacle.
• Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger is hoping her boyfriend, Formula One star Lewis Hamilton, will soon race with her to the wedding altar.
It was troubling when ESPN assimilated Bobby Knight last year, but one thought buoyed my spirits through those dark and troubling times: At least the Worldwide Leader will never get Jon Gruden. The (now former) Tampa Bay Bucs coach would never turn to the dark side; he despises everything that ESPN stands for. How wrong I was (shakes head sadly).
Fame is a cruel mistress, and if you’re not careful, you can find yourself becoming the thing you hate most. Gruden may think that we’ve forgotten his little skirmishes with ESPN in the past, but no, the Intertubes never forget. Chucky’s history with the WWL has been tempestuous at best, and I’ve got the quotes to prove it. Shall we begin? Read more…
Tony Kornheiser’s three years in the booth at Monday Night Football have been pretty uneventful. Some people liked him and his humor in the booth, while others would rather have had a real football mind instead of the guy who was supposed to appeal to the common man. Personally I didn’t really care because when I’m watching football I’m not paying attention to the announcers as mush as I am my fantasy team.
Still, while I was never a huge fan of Kornheiser in the booth, I did think he was a lot better after Ron Jaworski replaced Joe Theismann. Of course none of that matters anymore because once Tony saw that this season’s MNF schedule included a few trips to the west coast and that he’d have to get in a plane more than usual, he decided he’d had enough. Now he’ll be replaced by former Raiders and Buccaneers coach, and horror movie star, Jon Gruden.
To most of the country, a school like “Central State University” sounds precisely like the setting of a movie about college sports and a program where the ethics have begun to run dry, (movie trailer voice) until one man takes a stand. Think Western U in Blue Chips. Or Eastern State in The Program. Or Big State U in He Got Game. We could go on.
(Just a bit overqualified, sorry.)
But no, it’s real– Central State is a historically black school (HBCUs, the kids call ‘em) in Ohio. Their athletic director is someone you’ve probably heard of, Kellen Winslow Sr. No, not the effing soldier, his dad. This guy. Anyway, he had a job opening at CSU, so he contacted ousted Tampa Bay Bucs coach Jon Gruden about it. To nobody’s surprise, Gruden passed on the opportunity, but according to the HBCU SPORTS BLOG, KW1 seems to think his Marauders were just so, so close to landing him: Read more…
(This wood shack in Manitoba is where you can find Barry for the next six months)
The news came as authorities raided the house of trainer Greg Anderson’s mother-in-law in an effort to put pressure on Anderson to testify against Bonds, which he has thus far refused to do. Anderson has been in prison for more than a year for contempt of court. Much more on this to come today, I’m sure.
The Internet was abuzz when Mickey Rourke called out Chris Jericho on the red carpet at the SAG Awards the other night and said he would participate in April’s Wrestlemania, presumably as his Randy “The Ram” Robinson character from The Wrestler. Well, that excitement lasted all of three days.
The last thing anyone wants to be these days is the #1 team in college basketball. For the third straight week, the top-ranked team went down. This time, it was last week’s #1 Wake Forest taking down Duke, which rallied from a 13-point deficit in the 2nd half but forgot to play defense on the last play of the game. James Johnson’s virtually uncontested layin with 0.8 on the clock gave the Demon Deacons a 70-68 win. Here’s the end of the game. If you want to see the last play, skip to about the 3:50 mark:
• SI.COM isn’t bowing to the liberal media, as they’ve brought conservative pundit (and vaguely Palin-esque) S.E. CUPP (yeah, that’s her name) on board as a columnist. Her first subject? Bull-riding, of course. THE BIG LEAD has more.
• Everybody thinks they can run an MLB team. Now, 2K Sports is giving you the chance to prove it. Billy Beane is the pitchman for MLB Front Office Manager, which lets you run a franchise as a GM and see if you can screw up as badly as Steve Phillips. There are some other titles out there along these lines (I like Baseball Mogul), but this still looks like it could be pretty cool for all the seamheads out there. CNET’s GEEK GESTALT blog has a story on the launch.
• The OKLAHOMAN says that Oklahoma City sports anchor and former ABC sideline reporter Dean Blevinsfell and hit his head on some ice on Monday, causing him to miss the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game. He says he actually was laid out unconscious for at least 45 minutes in broad daylight before a neighbor noticed. Yikes.
• Iowa radio broadcaster Ed Podolak, who resigned after photos of him enjoying himself a little too much in Tampa before the Outback Bowl hit the web, is seeking “professional treatment,” according to THE WIZ OF ODDS. If everyone who’d ever had pictures taken of them drunkenly hitting on a questionable girl sought treatment, half of America would be in rehab.
• PRO FOOTBALL TALK reports that Jon Grudenfinally spoke out after getting thrown under a entire fleet of buses over the last two weeks by his former players. He called himself “Chucky,” and didn’t outright deny interest in the Notre Dame job. He probably would’ve been better off just staying disappeared.
I’m making a list of people who still like former Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden. John Daly is one, since he needs all the friends he can get these days. And I’m sure his mother is still very proud of him. After that…it gets pretty dicey. Almost immediately after he was fired by Tampa Bay, his former players lined up to take shots at him. Michael Claytonlabeled Gruden “a turncoat“ while Jeff Garcia said the team “needed a change” from Gruden.
Now you can add Simeon Rice to the list of players lining up to rip Gruden, and the former Bucs Pro Bowler isn’t pulling any punches. In an interview with Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan on Sirius NFL Radio, Rice went off on Gruden, running down a laundry list of players who hate him, and shredding his character like a rat going through an old stack of magazines in your garage:
“How I feel personally? I could tell you that, too. I think he’s a scumbag,” Rice said. “I think he’s a scumbag personally. That’s when he’s telling you one thing and… You know what he told me? ‘Simeon you’ll be here in the next five years.’ I got injured [and] this man’s never said one word to me. I won a Super Bowl for you. I got 13 sacks, 12, 15 every year for you. I balled. I got injured [and] you let me go like it was nothing.”
Now, to be fair, Rice had a grand total of one sack in 2007 after being cut by the Buccaneers and didn’t play last year, so it’s not like Rice showed Gruden what a horrible mistake he made by letting him go. But judging by the stories that keep coming out, releasing an injured player who helped you win a Super Bowl without saying a word to him seems to be right up his alley.
Hmm, let’s see: a “offensive genius” head coach whose teams always have lousy defenses; who is about as likable as genital warts and has the personal skills of Jeff Conaway; and who inspires hatred and disloyalty from former and current players. I’m starting to think that Notre Dame could have stuffed Gruden into a sumo suit and swapped him for Charlie Weis, and no one would have known the difference.
But Jon, if it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t just the fact that your players hate you that got you fired. Apparently the fans all hate you as well. So that’s nice.
Oops, they did it again: the Lakers managed to overlook the Charlotte Bobcats and fall 117-110 in double OT. All this with the Bobcats’ best player - Gerald Wallace - missing the overtimes with an injury. The LOS ANGELES TIMES has the gory details of the Lakers’ fifth loss to the Bobcats in their last six meetings. (Really, and these are the title favorites?)
FOOD COURT LUNCH examines “The Hansbrough Effect,” where college basketball analysts laud the hard work and gritty determination of big, white stiffs who will be sure to flop in the NBA. Which gives me another chance to type Kevin Pittsnogle.
Who loves chicken? New Orleans Hornets fans love chicken, especially when they get it for free if the Hornets score 100 points. NOLA.COM has the exciting blow-by-blow as the team sits on 99 with just seconds to go.
TRAVELIN’ LIGHT says that a resort in Aruba is offering vacation packages for fantasy baseball and football drafts. Sure, the resort might have beautiful beaches, world-class food and exciting casinos, but does it have a Bubble Hockey machine and old NES system with RBI Baseball like my garage? I didn’t think so.
If you think you’ve had a rough life, think about Arizona Cardinals lineman Darnell Dockett, who found his mother murdered, execution style, when he was 13. And then his father died of cancer four months later. The GANNETT NEWS SERVICE has a moving piece on his relationship with his uncle, who helped him get his life back on track.
The Braves need a power hitter to provide protection for Chipper Jones and Brian McCann. Enter Jeff Francoeur and .239 batting average. MLB.COM says that Jones, for one, is thrilled to have “Frenchy” back. Hey, if your other option is Andruw Jones, anything looks good.
Ever nearly kill yourself trying to get that stuck bag of chips dislodged from a vending machine? Me too! Now there’s a video game for you: Adult Swim’s Ultimate Vending Machine Challenge.
In yesterday’s Speed Read, we mentioned how it was obvious that the Australian Open was a little hotter this year, based purely on the gallons of sweat dripping off many of the top seeds. Well, yesterday the year’s first tennis major officially jumped the shark and morphed into an episode of Survivor, with Andy Roddick outlasting Novak Djokovic in sweltering 130-degree heat.
Yes, you read that correctly: 130 degress. Fahrenheit (if it was Celcius everyone would have burned up in the stands). It was so hot that Djokovic could barely force himself back onto the court midway through the second set after a six-minute break, but even the pride that motivated that didn’t last long; he retired after being trounced in each game after that.
Roddick deserves praise for weathering the conditions (all horrendous puns intended), but something more serious needs to be done in the future. As global warming makes both summers and winters more severe across the globe, the Aussie Open is going to keep getting hotter and hotter. Serena Williams has already called for air conditioning earlier in the week, and as crazy as it may sound to play tennis in an air conditioned dome at a global major, it may not be that far away.
There’s sure to be plenty of knee jerk criticism of such a drastic and unorthodox move, but there’s a lot about it that we should all love. First on the list? A chance to see more of the beautiful Brooklyn Decker, who just so happens to be engaged to Monsieur Roddick. What, you thought she was going to brave 130-degree heat to support her beau? Not a professional lady of leisure.
(Someone go get air conditioning in Melbourne! Pronto!)
So, was the heat that Roddick and Djokovic faced in the wee hours of Tuesday worse than the metaphorical heat Jon Gruden was up against during his ouster? Yeah, it probably was. Still, Gruden faced plenty of criticism in the days leading up to his shocking dismissal, and now it’s becoming clear that a disturbing amount of it came from Tampa Bay fans themselves. According to THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES’ Bucs Beat blog, the Malcolm and Bryan Glazer — the team’s owners — “took the pulse of the fans” before dropping the axe on Chucky’s NFL head coaching career.
According to the blog’s author, beat writer Stephen Holder, fans were absolutely irate that the team collapsed down the stretch, costing them a playoff berth in a wide-open NFC in a season where the city was hosting the Super Bowl.
(E tu’, Bucs fans?)
And don’t underestimate just how much the fan feelings may have played into getting rid of Gruden. Just look at the Glazer’s once irascible relationship with Manchester United fans — the family also owns that storied soccer franchise — and it becomes clear that they’ll cow-tow whenever they feel enough pressure to do so.
Here’s what Bryan Glazer told the blog:
“We talked to a lot of people, but we not only talked to the players, but (also) out in the community getting a feel for the team,” Glazer said. “We get opinions and we mix them all together. We just took our time making that decision.”
Asked further about the community feedback, Glazer said, “Our fans are our stockholders. They’re what we play for — the people in our stadium and the ones that watch on TV. That’s what it’s all about: winning and how they feel about the team. If they don’t feel good about the team, then there’s something wrong. . . I think you all know the sense that’s out there. It was time for a change.”
Hmmm. Sounds like a cheap way out when things start to go wrong with Raheem Morris next year, doesn’t it?
Here are Justice’s full comments. Pretty aggressive:
“He has never been in a car with me,” Justice said. “He didn’t take me to the airport. He’s going to call me a liar and that’s his information? That’s a bald-faced lie. … Who was in the car with me? Give me some specifics. What was the day like? Why didn’t [Radomski] put that in the Mitchell report? … You don’t remember taking me to the airport then? Now you wrote a book and remember? He has nothing.”
Well, he has something: A book deal. And the more this issue gets talked about, the better that book deal is going to look. Talk about free PR. Justice said he’s not going to take Radomski to court for that very hypocritical reason, though that in itself is sure to cast aspersion on his own assertions that he’s never sat in a car with the man. And what did Doc Gooden have to say about Radomski’s claim that he twice peed in a cup for him?
Here was Gooden’s text-message response: “LOL”
Uggggh. The steroid story spins on … and on and on and on.
Remember when the PLAYBOY party during Super Bowl week was the hottest ticket of the year? Well, now it’s not a ticket at all, thanks to that whole recession deal.
All the deification of Larry Fitzgerald Sr. — by Rick Reilly and Michael Wilbon, among others — has been a little over the top. How do we know? Because SLATE’s inimitable Josh Levinhas Fitzgerald Sr.’s past work to prove it.
Sure, the Super Bowl party scene may be taking hit, but will the slow down affect the strip clubs? It’s a legitimate question … or at least legitimate enough that the ST. PETERSBURG TIMES is asking it.
College baseball coaches aren’t the only ones who drink and drive. Players do, too. So, if Augie Garrido got a four-game suspension, how many are Stephen Locke going to miss?
If a Brazilian pro soccer player scores a goal that doesn’t go between the goalposts, is it still a goal? Judge for yourself at the 6:05 mark of the video below.
