7:30 PM Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Cortez Kennedy said how during his Miami Hurricanes days, teammate Randy Shannon would stay in his apartment & watch the refrigerator to keep Kennedy from eating late at night.
The NEW YORK POST reports today that the protective custody unit at the Oneida Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., has facilitated a friendship between Plaxico Burress and Lillo Brancato, Robert De Niro’s co-star in the 1993 feature film, “A Bronx Tale.”
New York City nightclub promoter and Brancato friend Noel Ashman told the Post, “They are buds. They work out together.”
Who knew celebs hung out in the VIP in state prison?
While Burress, who is serving two years for gun possession, is scheduled for release in early 2011, Brancato isn’t nearly so fortunate. Read more…
• Washington State RB James Montgomery underwent surgery on his injured knee last Sunday. And doctors soon learned that it was a good thing James didn’t delay - or he might have died.
Plaxico Burress began his two-year stint as a special guest of the New York state correctional facility system on Tuesday night, and the reception the ex-Giants receiver received couldn’t have been warmer. In fact, it was downright heated.
Plaxico’s first stop was an evening at Rikers Island, where the jailbirds were crowing at him at every opportunity.
With baseball not quite into the stretch run and the NFL and college football not quite ready to get underway, sports news has been a bit slow this week. So perhaps that’s why Punting-Into-The-Giant-HD-Screen-Gate just isn’t going away. Peter Kingspent an inordinate amount of time talking about it in his Monday Morning QB column yesterday, and he insinuates that the NFL might have as much to do with the mistake as Jerry Jones.
(Can’t the Geek Squad come and pick it up and put a new one in next week?)
It’s strange that the Cowboys had everything about the new stadium approved by the league, but Colts President Bill Polian — who is on the league’s competition committee — is quoted by King as saying this:
“The irony is that our stadium architect [at new Lucas Oil Stadium] wanted to hang the videoboards the same way in our stadium,” Polian said. “So we put a metal beam about 90 feet above the ground and had our punter at the time, Hunter Smith, punt the ball up there trying to hit it. He hit it the majority of the time. That’s why we put our replay boards on the wall.”
Seriously, nobody from the NFL or the Colts, realizing that another team was building a new stadium, said anything to anyone else at the NFL or with the Cowboys about this possible issue? A guy on the competition committee didn’t see where the screens were going to be and say “uhhh, that’s not gonna work?” Or did Jerry Jones just not want to listen to anything because his punters don’t do silly things like kick the ball high and hard? Jones, for what it’s worth, installed the screens five feet higher than is required by the NFL. So why, if 90 feet wasn’t high enough for Indianapolis, does the NFL still only require 85 feet of clearance?
Cowboys punter Mat McBriar said yesterday that he plans on kicking to the sidelines, and isn’t worried about the boards. That’s great for Mat and all, but the problem is that you don’t want to get in a position of the screen being in play at all. It’s entirely possible that it could be hit two or three times in a row, and then you’re stuck with do-overs that exhaust players and open more opportunities for injuries.
The NEW YORK TIMES’ Richard Sandomir says that a screen like this is a completely new animal, and was specifically designed to hang at its current height. It is also designed to be able to be lowered, but not raised. One imagines that permanently raising it up would certainly be possible, but quite costly. And who foots the bill in that case? Jones (because it’s his stadium), or the NFL (because they approved it to begin with)? A Cowboys spokesman tells the DALLAS MORNING NEWS that the team doesn’t believe the height of the board will be a factor “in a competitive-game situation.” I guess they just think that A.J. Trapasso was screwing around when he plunked it.
Don’t look now, but baseball’s 2007 darlings are well on their way to becoming baseball’s 2009 darlings. After a stunning walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 14th inning from Ryan Spilborghs last night to crush the Giants 6-4, the Colorado Rockies are now four games up in the wild card race and just three games out of first place in the NL West heading into a huge showdown with the Dodgers at Coors.
The Giants looked poised to pull within two games of the Rox, scoring three times in the top of the 14th to take a seemingly insurmountable 4-1 lead. But then Merkin Valdez completely blew up in the bottom of the ninth, walking pitcher Adam Eaton with the bases loaded to make it 4-2, then serving up the game-ending meatball to Spilborghs two pitches later.
Let’s be honest, here. The Giants are extremely fortunate to be anywhere near a playoff spot. It’s a testament to guys like Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain that they’re able to overcome an offense that features Bengie Molina’s .280 on-base percentage batting fourth every night. They’ve always seemed a bat or two away from being a real threat, and Freddy Sanchez wasn’t exactly the answer.
If Colorado can split the six games left with the Giants in San Francisco, they have a very favorable schedule, including 10 straight home games in September against the D-backs, Mets, and Reds. Then they get six games with San Diego down the stretch. It all leads up to a three-game showdown at Dodger Stadium to end the regular season. The Giants have nine games with Arizona and six with the Dodgers, but also have to go on the road to Philadelphia and Milwaukee while Colorado is in the midst of its long homestand.
Crazy to think that the NL West has become the best race in baseball, considering how well the Dodgers were going earlier in the year. And yes, a lot of that lead was built without Manny in the lineup.
• A 13-year-old, 383-lb. football player from St. Louis collapsed and died of a heart condition last week during practice. Anthony Troupe, Jr.’s father dropped dead at the age of 45 in 2007. The AP asks if all student athletes should be tested for heart problems. I think the more reasonable question is why a 13-year-old kid was allowed to reach 383 lbs. Not to judge the kid himself, but someone around him should’ve taken some initiative to ensure that he was healthy enough to play football, considering the fate his father suffered.
• Billy Wagner has shunned the Red Sox and will stay with the Mets, according to FOX SPORTS’ Ken Rosenthal. The Mets will get two draft picks for Wagner when he walks as a free agent following the season.
• Look, I know the WNBA isn’t very popular, but the NEW YORK TIMES might want to employ a copy editor the one time they actually put something about the league on the front page:
After yesterday’s sentencing of Plaxico Burress to two years in prison, it seems like you couldn’t turn around without hearing another person wailing, “Donte Stallworth gets 26 days for killing a man and Plaxico gets two years for shooting himself? Where’s the justice! I thought this was America!”
Okay. Back the truck up here. Stallworth and Burress’ cases have f–k-all to do with each other outside of the fact that both are in the NFL and they got sentenced in the same year. So let’s dispense with the flimsy comparisons of a DUI and a gun charge. And let’s also make one thing clear: Plaxico didn’t get two years for shooting himself.
A lot of loose ends are being tied up concerning some unpleasant NFL offseason incidents. Donte Stallworth has been suspended for the year after committing vehicular manslaughter. Michael Vick has finally found a home in Philly after a two-season exodus due to dogfighting. And we’re no longer subject to an annoyingly ongoing “will he or won’t he” conundrum of a certain signal caller from southern Mississippi.
And now, Plaxico Burress’ shameful self-shooting saga has reached its conclusion. This morning, the former New York Giants receiver plead guilty to weapons possession, and as a result, will be spending the next two years in prison. Hope Sing Sing has NFL Sunday Ticket.
