8:00 PM Late games recap: Saints stay perfect by beating Panthers 30-20; Vince Young stays perfect as starter as Titans top 49ers 34-27; Chargers hand Giants their 4th loss in a row in a 21-20 comeback win; and the Lions turn a 17-0 1st quarter lead into a 32-20 loss to the Seahawks.
7:42 PM And it wouldn't be an NFL weekend without Chad Ochocinco trying to liven things up on the field: this time the Bengals receiver tries to bribe an official with a whole dollar! Will this stunt cost Chad more than a dollar in fines from Roger Goodell?
7:20 PM How did Joey Porter back up all the jawing he did this week about the Patriots? By finishing Sunday's game with no tackles, no sacks, no passes defensed, no forced fumbles or recoveries, and no comments to reporters afterwards.
So, yeah, Santonio Holmes wore a Michael Vick Eagles jersey on Thursday night after the Steelers/Titans game. The story here? That there isn’t much of a story. Blogsthathavecovered this have nearly unanimously said that it’s not a big deal, and we can’t really disagree. Vick and Holmes are buddies; they share an agent, profession, and union. Why wouldn’t friends support each other?
In fact, the real only criticism of the move seems to be of Holmes’ fashion sense. As someone who has been known to wear a jersey to a game (but nowhere else), we’re not going to pile on there. But my, how far we’ve come in the few short months since Vick was released from prison.
Have you ever paid $70,000 for a pair of gardening gloves? Well, one Steeler fan now has, and he better put them in a safe place so he doesn’t come home and find his wife using them to pull a few weeds.
The very gloves Santonio Holmes wore while making one of the greatest catches in NFL history went up for auction, and while they didn’t fetch anywhere near the “buy it now” price of $1 million, they still took in a pretty good haul. The proceeds went to the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, which is a good cause. Just don’t ever let these people run your online auction.
Before helping cap off one of the most exciting Super Bowl finishes in NFL history with the touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had spent most of the two weeks leading up to the game just hoping he wouldn’t mess things up. After all, his first trip to the big game didn’t go so well in Super Bowl XL. Yeah, the Steelers won, but it wasn’t thanks to Ben’s 9 completions in 21 attempts, 123 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions.
Ben had been hoping that he’d be able to actually help his team win the second time around instead of slowing them down, and he followed through on it. Though Holmes made the big catch and won the game’s MVP award, it could easily be argued that Roethlisberger deserved the award more than Holmes after he completed 70% of his passes for 256 yards and orchestrating that final drive. What makes it more impressive? He did it all with a couple of broken ribs.
It guess it’s not just to the victor that go the spoils: despite his team falling just short in the Super Bowl, Cardinals offensive coordinator Todd Haley was rewarded for the team’s miracle run, as the KANSAS CITY STAR reports that he has reached an agreement with the Kansas City Chiefs to become their new head coach. Now, with the absolutely mess that the Chiefs are right now, it’s debatable how much of a “reward” this job is. But hey: it’s not the Raiders.
Clearly, by resurrecting the career of Kurt Warner and turning the Cardinals into a fearsome offensive machine, Haley’s proven that he can coach an offense. But can he be the leader? After all, this is someone who never played college football (instead playing and later coaching college golf) and only got into football as a scout in 1995. Can he earn the respect of the players with such little experience?
I don’t want to raise any red flags here, but when you think of “head coach with no college playing experience,” who do you think of? Charlie Weis? And if Haley commands the type of respect and admiration from players and fans that Weis does - yikes. It might even have Chiefs fans longing for the halcyon days of Gunther Cunningham. (Note: this will never happen.)
But I had an inkling this was going to happen. A source (a teammate on my kickball team) mentioned earlier this week that his father spotted Chiefs GM Scott Pioli having a lengthy meal with Todd Haley’s representatives at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House in St. Louis, hurriedly shooing away waiters and looking out for spies (apparently not well enough).
Which brings up an interesting point: Ruth’s Chris Steak House? Really? There was no better place in St. Louis to conduct an important, secretive conversation about your next head coach than a chain steak house? Granted, it’s not Sizzler or Golden Corral, but St. Louis has to have dining options with red leather chairs and lots of dark corners - don’t they have Italian restaurants there? And why not have the meeting in Kansas City? Can someone point him to Yelp, please?
In other news: it turns out that corporate sponsors don’t like it when the person they are using to sell breakfast to millions of kids is pictured taking a rip from a bong. Who knew? CNBC details how Kellogg’s has decided not to renew Michael Phelps’ endorsement contract, which is set to expire at the end of the month. Which was probably going to happen anyway - except very quietly versus with a public statement from the company admonishing Phelps for behavior that “is not consistent with the image of Kellogg.”
At least Phelps can always count on USA Swimming to have his back in their usual, clumsy way. The organization decided to crack the whip on their poster child by giving him a three-month ban, during a time when he wasn’t expected to compete in any meets of significance. (He will miss one meet, but let’s be serious here - if it’s not the Olympics or World Championships. does it really matter?) It’s the equivalent of a five-game baseball suspension for a pitcher, which just means that his next start is pushed back a game.
While all this was going on, there were actual games being played last night. And none were more important - or exciting - than the clash between the Lakers and the Celtics in Boston. The last time the Lakers were seen at the Garden, they were dodging green and white confetti as they exited the court to lick their wounds after having the Celtics pound them like a two dollar steak in their Finals-clinching 131-92 victory.
That didn’t happen this time. Despite Kobe Bryant having an off shooting game (10 of 29 from the field), the Lakers found a way to prevail 110-109 in a seesaw overtime thriller. The key for the Lakers was defense - a concept many thought they had abandoned about a month ago - even without injured center Andrew Bynum, and the scoring of Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom (a combined 44 points).
But if you want to talk about winning, you have to start with Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt. After missing at her first attempt earlier in the week against Oklahoma, she notched her 1,000th career win on Thursday, with her Lady Volunteers thumping Georgia, 73-43.
Say what you will about women’s basketball, but that’s an incredible feat. Consider this: in all team sports, only Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan has recorded more wins with one team. The difference, of course, is that Summitt actually knows how to win championships (although to be fair to Sloan, she never had to game plan for Michael Jordan.) In other news:
It turns out the NFL did screw up the Santonio Holmes catch: USA TODAY says the league has admitted that the Steelers receiver should have been given a 15-yard penalty for excessive celebration after his Super Bowl-winning catch. As I type, Will Leitch is buying a black market gun and heading to the league offices in New York.
BALL DON’T LIE wants to slap an asterisk on LeBron James’ triple-double the othe night against the Knicks on the basis of his questionable ninth rebound out of 10. Judge for yourself and see if it should have been credited to him or Ben Wallace:
Alabama has never had a black head coach in a major sport. Jon Solomon of THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS thinks it’s about time that changes, with the Crimson Tide looking for a replacement for basketball coach Mark Gottfried. (h/t to THE MARCH TO MADNESS)
PBA bowler Jason Belmonte bowls like your four-year old son does - except your son probably can’t bowl 300 games. The WALL STREET JOURNAL has the details of one of the weirdest bowling styles you’ll ever see from a pro:
MLB.COM reports that the Los Angeles Dodgers will host the first-ever Mexican League baseball game in the US in May, as first-division teams Monterrey and the Mexico City Diablos Rojos will battle at Dodger Stadium. Grab yourself an ice cold Horchata and enjoy the game!
We are so close to history: the NEW YORK TIMES reports that a 14-year-old set a world record at Guitar Hero with a score of 973,954 on a song by metal shredders DragonForce. Someone is going to break the million point barrier - just call that kid the Roger Bannister of Video Game Nerds.
It’s not quite the postgame classic that “I’m going to Disney World!” is, but across recent years, Cadillac has steadily made its delivery of the Super Bowl MVP’s Cadillac of his choice an annual staple, in both the Super Bowl and World Series. Well, this year the postgame car delivery service was conspicuously absent, and there may be a perfectly legitimate conspiracy theory behind it: GM just doesn’t want to be shown giving away free cars with the taxpayers’ bailout money.
(Cadillac may downgrade to toy Escalades for future MVPs.)
It’s been a few days since the whole Michael Phelps bong-gate exploded onto the scene, and the reaction has been overwhelmingly this: So?
(”Dude, I think I’m seeing robots”)
Well, now some people are wondering why it is exactly that everyone is giving Phelps a pass, especially the sponsors who pay him millions to represent their brands. This is a guy who was arrested for DUI in 2004 and now has been shown in public using an illegal drug (whether or not the drug should be illegal or the level of outrage that pot use should inspire is not the issue here). And it’s not like sponsors were overly harsh about this. If anything, they’ve been downright supportive.
The WASHINGTON POST’S Michael Wilbon isn’t really having it, and wrote a column critical of Phelps’ defenders that, to his credit, wasn’t filled with hyperbolic overreaction to the pot use itself:
There should be zero tolerance for (drinking and driving), and Phelps doesn’t get a pass for that, nor for his bong hit. The latter, in and of itself, certainly isn’t heinous. But it is stupid, given what’s at stake. And everybody excusing it, Sally, doesn’t help Phelps get the message that he’d better be careful and vigilant. Being granted a pass at every turn usually breeds a sense of being bulletproof, as we saw in the much more serious case of Michael Vick, who actually squandered $100 million or more. And Phelps isn’t cast in the role of bad boy or tough guy. His marketing representatives have set him up to be the guy who walks the straight-and-narrow.
According to the police report, Holmes was cooperative and contrite. He wasn’t belligerent. He readily owned up to his mistake.
Holmes admitted to the Miami Herald a few days before the Super Bowl that as a teenager he sold drugs on a street corner near his Florida home. He thought it was time that he publicly acknowledged the poor decisions of his youth.
Maybe it would serve as an example to others at that age doing the same things because they don’t believe there’s a lawful alternative to changing their lives.
Applying the new Phelps standard for decorum when busted, shouldn’t Holmes get a free pass because he has fully acknowledged his sins and appears repentant?
A couple of months ago, I made the now ridiculous claim that North Carolina might win all of their basketball games this year. And even though I was off there, why have the Heels suddenly fallen off the radar? Sure, they lost two games, but there’s no indication that they are no longer the most talented team in the country. They’ve fought their way back up to the #3 ranking again and blasted Maryland 108-91 last night at the Dean Dome. UNC and Duke play their first of three games (because, let’s be honest, they’re playing each other in the ACC final) a week from tonight.
Manny Ramirez has turned down the Dodgers’ one-year offer of $25 million. Frank McCourt says he still wants Manny back, but concedes that eventually they’ll have to move on (perhaps to Adam Dunn and others). If talks fall through in L.A., who’s left? San Francisco seems to be the only other team willing to enter the discussion, now that Brian Cashman has said that the Yankees are done spending.
• The DAILY MAIL says that David Beckhamneeds to stay in Europe to have any chance of playing for England in the 2010 World Cup, because coming back to MLS would apparently make him regress as a player so much as to become completely worthless in international competition.
(This Milan fan might be willing to convince Becks to stay in Europe)
• IT’S METS FOR ME congratulates Omar Minaya for bidding against himself to sign Oliver Perez for $36 million when it looked like nobody else was prepared or willing to offer him anywhere near that much. In other news, the Mets are out of the Manny Ramirez sweepstakes.
At least the Mets still have all that money Bernie Madoff’s been taking care of for them.
• If you’re going to come out of the stands to attack a referee, you probably should make sure the guy isn’t also a state trooper. Patrick Rempala didn’t do his homework, and now is charged with battery and resisting arrest after attacking the trooper/ref at a high school game in Indiana, so says the AP.
• A Manchester United supporter riding a bus home from Man U’s road win over West Bromwich really needed to pee, so he decided to go to the bathroom in the back of the bus. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the lay of the bus very well, because he opened the emergency exit, fell out, and then was hit and killed by a car. The guy was drunk, of course. UPI has the story.
If you thought Super Bowl XLIII was exciting on its own, you should have seen it in Tucson.
(Hey! That’s not Larry Fitzgerald!)
According to the ARIZONA DAILY STAR, viewers in Tucson, right in the heart of Cardinals country, had the climactic moments of Sunday’s Super Bowl extravaganza co-opted by a cable porn network called CLUB JENNA, the pay-per-view TV station started by porn star Jenna Jameson. But wait, there’s more: The 30-second clip that ran over Pittsburgh’s fourth-quarter heroics showcased a woman unzipping a man’s pants and then, you know, some very athletic moves of a different sort.
“I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up,” said Cora Kingof Marana.“Then he did his little dance with everything hanging out.”
“I was in a state of shock,” said Jeanene Piek, who was watching the game with her granddaughter. “I am totally disgusted.”
Before you think this was a freak cable-crossing that only hit a few homes, check out the Comcast data. The overlay affected all viewers in the cable provider’s reach that were watching the game on its regular definition feed (the HD version wasn’t effected, perhaps as another incentive to go buy a better set). Comcast provides cable to at least 80,000 homes in the Tuscon area, so it’s safe to say that some 40,000 Super Bowl parties got an pretty unhappy ending, both on the screen and then on the field.
(Yup. Still Jenna Jameson. Not Fitzgerald. Thought we’d check.)
Not surprisingly, Comcast has already dispatched customer service reps to handle a huge influx of calls. And what’s the company line right now?
The company had “no idea” at the time it happened how the porn may have gotten into its feed, said Kelle Maslyn, a Comcast spokeswoman.
Might want to get on that, Kelle. The word is out, and Comcast is about to have some explaining — and probably some firing — to do.
For the rest of the country, there was no porny ending to overshadow a terrific game. And for the second-straight year, the Super Bowl was an instant classic, handing the lucky American public a game will be remembered for an unbelievable, final-minute catch by a wide receiver.
A year after Plaxico Burress easily pulled down a game-winning grab moments after David Tyree pulled in the catch heard ’round the world, Santonio Holmes did his best Tyree impression, grabbing a fading ball in the corner of the end zone for the game-winner, capping Pittsburgh’s NFL record sixth title.
It was an amazing catch, yet even if he’d dropped it, a catch still would have defined Super Bowl XLIII. As Adam pointed out last night, Larry Fitzgerald Jr.’s heroics will likely be overlooked 50 years from now, thanks in part to a questionable call on the game’s final play. That doesn’t mean his fourth quarter was anything short of transcendent. That he and schmoopy-with-Jesus quarterback Kurt Warner stuck to their crossing pattern guns all game and eventually got the result they wanted and expected is a testament to them and their game plan (Editor’s note: Where were all the trick plays? What happened to that story line?).
Put it all together, and there’s a fascinating trend developing. Maybe, rather than hyping quarterbacks forever in the playoffs, we should really be focusing on wide receivers. Sure, qb’s have to get them the ball, but it’s no coincidence that the Giants, the league’s best team throughout most of ‘08, collapsed after their star pass catcher shot himself in the leg. It’s no surprise that the Cardinals really emerged when Fitzgerald became a world beater after an embarrassing loss in New England. It’s no surprise that the biggest factor in the Steelers’ Super Bowl win — for the second straight Pittsburgh Super Bowl, at that — was an overlooked wide receiver.
So, while there will be plenty of attention lavished on Holmes in the aftermath of Super Bowl XLIII, it’s important to reflect back on the ante-game, a time when people hardly talked about Santonio Holmes being a key receiver full stop. Maybe next year we can all look a little harder at the wide out depth charts when diagnosing what’s really going down.
Of course, the game is always only half the story with the Super Bowl. In fact, sometimes it’s the lesser half. If the game gone the way it looked like halftime, with Pittsburgh rolling to a rout, we might be spending a lot more time right now bemoaning the lack of decent commercials. Because as good as the game was, that’s how bad the record-setting expensive — $3 million for a 30-second spot — ads actually were. There was one pretty clever ad, the punching koala bit for CAREERBUILDER.com, but that would have been a mid-tier commercial in a funnier year. At best.
So what’s happened with advertisers? That’s a good question. It’s always possible that many have cut back on their creative budget, opting to save the money for one or two Super Bowl commercials rather than cleverly crafting their campaigns. Other firms, like Gatorade, launched their new ad campaigns earlier, targeting the BCS as a start date rather than the Super Bowl.
Nonetheless, something needs to be done to make the ads a heck of a lot more watchable. Where are the clever creators of cat wrangling when you need them? Where’s this year’s “Wassssuuuuuuuuup!” The answer, dear friends, is nowhere to be found.
In fact, this year’s ads were nowhere near as interesting or cool as the halftime show. For once, a performance lived up to the hype, with Bruce Springsteen attacking a miniature four-jam set with much of the gusto and zest that he’s been known for throughout his career. You could feel it coming from the moment our fearless leader leaked the Boss’s set list earlier in the day and there was no “Born in the U.S.A” to be found on it. Clearly, this was the act Springsteen wanted to do. He was going to rock the Super Bowl, but he was going to rock it on his terms.
The lesson, as always, is to trust in Bruce. Not only was Springsteen so captivating that you couldn’t take your eyes off him, he transmitted the energy from his live shows over to TV. That’s quite a trick. And nothing can top his half-stage power slide right into a cameraman, a move which decked an unsuspecting film crew member without slowing Bruce for a second.
Now for the bad news: That’s probably the last we’ll see of Bruce in a Super Bowl. The NFL had begged him to steal the league’s biggest halftime stage for years, and he took a solid decade to accept the pulpit, and only grabbed it then (in all likelihood) to pimp his new album. You know what? With Bruce, we’ll take it. Still, with the E Street Band rapidly reaching their golden Metamucil era, it’s unlikely Springsteen and co. will be willing to take such public jaunts in the spotlight in the future, which just means everyone should try to commit as much about yesterday’s halftime to memory as humanly possible. Hey, we know that we will.
The game hadn’t even started before the first free agent rumors and rumblings got going, and not surprisingly one of the hot names was Kurt Warner. So what will the near two-time Super Bowl champ be asking for? Try a two-year deal with a cellar of $18 million. Ouch.
There’s suddenly evidence that UFC champion Georges St. Pierre, coming off a truly dominant win over Brian Penn, may have gotten an edge from his trainer to win the bout. What did the cut man do? Slather him with vaseline. That’s gross, unsanitary and illegal. Ewwwww.
Does anyone understand this Jack In The Box ad? We didn’t, and neither did FANHOUSE.
The campaigns have already begun: Please Cardinal fans, don’t be the new Seahawks. It’s not worth it.
Remember the magician who almost drowned at an Oklahoma City Thunder game? Here’s the video of the near disaster.
The mainstream American media delay on the Michael Phelps bong hit? Yeah, it was only a single day. Oh, and according to THE WASHINGTON POST, the swimmer won’t face any sanctions, despite basically admitting he smoked. Seems like a double standard, doesn’t it?
If there was any question that the Barcelona-backed Miami entry is your clubhouse leader for MLS expansion, here’s your proof: the team already has a logo.
Speaking of soccer, today is the official finale to the transfer window in England. Think of the trade deadline, except 10 times more random and expensive. Good times. You can follow all the craziness here.
