The Detroit Lions are doing their damndest to put last year’s 0-16 abortion of a season behind them, and who can blame them? They fired their coach and GM, redesigned their logo, drafted a franchise QB - in short, they’re trying to leave their culture of losing behind (kinda hard in a city like Detroit, but whatever). So, let’s check in and see how the new-look, facelifted Lions are doing. Unrecognizable from last year? Er…well…

(Daunte Culpepper, seen here being attacked by a mean Berber rug)

We’ll say one thing: QB (and bikini babe magnet) Matt Stafford sure is getting a heck of a lot of snaps in practice. That’s going to help his development down the road. So good on them. But, uh, where are the other QBs? No, really…WHERE DID THEY GO?!

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As we mentioned this morning, Philip Rivers just got a monster new contract to remain the Chargers’ kinda-douchey quarterback. The important particulars: 6 years, $93 million. Well, check that - there’s no way he earns all $93 million.

(”No sir, I don’t like it.”)

That’s because he’s only guaranteed $38 million, and that figure’s likely a lot closer to the amount Rivers will actually get out of the contract than $93 million. Hey, it’s the nature of the game. Guys get released - or their contracts “restructured” - all the time. And Rivers was paid something approximating a fair market price, considering Eli Manning just got $107 million. But there’s one aspect of this that’s still troubling.

That’s the fact that Rivers, for the boatload of money he did receive, only got as much guaranteed money as if he’d been drafted 4th in 2009 instead of 2004.

Allow us to explain.

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• Brooks gleams the cube, as he & SbB Girl Cecilia check out the X-Games.

• Percy Harvin regales U of Florida recruits with wild Gator tales of partying, pot smoking, and coach choking.

• Speaking of the SEC, does Matthew Stafford’s U of Georgia girlfriend have enhanced gazongas?

• Fresh off the LeBron Dunkgate comes the Tiger Woods Fartgate.

• Detroit Pistons rookie DaJuan Summers places a Twitter bet with porn star Valerie Luxe on who can get 4,000 followers the fastest.

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• Smoking pot, partying with coeds, choking out assistant coaches - Percy Harvin sure knows how to sell the Florida Gators to recruits.

• Tiger Woods ends the Buick Open with a big bang - from his pants! And like Nike did with the LeBron dunk, the PGA tries to remove all video.

• Beer pong with babies & shotgunning brewskis with toddlers - now that’s good parenting!

• Time to go outside, as the Arena Football League is officially folding.

• Fergie Jenkins recalls the fun traveling with the Cubs during the days of segregation - such has having to sleep at funeral homes & bordellos.

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Whatever happens to Matthew Stafford this season as quarterback for the Detroit Lions (slow funeral dirge here), he is a winner in my eyes. No, more than that: He’s a hero. Boozy Fourth of July boat party with hot cheerleaders, the hottest of which is his girlfriend? Vertical lap dances? Random flipping the bird? That’s why God invented summer. But wait, who is the blonde damsel who stole Stafford’s heart?

After much speculation, BUSTED COVERAGE digs out the facts: She’s Kelly Hall, a University of Georgia cheerleader who may or may not be surgically enhanced. I’ll leave that speculation to you, since I am not good at estimating size from two-dimensional images (side note: Never buy a home solely off the Internet). But the photos above seem to offer evidence that Stafford used at least some of his signing bonus for a higher purpose.

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More photos have surfaced of Matthew Stafford’s recent party activities as he passed the time waiting for Lions training camp. Awesome. Never have such naughty boat shenanigans come to light since a certain Vikings Lake Minnetonka cruise; or of course Gary Hart’s 1984 Presidential campaign.

Last week we brought you the horror of Stafford’s crooked-hat, Dancin’ Raisin sunglasses combo, but today we can only sit back and marvel at the way he moves in the pocket. It will all come in handy when the Chicago Bears attempt similar bodily violations come October. More photos following the jump. Read more…

Let’s see: Hat on sideways? Check. Shorts in Detroit Lions colors? Check. Buxom, flag-waving, boozing bikini chicks? Yes. Sunglasses from the Ray Ban Casual Douche collection? Affirmative. Say hello to Matthew Stafford, who looks like he’s having fun in a Jethro-Bodine-way-out-of-his-league-at-the-ceeement-pond kind of way.

Sadly, as the Lions schedule indicates, this was probably Stafford’s last opportunity to parade around shirtless. A turtleneck will hide the scars and bruises, Matthew, but it will never conceal the shame. Wait a minute … now I think I know where I’ve seen those sunglasses before! …

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In what will surely come as good news to fantasy football dweebs, shut-ins and the parents of Denver Broncos backup quarterback Tom Brandstater (full disclosure — I qualify for the first two), the NFL Network has announced that it will broadcast every single preseason game. It’ll be the first time that the entire NFL exhibition slate will be televised, making if officially no longer necessary to ever attend one of them in person.

(Even here, the Lions are on the bottom. Sad, really)

This is also good news to the 10.8 million digitally-based Comcast subscribers who will be able to watch the games without paying extra. Comcast and the NFL Network finally hammered out a nine-year contract agreement in May, including the agreement that the company would no longer relegate NFL Network to a digital sports tier that cost subscribers extra. Of course not everyone has Comcast, but that’s another post. Oh, more breaking news … Read more…

Last night, after weeks of posturing and negotiating, the Lions agreed to a deal with Matthew Stafford, the 21-year-old who is hours away from becoming the first pick in the NFL Draft and a multi-millionaire. According to multiple reports, Stafford will receive $41.7 million guaranteed as part of his six-year, $72 million deal with Detroit, a team owned by the Ford family, which also happens to own a pretty big slice of a failing auto company.

How much money is Stafford’s deal worth? Well, when you put it in the context of other highly compensated NFL stars, the numbers are still positively startling:

• Albert Haynesworth’s record-setting $100-115 million deal with the Redskins earlier this offseason contained $41 million in guaranteed money, less than Stafford’s deal.
• Tom Brady’s six-year deal — signed in 2005 — is worth $60 million, a full $12 million less than Stafford’s pact.
• Peyton Manning’s seven-year, $98 million deal — signed in 2004 — contains $34 million in guaranteed money, less than Stafford is getting.
• Jay Cutler is still playing on his original six-year, $47.86 million deal. That’s $24 million less than Stafford will be earning, and Cutler’s an All-Pro.

Amazingly, the numbers Stafford is getting when compared to other recent highly picked quarterbacks is equally startling.

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The NFL draft is coming up, as ESPN has hammered into your skull a thousand times you might have heard, and all eyes have been focused on what Detroit will do with the first pick in the draft. They really only have their choice of about three players; select anyone outside of QB Matthew Stafford, LB Aaron Curry, or OT Jason Smith, someone they regard higher than those three, and they’ll be widely derided as “reaching.” This despite the fact that it’d be their only shot at getting that player short of a trade, and nobody’s willing to trade for the #1 spot in a draft lacking surefire stars like this. So it goes in a hive-mind society like the NFL scouts.

Luckily, Detroit has no such plans to stray from the big three, as according to MLIVE.COM, the team just announced this afternoon that they’ve got a deal in place with Curry, terms agreed to and everything, and they’re ready to get this guy signed before the draft begins. That way there’s no contract drama to worry about; he can just get into camp and go. Yep, they’re selecting Curry with the #1 pick … unless they sign Stafford first.

Wait, what?
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