8:07 PMGregg Rosenthal of Pro Football Talk reports that Vince Lombardi's life story will soon be adapted into a Broadway Play. Let's just hope Hank Williams, Jr., gets nowhere near the score.
7:57 PMJudy Battista of the New York Times on missed tackles in the NFL: "One trend most exposes how poor tackling is. According to the N.F.L., there were 81 touchdowns of 50 yards or more through Week 8, the most since 1970, great for highlight reels, a nightmare for defenses."
7:36 PMLou Holtz observing Opposite Day on ESPN set today after Navy dominated Notre Dame during 23-14 victory in South Bend today: "It was obvious Notre Dame was the better football team."
7:17 PM Here's a thought: When watching the Yankees ticker-tape parade from one of the adjacent buildings looming over the route, don't toss documents out the window that contain people's social security numbers. Or meatballs.
Here’s the thing about Charles Barkley: he may come off as contrarian and opinionated and anti-establishment or whatever, but that’s not really the case. He’s just in the normal early stages of Cranky Old Man Syndrome, in which COMS sufferers begin alienating themselves from the changes in the world around them. It wasn’t immediately obvious; Barkley’s frequent shots at his superiors could have been just a garden-variety case of a problem with authority.
(NERRRRRRRRRRDS! AND BIRRRRRRRRRDS!)
But now that he’s going after TWITTER, well, we’re kicking ourselves that we didn’t diagnose the COMS earlier. It’s so obvious, in retrospect. He doesn’t hate authority because they tell him not to do things, he’s just not used to the culture of responsibility. And the kids, with their Twitter Tweet Twoodles or whatever they’re called? Well, Charles Barkley doesn’t much cotton to these computers today.
It’s hard to get too misty-eyed about the integrity of college sports when coaches are dealing with sex scandals, players are getting arrested on a daily basis and Yahoo! Sports is ready to let loose with the blockbuster news that a USC football player might have received an extra large slice of apple pie at the cafeteria because he’s on the team. But then you hear about things like the following story and you remember why you cry like a girl every time “Rudy” is on.
Vanderbilt head basketball coach Kevin Stallings had been planning a 10-day trip for his basketball team to Australia for well over a year when he learned that school wide budget cuts threatened to nix the trip. So what did Stallings do? He decided to decline the $100,000 raise he was owed by the school in order to pay for the journey. The team played OK - going 3-2 in five games - but I would imagine that the benefits go much further than that. Plus, how do you not play hard for a guy who gave up $100,000 so you could go to Australia?
“Jermaine, remember when you got to feed that kangaroo straight from your hand? Then how about screening out your man?”
This comes on the heels of Mississippi State’s star basketball player Jarvis Varnadogiving up his scholarship so the team could sign more players. That’s two totally selfless acts involving SEC basketball in the space of less than a week, which is probably more than we saw all of last season. Sometimes its good to be reminded that sports are supposed to be, you know, uplifting.
Meanwhile, just to cut the legs out from under you as you’re actually starting to feel good about sports again: look, British football hooligans are back! I guess if The Specials are touring again, then it really is like 1982 in London, which apparently means it’s time for pitch invasions, fights in the stands and undoing 25 years of progress toward making soccer in England respectable again.
The trouble came in a Carling Cup match between rivals West Ham and Millwall. West Ham won the game in extra time, 3-1, but the story was the “fans” of the two teams. One man was stabbed and at least 10 people were arrested in what appeared to be planned brawls outside of the stadium before and after the game. Plus, West Ham fans staged a “pitch invasion,” storming the field after West Ham scored the go-ahead goal early in extra time, forcing the match to be delayed for several minutes and riot squads to escort the visiting Millwall players off the field for their own safety.
I’m guessing this isn’t exactly what ESPN was hoping for when they paid for the partial rights to cover EPL games this season. Although I’d like to see the “ESPN Axis” technology be used to highlight some hooligan taking a dart to the eye - let’s see Tommy Smyth put that one in the old onion bag. (Also, it should be noted that the Carling Cup is about as important as winning the Cactus League title - I shudder to think what things will be like by the end of the season.)
Speaking of awful people, we have a Floyd Landis sighting. Even though he’s was stripped of his Tour de France title for doping offenses, he’s got at least one cycling team who would consider hiring him. And of course it’s with Lance Armstrong’s new team. Really, were you expecting anything else? Armstrong had been out of the headlines for a whole three or four weeks, and we can’t have that. P.S.: Have fun with that sponsorship, Radio Shack.
As you probably know, Senator Ted Kennedy died late last night at the age of 77. Regardless of where you stand in the political spectrum, it’s hard not to think that an era in American politics died along with him. But did you know that he was also a fair football player in his day? In fact, he was good enough to be the starting end on the Harvard Crimson football team and be offered a shot at the NFL by the head coach of the Green Bay Packers.
The head football coach at Ogden High in Utah has been suspended after allegedly getting into a confrontation with the band director over the use of the field for practice. Sounds like someone wound up getting a piccolo stuck somewhere it shouldn’t be.
Apparently in Canada, stomping on a goalie and breaking his neck during a soccer match can get you arrested, but only earn you a yellow card on the field. I think that using hockey refs as soccer officials might not be working out.
Jerry Stone, one of California’s top high school running backs, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder for his alleged role in a drive-by shooting on Friday in Compton.
A drunk city official in Snohomish, WA offers to show a female employee of the group sponsoring a golf tournament “the size of his tee” and whips off his…ahem…head cover. That’s one way to lose your job.
The woman who was accused by Michael Vick of ripping him off of more than $2 million has been charged in a Ponzi scheme involving an investment firm co-founded by NFL players Demorrio Williams and brothers Josh and Daniel Bullocks.
Sure there were disagreements, but now that the Tour de France is over and Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong are back in their own countries, bygones can be bygones, right? (Laugh track). Ain’t gonna happen. Barely having arrived back in his native Spain, Contador laid into Armstrong the first time someone approached him with a microphone.
Contador finished first, Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck second and Armstrong — returning to the Tour de France after a three-year layoff — was third. But the Astana teammates were frequently at odds, although Contador wouldn’t give specifics. Read more…
One of the blogosphere’s most prominent cancer fighters was “Jonathan Jay White,” a 15-year-old (here’s his Blogger profile) who was “diagnosed with Anaplastic Astrocytoma [[Brain Cancer]].” The fact that we’re using quotation marks so liberally should be a dead giveaway that something is wrong. Also, so is the headline.
(Given all this, who’s the real kid in this picture? He can’t be happy about his likeness being used like this, right?)
White’s prominence and medical condition led many to lend their support to his predicament. A fund was set up to help pay for his treatment, he received gifts like a signed guitar from Kenny Chesney & a skateboard from Tony Hawk, and the Livestrong foundation even took up the cause. When White was supposed to undergo surgery, however, the bizarre truth came out: he didn’t exist.
As annual sporting traditions go, few match both the scope and novelty of RAGBRAI, an acronym for Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.* You can figure out pretty easily from the name what all is involved. What started as an offhand idea from DES MOINES REGISTER editorial writer Donald Kaul for a nice week-long summer vacation has turned into a decades-long annual event that attracts several tens of thousands of riders, both from Iowa and abroad.
(No, Lance isn’t here this year, though we’re pretty sure Mr. Pork Chop is.)
Sigh. Just 24 hours ago, the idea of Tom Watson winning the British Open and Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France didn’t seem all that far-fetched. In fact, we were all starting to believe that it all had to happen. Why would they come this far just to fail in the end?
Much has been written about Watson’s inability to hang on to a one-shot lead on the 18th at Turnberry, but lost in that shuffle was the news that Armstrong has basically conceded the Tour to his teammate Alberto Contador after falling behind in yesterday’s climb in the Alps. While Lance is still second overall, he finished ninth in yesterday’s stage and looks like he’s not going to be able to keep up as the Tour continues through the mountains over the next week.
Armstrong is trying to take the high road in pledging that he will do whatever he can to help Contador keep the yellow jersey until the end, but Contador couldn’t resist smacking Lance with a rather large verbal backhand:
“Lance Armstrong was my idol, but dropping him today wasn’t important — he was just like any other rider … It’s an honor for me to have him working for me,” Contador said.
In other words, this is my sport now. Armstrong, who is rumored to be starting his own team for next year, acknowledged that Contador was the best rider and that his goal now is to do what’s best for his team.
Wins by Watson and/or Armstrong would have probably ended up being the biggest sports stories of the year, if not among the best of the decade. These examples of the triumph of the spirit over the limitations of the body as we age are a shot in the arm of a lot of us could use. For the most part, we are faced every day with some reminder that we aren’t all we could be, and we accept it because we’re getting older. It’s the most convenient excuse, and perhaps the fact that they came up just short is enough evidence for us to keep using it. Golf and cycling are about as far apart in terms of their physical demands as you can get in the sports world. But the fact that a 59-year-old and a 37-year-old cancer survivor could come so close to reaching the pinnacle of their respective sports one last time has to be some sort of wake up call for the rest of us, right?
Speaking of wake up calls (and I hate to keep bringing this up), but it looks as if the nails are just about to be driven in the coffin of David Beckham’s MLS career. In his first home game since his return to the Galaxy, he was roundly booed and got into an angry confrontation with a fan during L.A.’s friendly with AC Milan (Beckham’s other team).
Though he claimed afteward that he expected some negativity, it was clear through his behavior that he didn’t expect it to be quite as overwhelming as it was. The main culprits were the Riot Squad, the Galaxy’s version of a wannabe European fan section. As you can see, they aren’t too happy that Becks backed out on the first half of the MLS season to play in Italy:
After hearing boos and coordinated chants and jeers throughout the first half, Beckham finally had enough and confronted the section of fans as he headed off the field for halftime. He says he went to ask them to calm down, but soon security was getting involved and escorting away a fan who appeared as if he wanted to engage Becks in some sort of physical altercation. The L.A. TIMES has all the particulars of a strange evening at the Home Depot Center.
Lost in all of the tension was the fact that Beckham actually played well, and was instrumental in both of L.A.’s goals in a 2-2 draw with Milan. After he delivered a perfect corner kick in the second half that Bryan Jordan headed into the net, he turned to the Riot Squad and stared them down as he raised his arms in celebration. I imagine that this battle isn’t quite over yet, even though Beckham tried to downplay it in his remarks afterward:
By the way, Los Angeles, way to treat your sports stars. You welcome Manny Ramirez, a proven cheater, back from his suspension as if he was returning from chemotherapy or something, but you get all over this guy. Nice.
• From the world of minor league baseball promotions, here’s footage of Chewbacca riding around in the Mystery Machine at a single-A game in Lowell, Massachusetts:
• More from the world of minor league baseball promotions: The Brooklyn Cyclones dedicated last night’s game to preganancy, complete with a pregame Lamaze class, and the promise of free tickets for life to anyone who names their kid “Brooklyn” or “Cy.”
• The Mets have lost yet another player to injury, and are dangerously close to having to go out and sign Jose Lima again, and nobody wants to see that. Unless his wife shows up for his starts:
• Hey, so how about that really thrilling PGA tournament that ended in a playoff yesterday? That was some pretty great stuff. Wait, who’s Bo Van Pelt? Milwaukee? What’s going on here?
• First, Tony Romo lost Jessica Simpson. Now, he lost a celebrity golf tournament to Rick Rhoden, who won the tournament in Lake Tahoe for the eighth time. Charles Barkley finished last, falling behind Chuck Liddell and Kevin Nealon on the last day.
• Maybe the reason that the Pirates gave a bit of an insulting extension offer to Jack Wilson is because they realize that, despite his defensive brilliance, he’s an absolutely atrocious offensive player. Like, along the lines of Yuniesky Betancourt. But I’m not sure I give Neal Huntington that much credit.
Admittedly, we’ve never followed professional cycling all that closely; sure, our interest has been occasionally piqued by Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France dominance or Bob Roll’s stories about pooping, but that’s about it. We were always under the impression that cycling was a non-contact sport involving a group of people riding bikes as fast as possible. That would make sense, right?
Boy were we wrong. Turns out pro cycling in general, and the 2009 Tour de France specifically, is nothing less than Death Race 2000 on two wheels. Sure, it started innocently enough - a fall and a broken wrist for Armstrong’s Astana teammate Levi Leipheimer. That, however, was just the beginning of the Tour’s bloodlust.
The Tour de France is fraught with peril, with dangers like drug testers and, um, potholes. Oh, and falling off a cliff. Those, among myriad other reasons, should be enough to make any reasonable person consider other activities for fun or profit.
(Police have released a picture of the suspected assailant, above.)
It may be time to add one more lurking predator to the mix, though, one of the most cunning of all. No, we’re not talking about Siberian tigers, though that would certainly liven up the mountain stages. “The Frenchman surges ahead, and oh dear, it looks like Sasha has pounced upon him! She’s got a good hold of his jugular, that beautiful beast!” No, we’re talking about the ever-dangerous prankster.
