Deion Sanders appeared on NFL Network today to talk about his involvement with now-suspended Oklahoma State receiver Dez Bryant and his possible role in tampering with now-49ers receiver Michael Crabtree. Sanders was in rehearsed, hyper-defensive mode, which made for a plethora of unintentionally hilarious moments.

(Watch entire interview here)

Early sampling:

NFL Network interviewer Jason La Canfora to Sanders: He’s (Bryant) ineligible because he lied (to the NCAA) about what when on in your house.”

Sanders: “(interrupts) No, no, he’s not ineligible because of what went on in my house, he’s ineligible because he lied.”

Great.

Sanders was sure to mention that Oklahoma State approached him about “mentoring” Bryant: “When I first started mentoring Dez, the first thing I did was call his receivers coach. His receivers coach told me everything about Dez. … So we have an ongoing relationship.”

Now, if Sanders is so close with Bryant’s position coach, why doesn’t he name that coach? Maybe, perhaps because that coach, the much-traveled and since-departed Trooper Taylor, wasn’t exactly on head coach’s Mike Gundy’s Christmas card list when he left? (That’s what sources have told SbB.)

More:

Sanders: “Now the problem was, someone, um, they wanted to question Dez about our relationship, and Dez was nervous about — Why these NCAA people have me in this room with a closed door, questioning me? Now, had I been liar, or falsified any incident or evidence, my story would have collaborated with Dez. We talked three times a week and they didn’t, because I don’t lie, and the kid said he didn’t come to my home, and in actuality, he did.”

La Canfora: “In terms of your dealings with him though, the fact that Dez lied, does that go against what you told him? (Deion: ‘Yes”) And did you have a chance to intervene before he spoke to the NCAA and say hey man (Deion: ‘No) you have to tell the whole truth?”

Sanders: “I don’t have to prepare a person to tell the whole truth. The truth is what it is, so the fact that he got nervous and falsified the truth, he had thought he had done something wrong. When there’s somebody there, ‘Were you at the house of Deion Sanders? Were you there were you there?’ The kid got nervous, and I don’t know why he falsified the truth, but I must … if I was a liar, my story would have collaborated with his. Just think about that.”

Collaborated or corraborated?

And now the surest way to spot a liar: find the guy who says he never lies. Read more…

Deion Sanders comes out of hiding today to talk to Thayer Evans of the NEW YORK TIMES about his role in Oklahoma State’s Dez Bryant getting suspended by the school.

Sanders, contrary to what ESPN Radio host (and former Oklahoma State basketball player) Doug Gottlieb said today on-air, claimed to Evans that Okie State coaches asked him to mentor Bryant! Gottlieb said he was told by the same coaches that Sanders spirited Bryant away from them and was providing unsolicited career advice.

Sanders said he was asked two years ago to mentor Bryant because of Bryant’s difficult past; his mother served time in prison on a drug-sale conviction.

Sanders said that before he started mentoring Bryant, he called Oklahoma State’s receivers coach to ensure that it was O.K.

“When Dez is late to class, the coach calls me,” Sanders said. “When Dez doesn’t show up for this, the coach calls me.”

Sadly, we get no response to Sanders’ comments from Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy. Read more…

Sports media is abuzz today about the botched contract of Michael Crabtree, who Mike Florio of PFT reports will get a full $2M per year less than Darius Heyward-Bey.

Almost immediately after Crabtree’s cave-in was announced, we got word that another prized Big 12 wide receiver, Dez Bryant of Oklahoma State, had been declared ineligible for lying about contact with an ex-NFL player.

So was there a common deionominator between the two? According to ESPN Radio Host Doug Gottlieb, yep.

Read more…

For past two seasons, the once-mighty Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry has been mighty crappy. There was ND’s 35-17 wipeout of the Wolverines in South Bend last season, and then there was UM’s 38-0 a$$-whooping of the Irish in Ann Arbor the season before that. So you’d figure that today’s matchup in the Big House would be a big bore.

Big mistake to assume that. Like two aging heavyweights whose glory days appeared to have been behind them, Michigan & Notre Dame traded punches all afternoon (figurative, not literal) as the score see-sawed back & forth. But it was the Maize & Blue who managed the final knockout blow, as Tate Forcier tossed a 5-yard TD pass to Greg Matthews with 11 seconds left. So Hail to the Victors in a 38-34 thriller.

(Time to get those Charlie Weis-bashing billboards back up.)

Speaking of knockouts, another top-5 team from the Sooner state took another tumble on the field in an upset loss.

Read more…

Bad things, man; bad things.

Dennis Hopper’s warnings from those admittedly awesome Nike commercials were an apt metaphor for the perils of Week 1 in college football. In this case, while Georgia and Virginia Tech couldn’t overcome tough opponents in hostile territory, Oklahoma was the real loser of the weekend.

(”Coach said to rub some dirt on it. Wait… we don’t have dirt; this is field turf! MEDIIIIIIC!”)

But first, about the Georgia loss: With the score 17-10 OSU in the third quarter, Zac Robinson led Justin Blackmon on a crossing route over the middle. The pass sailed and bounced off the receiver’s hands, at which point Blackmon was immediately met with a violent hit from safety Reshad Jones. Flags fly, unnecessary roughness call, 1st down for the Cowboys.

Except… that was, by all accounts, a legal hit. Jones had begun his move before the ball bounced off the receiver’s hands. His technique was legal: he didn’t lead with the helmet, just a high shoulder. But since he hit Blackman so hard and there’s the emphasis on caling unnecessary roughness, three flags fell at his feet. Even Matt Millen was apoplectic. After all… what the hell was Jones supposed to do? Not play defense? If Blackmon makes that catch and Jones lets up, Jones probably loses his starting role for bitching out and being afraid of contact. It was an idiotic call and a bad precedent for the rest of college football. Video is after the break.

Read more…

And we thought the worst news to come from Oklahoma State this week would be their refusal to hold a pregame handshake with Georgia. But it turns out a former Cowboys TE is facing rape allegations.

Jamal Mosley had left the OSU program on Tuesday, due to what coach Mike Gundy called “personal reasons”. But those reasons were apparently tied to Mosley supposedly sexually assaulting two women at two different times.

Read more…

Nice to see the college football season get off to such a dramatic start. Actually, it wasn’t that nice to see Oregon RB LeGarrette Blount slug Boise State DE Byron Hout after Thursday night’s contest. The whole ironic thing about Blount bopping Byron is that the game began with a ceremonial handshake between Ducks & Broncos players - a gesture designed to help promote sportsmanship.

But seeing how such a show of goodwill concluded with a player coldclocking an opponent, Georgia and Oklahoma State have decided not to hold their own pregame handshake.

Read more…

The conventional wisdom is that the Pac-10 was having an exceedingly down year. In fact, that’s probably the main reason that USC was left out of the National Championship discussion: their one loss against a Pac-10 school was far worse than a loss to an SEC or Big 12 team.

So what do we make of Oregon’s 42-31 victory over Oklahoma State in last night’s Holiday Bowl? Yes, the Ducks featured an explosive offense, which you would expect from an Oregon team and is apparently mandatory to play in the Holiday Bowl. But the story was their defense in the second half, which put the clamps on the Cowboys’ star QB Zac Robinson.

How physical were they? DR. SATURDAY has some video evidence from YouTube of just one of the many big hits Robinson took in the second half:

It was just a big day all around for Oregon sports teams. Along with the Ducks winning the Holiday Bowl, the Portland Trail Blazers did the improbable on Tuesday night, taking out the defending champion Boston Celtics 91-86 without the services of injured All-Star guard Brandon Roy.

Keeping in mind it might be foolish for the Celtics to start panicking now - they are still 28-5 - but they have lost three of four. Oh hell, where the fun of having a sense of perspective: between this, the Patriots missing the playoffs and the Red Sox getting rejected by Mark Teixeira, let’s start wildly speculating about the end of the Boston sports dynasty.

Other sports news that happened as you prepare to get your drank on tonight:

• LeBron James’ birthday wasn’t as successful as he would have liked, as he lost his showdown with Dwayne Wade’s Heat 104-95. Somehow you excuse me if I’m not too sympathetic. Still, the game was a lot of fun to watch - NESW SPORTS has highlights of some impressive blocks each superstar had during the game:
  

• Most coaches are petrified of their players getting distracted by the glitz and parties that surround bowl games, especially if they are some place exciting like Miami. Which explains why the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER says Bearcats head coach Brian Kelly is debating moving his team from the hotel they are staying at ahead of the Orange Bowl because Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is having a New Year’s Eve party there.
• DIME WARS has awesome video of the Pistons’ Rasheed Wallace doing what he does best: taunting and baiting NBA referees. What can you say? The man is the best of all time.
• Wrestling legend/sock afficianado Mick Foley is upset with a Sports Illustrated review of the new movie “The Wrestler” that compared him to a homeless person, and he’s written an open letter on the TNA WRESTLING Web site about it. And then, for some reason, he fell 30 feet through three flaming tables to prove his point.
• The BOSTON HERALD says Red Sox slugger Kevin Youklis is in trouble with state officials because he hasn’t registered his Hits For Kids charity as a non-profit.
• Classic baseball fight! THE BIZ OF BASEBALL notes that ESPN Classic will be airing a memorable game from baseball history every Monday night starting in January to compete with the new MLB Network.
• The AFP has reports of deaths in Vietnam that you can’t blame on Richard Nixon: four people were killed and more than 400 injured on the roads following evening-long celebrations of the country’s win in a regional soccer tournament.
• An ugly story: ARKANSASSPORTS360.com says that former Razorbacks fullback Mark Pierce may have been the driver in a DWI crash that ended in a fatality on Tuesday. Add this to the British soccer player accused in a deadly crash, and you’ve got a holiday week of suck.
• The LA TIMES reports that UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker, long considered to be a prime candidate for a head coaching job somewhere, is finally going to get his chance at New Mexico State. Of the seven African American head coaches in the FBS, two are in the state of New Mexico.
• More from the Danny Villa mess: the BOSTON HERALD says that his wife has filed divorce papers against the disgraced former NFL player and HS football coach accused of raping an underage student. Hope he has a good divorce lawyer.

Against the wall, Texas Tech rallied to beat Baylor, 35-28, and hold serve in the growing madness that is the Big 12 South, effectively passing the buck to Oklahoma in Stillwater, Okla., tonight on ABC. Of course, there’s a pretty decent chance that Oklahoma State could upset the Sooners, which would send the Red Raiders to the Big 12 title game off the least impressive win a Mike Leach-coached team has had in a long time.

(Oklahoma and Baylor have smoked out Texas Tech as a pretender.)

Considering the fact that Baylor finished at 4-8, and that they’re most impressive win came against Iowa State, that’s not saying much. The Red Raiders had to rally for 21 points to squeak past the Bears … at home. Needless to say, this isn’t quite the same team that beat Texas and obliterated Oklahoma State three weeks ago.

Making things worse, Michael Crabtree had to be carted off the sideline with a right foot injury in the first half, and didn’t return, sitting out the second half in a walking boot. Naturally, all of this begs the question: If Oklahoma loses, could Texas Tech lose the Big 12 title game to Missouri? And even if they win, can voters really justify vaulting them above Texas in the polls and the BCS rankings?

Read more…

Should Oklahoma State find a way to get by Texas Tech tonight, we’ll be set up for one of the great rivalry games in years when Oklahoma visits Stillwater in three weeks. Heck, even if the Cowboys don’t beat the Red Raiders tonight, it will still be a game that could decided the champion of the Big 12 South.

(Feel the excitement, Cowpokes!)

Good luck getting in to the game, though. I mean, it’s gotta be sold out, right? Actually, no. In fact, there’s at least 15,000 tickets available right now, and the way things are going, most of those 15,000 seats will still be empty on game day. Whaaaaaa?

Read more…