1:30 PMBill Shaikin of the L.A. Times reports that Frank and Jamie McCourtstole earned a total of $16M in salary last season. No wonder the Dodgers, in the country's #2 market, have a mid-market payroll.
1:16 PMJesse Ventura: "I wish they would pass a law where all Democrats and Republicans had to wear Nascar racing suits, because if you look at the Nascar drivers, it tells who their sponsors are. And if they do that, we could then become informed voters, because we would know who owns them."
1:06 PMJohn Wooden was a power outage away from taking The U. job over UCLA? "a blizzard shut down phone service in the Twin Cities, and the Gophers couldn't reach Wooden to notify him it was all right to hire his own assistants until 7:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Wooden accepted the UCLA job at 7.
12:44 PM Think Carrie Underwood will regret these liner notes for her latest album in a few years months?
Look, you may have your opinions about waterboarding, Gitmo, illegal wiretapping, the war in Iraq and offenses against human rights, the U.S. Constitution and international law. But damn it, if Condoleezza Rice is going to bring blue-chip athletes to Stanford University, then she is to be welcomed back with open arms.
In a rather remarkable paragraph in his fine story on Rice and her relationship with the Stanford Athletic Dept., Jon Wilner of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS tells of how the former Secretary of State for the Bush administration lifts weights with athletes on campus, and is an assistant coach of the women’s golf team. And how she’s drawing in those football recruits, the Condi Way. Read more…
College football sideline reporter Samantha Steele had alluded to suffering a concussion on her Twitter the past week, and the video that caused her noggin trauma has now been posted.
(Video credit: FSN @ Stanford Stadium)
Not exactly a Tebow-esque whack on the head, but plenty impactful enough for thisreax:
There was a time earlier this decade when Michelle Wie was labeled by some as the Next Big Thing in golf. Then, as she aged, she slowly progressed from phenom to curiosity to relatively unknown, if not forgotten. It can’t be easy spending one’s teenager-hood under the judgmental microscope of American sports media, but with very few exceptions, Wie handled the pressure and expectations just about as well as one could possibly expect.
(All growed up.)
Though the harsh spotlight has dimmed, the 19-year-old is still playing on the LPGA Tour. For all the talk of bust and wasted potential, she’s a respectable 16th on the tour money list with nearly $600,000 in winnings this season. She’s also a student at Stanford University who appears, like many college kids, to be growing up and discovering new talents and interests. Thankfully for the world, Wie is sharing those interests with the world via her new blog.
If you haven’t received your newspaper this morning, it’s possibly because you subscribe to the SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, or a variety of other fine publications that are no longer in printed existence. Your dog: Depressed, due to nothing to fetch. I would suggest stop paying the bill.
But if you’re a sports reporter, what are you going to do with that journalism degree now that newspapers are becoming more scarce than leftovers at the Yankee training table? The answer for many: College websites. Read more…
Stanford is one such school not immune to budgetary shortfalls. 20 Cardinal athletics employees have already lost their jobs, and some of the less revenue-generating sports could be headed for the chopping block. So it seems like just as good a time as any to build football coach Jim Harbaugh a $70,000 private bathroom.
Is it time to talk about race in college athletics? No, not really. What purpose would it serve? What territory are we supposed to be driving towards by noticing that there’s only one white guy playing meaningful minutes in this Final Four game between Michigan State and UConn, and he’s not even from America? That’s a fact. So what?
(Destroying racial strawmen. Or strawpeople. Oh Jesus now we’re sexist.)
The simple truth is that discussing race makes people sufficiently uncomfortable that unless you’ve got something truly ground-breaking and worth saying, just leave it alone. It’s not going to change anything, it’s not going to be explored fully by the sensationalist media, and it’s just going to spark some truly stupid commentary from peanut galleries who have their own stupid pre-existing racial agendas. So let’s just keep our mouths shut until–oh damn it, for some reason, Geno Auriemmahas something to say (via THE QUAD):
“White kids are always looked upon as being soft. So Stanford’s got a tremendous amount of really good players who for whatever reason, because they don’t look like Tina Charles or Maya Moore, the perception out there is going to be, well, they must be soft.”
The U.S. doesn’t run, from anything. At least that’s the story they tell you at jingoistic patriot rallies and Boy Scout camps. Yet it turns out that’s not the case, because U.S. baseball manager Davey Johnson is making noise that he’ll withdraw the team from the ongoing World Baseball Classic’s second round — or semifinals, should it advance that far — if further injuries strike the squad.
According to the ASSOCIATED PRESS, Johnson says he will forfeit if he runs out of players at any positions. And before you scoff that off as hyperbole, you should consider how close he already is to that point: The U.S. had to call in Brian Roberts, the reserve infielder, when he was out at dinner. Now he’s the only second baseman left on the roster.
How big a statement would the U.S. be making if the country that invented baseball pulled out of only the second World Baseball Classic? A big one, that’s for sure. Yet as more players criticize the practice methods and over-inflated early intensity of the WBC, the entire tournament is being thrown back into question, even as the Netherlands (recently and dearly departed), Japan, Korea, Venezuela and Puerto Rico author a pretty intriguing script.
It’s a strange emerging dichotomy that’s hard to bridge, both for the American public and, surely, the commissioner’s office as well.
If Davey Johnson doesn’t want the job of leading the U.S., we think we know a guy who does: One particular British cop, if he can learn anything about baseball. After all, right now he’s heading over to L.A. to be an assistant coach with the Galaxy, and that’s hardly at the level of a national team gig.
Think about what’s he’s already getting though! In one fell swoop, Community Support Officer Andy Bridgman is going from organizing a “Shopwatch” to coaching David Beckham and Landon Donovan.
That’s the MLS for you: They’ll spend $30 million+ on two players on a roster, but they’d rather bring over a cop from England on a psuedo loan than hire a half-decent trained coach.
A coaching scout for Major League Soccer called him late last year to offer him the job and he is taking a 12-month career break to accept it.”How many people get this kind of opportunity?” he said.
“Not only to play football full-time but also to work alongside the top teams in America? It’s fantastic. At first I thought, it’s not real.”
Well, we hardly thought it was real at first, either, but it checks out. Unfortunately, the MLS doesn’t check out itself.
If you’re like us, you waited all day yesterday for the real NCAA show: The Women’s Tournament Selection Show! What’s that? You didn’t watch it? Ahhh, well, we didn’t either. But we did read enough to learn that the four No. 1 seeds are U-Conn., Maryland, Duke and Oklahoma.
More interesting is the bracket breakdown, with Duke landing the top seed in the Western (Berkeley) Region. Who’s the No. 2 there? Why, Stanford, which happens to play less than an hour away from the site of the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. If that seems a bit unfair to you, it does to us, too. Not that it’s unprecedented, of course, but it sure does minimize the advantage of being the No. 1 seed. After all, if you can’t beat a 15, then you don’t deserve to go anywhere in the tournament. And if you can’t beat a 7, then you probably should have been a 1 or 2 seed anyway.
Once you get past that point, the site and fan presence at the event are as important as anything else, and that’s where Stanford will have a huge advantage. That’s not to say Duke won’t pull it off, it’s just a matter of the smart money being on Stanford.
You just thought Binghamton was having a great month because of the NCAA Tournament. It really isn’t. Why? Because of this Serbian lunatic.
Why can’t teams just keep wearing the uniforms, warm ups and shoes they’ve sported all year when they make the tournament? We’re so sick of this March marketing already. With that in mind, here’s Louisville’s new duds and kicks.
Rasheed Wallace, aspiring economist. Who would have thought? Maybe Dean Smith, actually.
THE BIG LEAD posted this yesterday, but it really is a must see if you’ve ever doubted the credibility of either Jay Bilas or Dicky-V. One of them is wrong in this scenario, no matter how you slice it.
Are you a degenerate gambler? Just curious about how the Vegas lines are moving heading into the NCAA tourney? Well, this fascinating post is for you.
Is Roy Jones. Jr’s heart really still in the fighting? Or are these bouts just huge publicity stunts? Read this interview and tell us, why don’t you.
Did idiotic Chelsea defender Ashley Cole — husband of the almost perfect Cheryl Cole — get set up for an arrest by an employee of a tabloid? Someone thinks he did.
Finally, are those shoes on Victoria Beckham’s feet, or did she step on a couple birds? We’re really not sure.
