Odds and Ends: NFL Countdown says sayonara to Emmitt Smith

Posted on Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 01:03:58 PM EST in NFL
More on: ESPN, Emmitt Smith, Phil Mickelson, West Virginia, NFL, Florida, skiing, Colt Brennan, video, Odds and Ends (all tags)

If you love language-butchering and verbal buffoonery then this is going to be tough for you to take. Emmitt Smith has been released by ESPN, kinda.

It's official. Emmitt Smith will not be part of ESPN's two-hour pregame show, NFL Countdown, in 2008.

ESPN is expected to make the formal announcement soon.

Emmitt will be replaced by Cris Carter, whose enhanced visibility could help his chances of getting into the Hall of Fame on the second try. (Then again, if Carter does a bad job or comes off as a blowhard, it could hurt him.)

Emmitt will remain on Monday Night Countdown, and he'll have a role on the Sunday morning pre-Countdown version of SportsCenter.

We know, we know; it's difficult to confront. We loved listening to Emmitt slaughter the simplest of sentences just like everyone else. Don't forget though, he's not gone; he's just on two hours less each week. Anyways, utterances like these will live on forever.

In other news...

[FanHouse.com]: Guess which golfer got rid of his man boobs?

[The Undrafted Free Agent]: Mountaineer basketball players love their alcohol

[Bugs & Cranks]: Yup, William Hung is still a horrible singer

[By the Numbers]: Vote no on a tournament in college football. Wait, what???

[YardBarker.com]: Ocho Cinco, Too Tall, Crazy Legs, Bad Moon, Gravedigger and many, many more of your favorite NFL nicknames

[SportsAgentBlog.com]: Finally, a reason besides Erin Andrews to love the University of Florida

[Rush the Court]: NBA draft picks by school (1949-2008)

[CollegeHumor.com]: "Oh, monsieur!! The boys took a beating on that one."

[Redskins.com]: Colt Brennan is a system quarterback and a blogger

[The Big Picture]: "Booze + Ambien + bad judgment + flight attendants = one year of jail time and a $4,000 fine"

[The Love of Sports]: Yogi Berra gets robbed, winds up with only one of the Top 20 Baseball Quotes of All Time

[SidelineHotties.com]: Finally, a site devoted entirely to sideline hotties

[TampaBay.com]: If the Rays win the World Series, we want a large with pepperoni and jalapenos

[Hollyscoop]: Freddie Prinze Jr. joins the WWE and becomes The Masked Blogger

[Tirico Suave]: Can it get any better than babes telling us about fantasy football? Uh, no

[Kissing Suzy Kolber]: `Just make it look like an accident'

[The World of Isaac]: Hallelujah, we can finally forget about Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

And finally, hey, where'd you find that guy? We've been looking for a little person friend who's willing to kick himself in the head with steel toe boots too!!

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Case closed on the great Gator trophy caper

Posted on Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 12:44:29 AM EST in College
More on: Florida, national championship trophy, Orson Charles, accident (all tags)

The mystery that was the smashed crystal football outside Florida coach Urban Meyer's office has been solved. The Waterford crystal trophy was destroyed last week after falling off a coffee table and crashing to the floor and the program was hush-hush about how it all went down, leaving the door wide open for conspiracy theories galore. But on Wednesday, the truth came out...it was a damn recruit!

Plant tight end Orson Charles, in town participating in a Nike football camp, was posing for photos with the Tim Tebow's Heisman Trophy and the 2006 BCS National Championship trophy. While posing with the Heisman, his hip bumped the table, and the $35,000 crystal football on top of the trophy crashed to the floor just outside coach Urban Meyer's office.

Jaws dropped. For once, Plant coach Robert Weiner, 3 feet from the fall, didn't know the next play.

"We didn't know what to do, if we should have started picking up the pieces or what," Weiner said. "It was surreal, like everything happened in slow motion."

Weiner whispered to Charles (right): "They're either going to take your scholarship away or they're going to make you commit to them today."

Meyer came to survey the scene.

Plant assistant T.J. Lane broke the silence: "That's a replica right?"

Awkward. But the craziest part of this whole story comes with coach Weiner's assessment of his clumsy tight end prior to the big crash.

Before Charles broke the trophy, Plant coach Robert Weiner said Meyer asked him to describe Charles. Weiner told Meyer that Charles was a "physical specimen" but sometimes a "bull in a china shop."

"After what happened," Weiner said, "I'm sure Urban now thinks I'm an excellent evaluator of talent."

Links:
[TampaBay.com]: Follow the breaking ball: Plant's Charles' bump broke BCS trophy
[TBO.com]: UF Mystery Solved; Plant High Player Admits To Mishap

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12-year-old boy has one helluva whale shark of a tale

Posted on Fri Jan 04, 2008 at 09:50:36 AM EST in Other Sports
More on: fishing, Florida, record, shark, kid (all tags)

When man and wild animals cross paths, the results can often be tragic for the humans. However, sometimes the odds are simply stacked against the beasts and that's when amazing things can happen for man, or should we say boy.

On New Year's Day, 12-year-old Aidan Murray Medley was fishing off the coast of Florida with his family when he snagged a 551-pound bull shark. After a 45-minute battle with the nine-foot-long behemoth, Medley finally reeled in the monster that weighed a full 431 pounds more than he did.

When you have a shark on the line, it's completely painful," said Aidan, who said he lost feeling in his body after about 20 minutes of having the shark on his line.

The shark's size set a new state record for the largest fish ever caught in Florida with the old record being set by a 517-pound shark that was hauled in back in 1981.

So what's a 12-year-old to do with a shark that weighs 300 pounds more than him? Medley says he plans on having the shark stuffed and mounted on the wall of his boarding school in Greenwich.

Links:
[WCBSTV.com]: Conn. Boy, 12, Catches 551-Pound Bull Shark
[SPTimes.com]: Boy's shark tale weighs 551 pounds

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Tim Tebow is running over the Heisman competition

Posted on Mon Nov 12, 2007 at 08:03:35 AM EST in College
More on: Tim Tebow, Florida, Gators, Heisman (all tags)

After the Gators suffered their third loss of the season and slipped in the SEC East standings, it appeared as if the Ducks' Dennis Dixon had slid into the role of the nation's best dual threat quarterback and the leader in the Heisman race. Well, seven touchdowns and a romping of the Ol' Ball Coach have a way of making someone forget about `quality losses' to Auburn, LSU and Georgia.

Tim Tebow did everything but throw a touchdown pass to himself during Florida's 51-31 thumping of the Gamecocks. Superman racked up 304 yards and two touchdowns on 22-of-32 passing to go along with his five rushing scores and 120 yards on the ground. The sophomore signal caller has scored a rushing touchdown in 11 consecutive games which is a school record and the longest such streak in the nation. His 19 rushing scores are the most for a quarterback in SEC history and he smashed some guy named Emmitt Smith's school record for rushing touchdowns in a single season, which was 14.

It's pretty hard to imagine that a major school can actually survive when only one player is responsible for almost an entire offense, especially in such a difficult conference, but that is exactly what the Gators are doing. Against South Carolina, Tebow accounted for 424 of Florida's 537 total yards of offense! That's 80 percent!

And this is nothing new for Urban Meyer's winner. On the season, Tebow has personally accumulated 3,250 yards of offense (2,532 pass, 718 rush) and 42 touchdowns. Florida as a team has 4,502 yards and 53 scores on offense. In other words, Tebow's good for 72 percent of their yards and 79 percent of their scoring. That's as close to a one-man-band as you'll find in today's game.

The insanity of the season should level the playing field, seeing as how there will probably be no clear-cut `best player on the best team' excuse for voters to fall back on. This is a good thing because we were starting to hear some `Todd Boeckman for Heisman' chatter. Instead, this could be the year in which the trophy is actually given to truly the best player in the nation. And in that case, you can start engraving Tim Tebow on the name plate right now.

Links:
[AJC.com]: Tebow has career-high 5 rushing TDs to lead Gators

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If you thought that Bobby Knight was a sore loser...

Posted on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 01:06:34 PM EST in College
More on: Florida, Gators, kid, mad, Auburn, Tigers, video, funny (all tags)

There were a ton of upsets in the world of college football this weekend, but we're guessing by this clip that nobody had a worse Saturday (or Friday in the case of Mountaineers fans) than the Florida die-hard. Wait, let me rephrase that: nobody had a worse Saturday than this Florida die-hard.

One word of advice before you hit the play button: Earmuffs.

Links:
[Our Book of Scrap]: So Gators Fans, How Do You REALLY Feel?

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Billy Donovan can go stuff his sorrys in a sack, mister

Posted on Fri Jun 08, 2007 at 10:52:50 AM EST in NBA
More on: Magic, Florida, NBA, chumps (all tags)

Read your contract

Billy Donovan apologized to just about everybody yesterday and explained his decision to sign a five-year $27.5M contract with the Magic as a huge mistake. He's expected to sign a 6-year $21M contract with Florida instead. The Orlando Magic must be the worst organization in sports if someone is willing to pass up $6.5M and work an extra year instead of coaching the Magic.

There was no words, there was no pressure by anyone to come back. It was what was in my heart. You realize you made a mistake and you go forward. I think sometimes people think, 'Well what happened? What was the reason?' There really wasn't one. It had nothing to do with the Magic, my wife, the University of Florida, it was a process I went through myself that I'm sorry for."

Translation: The Magic don't suck, I'm not whipped, Florida is ok, I'm just a weenie who can't keep his word.

Despite bolting for the NBA and then backing out of his deal, Billy boy doesn't think trust will be an issue when recruiting players. OK. Billy Donovan - a man you can trust! Someone should ask the Orlando Magic executives about that, who go so screwed they had to hire Stan Van Gundy.

Links:
[AP]: Donovan apologizes to Magic and Florida

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Odds and Ends: Clearing up this whole Craig Sager thing

Posted on Fri May 18, 2007 at 06:40:46 PM EST in MLB
More on: Braves, Flyers, NBA, Jaguars, Florida, Odds and Ends, MLB (all tags)

Craig Sager,the NBA sideline reporter with the ridiculous wardrobe, has been getting a lot of play today because it was mentioned that he was one of the people running alongside Hank Aaron when he broke Babe Ruth's record. You've probably seen the clip 1,000 times by now but it's below if you have been living under a rock for the past 20 years.

Anyway, the problem is that some bloggers think Sager's one of the two fans who ran alongside Aaron around 2nd base. No no no. Sager is the creepy guy in the white trench coat that runs with Aaron from third to home and waiting to to interview him.

Just thought we'd clear that up.

In other news...

[Hockey Rants]: Mike York's Wife will kick your ass

[Can't Stop the Bleeding]: Dough Christie and his wife have a book coming out.

[6ABC]: NJ officials want Rutgers to redesign its logo.

[KDSK]: Video of door coming off plane in Fred Taylor African safari incident

[Our book of Scrap]: This Almost Makes Me Wish I Was A Gators Fan (Almost)

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Thank God, now we can concentrate on Tenneesee vs Rutgers

Posted on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:07:38 AM EST in College
More on: college basketball, Florida, Ohio State (all tags)

Hopefully this is the last pic
of Noah we ever publish

Now that the most predictable and boring NCAA Tournament in modern history is over, we can look forward to the title game between the Lady Volunteers and the Scarlet Damsels or something. Hell, we're going to do something never done before in the history of blogging -- we're gonna pre-live-blog the thing:

10:54 Player dribbles up the court and awkwardly jacks up a three. Rebound by another player. Kicks it back out. Another awkward three. Rebound and putback.

10:20 It's a steal. Full sprint the other way. Layup.

9:45 Rinse. Repeat.

We don't mean to bash womens basketball but it's really just a terrible game to watch. There are some people out there who love the game, and good for them, but we are so sick of the marketing of the college game (and the WNBA) ad nauseum during all mens basketball contests. There is no chance that anyone who isn't already predisposed to watching womens college bball sees one of these ESPN commercials ("men out, ladies in") and thinks, yeah, I'm totally tuning in for that. So stop shoving it down our throats.

Sorry, just a little bitter today because what arguably is the best event in sports turned out to be such a dud. Was there a single true buzzer beater in the entire tournament? Was there a big upset at all? (VCU beating overrated Duke doesn't count.) Was there a defining moment? What a colossal waste of time.

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Joakim Noah will not be on Dancing with the Stars

Posted on Mon Mar 12, 2007 at 10:18:48 AM EST in College
More on: college basketball, NCAA Tournament, dorks, Florida, YouTube, video (all tags)

Step aside Mark Madsen, move over Bob Kraft; you are no longer the benchmarks for the most humiliating championship celebrations of all time. In fact, Joakim Noah might have set the bar to an unreachable height when he flailed about like a sugar starved eight-year-old who just slammed a Double Gulp Slurpee after the Gators knocked off Arkansas in the SEC title game. (We think that's Noah, or maybe someone just let a retarded epileptic kid on the floor.)

Look, anybody would be happy to win their conference’s championship; it’s just that most wouldn’t celebrate by performing their best Beavis and Butt Head dance impression on national television during the post-game festivities.

Links:
[YouTube]: White People Should Not Dance

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