Author: Vin

Vin is a Philly boy who shouldn't be invited into your house because he'll judge you on your book and music collection. He owns Dawkins, Utley, Iverson, and Lindros jerseys, which is all you really need to know about him. He can be reached at [email protected].

Categories
NFL General

Odds and Ends: The NFL is serious about those copyright laws


Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis wants to throw a Super Bowl The Big Game Party for members and guests but the NFL has put the kibosh on the event because it would violate copyright laws. The church planned on showing the game on a 12 foot screen but the law says it can only show it on one TV no bigger than 55 inches. While it clearly states in the U.S. constitution the separation of Church and NFL, this is insane. You can watch NFL broadcasts online via a bunch of TV over IP applications (if you know where to look) but a group of churchgoers can’t gather to watch the Super Bowl? NFL lawyers will have a special express line for hell. (Thanks to Can’t Stop the Bleeding for the photo and their excellent headline: “NFL to Christ: Fuck off”.)

In other news…

[Newsday]: Dolphins lose a home game, Giants benefit again

[MSNBC]: Super Bowl Myths

[KETV Omaha]: The wrestler who started the herpes outbreak in Minnesota is from Nebraska

[Sports By Brooks]: Which Super Bowl Champion t-shirt will some third world country get?

[ESPN]: What’s this? A feel good story from ESPN?

[Sportsline]: 50 types of annoying people at your Super Bowl party

Categories
High School Sports

Cheerleaders. Soldiers. Booze. Sex.


That’s the headline from Newsweek. They are either running out of good headline writers or they simply realized that there really isn’t anything more you need to add. Why waste words when that will get everyone’s attention. Hell, if they could have added lesbian to it, I’m sure they would have. Titillating headlines aside, this story has got everything that tabloids love… except it’s Newsweek.

According to the article, two cheerleaders from Ware Shoals High School in South Carolina ditched a school function and instead headed to a hotel room with their coach Jill Moore to meet two National Guardsmen on a recruiting trip to their high school. Moore allegedly gave the girls vodka and then went to another hotel room with one of the guardsmen and left the other one with the two girls. One of the girls admitted to having sex with him.

Oh but wait… there’s more. The principal of the school is being charged with obstruction of justice for trying to cover up what the cheerleading coach did. Oh but wait… there’s even Moore… (sorry)… Jill Moore also is accused of having sex with a male high school student and separately would bring along a cheerleader to the National Armory to distract other employees while she had sex with a Guardsman. Did we mention she is married with two kids. (Jill, you dirty slut.)

Moore is the only one to be charged. The guardsman are off the hook because everyone involved were at least 16, the age of consent in South Carolina. The Newsweek subheader was “A National Guard recruiting mission gone awry shakes a small South Carolina town to its core.” Did it really go awry? This might be the single best thing to happen to the National Guard. What high school student isn’t going to want to join the Guard now? Look at the perks!

Links:
[Newsweek ]:Cheerleaders. Soldiers. Booze. Sex.

Categories
NBA General

Around the Rim: Is There a Doctor in the House?


1. Injuries Love Company
The injury bug is biting the big stars, and it’s biting hard. The latest victims are Carlos Boozer and Antawn Jamison. Jamison is out for anywhere from two to eight weeks with a sprained left knee, while a hairline fracture in Boozer’s left leg will keep him sidelined for four to five weeks. But the Jazz and Wizards aren’t going to be receiving much sympathy from the rest of the league. All-Stars are dropping like flies around the Association. Paul Pierce, Ben Wallace, LeBron James, Allen Iverson, Yao Ming, Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson (whew!) are all currently out of action with a variety of injuries.

2. Cold Blooded

Kobe Bryant returned to action against the lowly Celtics after being suspended for a game because of an elbow to Manu Ginobili’s melon. And when he got back on the court, he let out his frustrations by dropping 43 points on the leprechauns. Bryant showed again why he is the best scorer on the planet, despite his tendency to take a cheap shot from time to time. Kobe hit 13 of 25 overall and was dead on from behind the arc, going seven of nine. This is the Mamba’s fourth career game with at least 40 against Boston. There are some great players who don’t even have four games of 40 in their entire career. His scoring ability is almost underappreciated because he has been so explosive, so consistently since joining the league.

3. XXXXXXL

If you thought Yao Ming and Shaq were a couple of big boys, just get a load of the newest member of the ABA’s Maryland Nighthawks. Sun Ming Ming is a 7-9, 370 pound center from China and he’s only 23 years old. When being signed by the team, Sun had a difficult time squeezing into a XXXXXXL sweatshirt. The youngster’s career has been on hold for the past year while he underwent a pair of surgeries on a pituitary tumor that was the cause of his enormous size. But he’s gradually getting back into playing shape and it’s a pretty safe bet to assume that this giant will make his way into the NBA at some point because, if you haven’t noticed, most teams are willing to gamble on a seven footer.

Wednesday’s Player of the Day: Kobe Bryant @ Boston 41 min, 43 pts (FG: 13-25, 3FG: 7-9, FT: 10-13), 8 reb, 8 ast, 2 blk

Thursday’s Game to Watch: San Antonio (32-15) @ Phoenix (36-9) Nobody likes playing in back to back games, especially when the second game is against the run ‘n gun Suns. But the Spurs are going to have to quickly forget about their four point loss in Salt Lake City last night and prepare themselves mentally to take on the hottest team in the league. Sure the Suns are coming off a loss to the T-Wolves on Monday, but 17 of 18 and 35 of their last 39 is still considered scorching where I come from. If that’s not impressive enough, Phoenix has only lost three games at home this season, but they are winless in five games against the Spurs, Mavs and Jazz.

Buzzer Beater: Talk about offensive productivity! In the third quarter of last night’s game between Washington and Toronto, the two teams put up an incredible 77 points. In a 12 minute shootout, Toronto scored 43 points while the Wizards responded with 34. Chris Bosh put in serious work during the quarter as he scored 16 of his game-high 34, including a 56 foot three pointer that hit nothing but the bottom of the net. After missing his first four shots of the game, Bosh went 15 of 15 during the remainder of the contest.

Categories
NFL General

Sarah Spain picks her lucky date


By now you’ve probably heard about Sarah Spain, the girl who tried to sell herself on eBay for Super Bowl tickets because she’s a huge Bears fan. (We never got around to blogging this story because, well, we couldn’t get past the picture part of it, but for you dear readers, we fought through…) Anyway, instead of having to actually do anything for Super Bowl tickets, she wound up with 4 tickets to the game courtesy of Axe Body Spray (what tons of high school guys will look back on as their generation’s version of Drakkar Noir) and had an extra ticket so she decided to run a contest to take one lucky guy. Well that lucky guy is some medical student named Alan Shahtaji.

You can check out Sarah’s posting on her myspace page about why she picked the guy but we think it was probably the photo of him as a kid pretending to be a Bear. Chicks love that stuff. Anyway, we think the guy over at With Leather should have won even if he isn’t a Bears fan — mainly because of his application essay. We suspect that if Matt from With Leather had his way, any googling of “Alan Shahtaji” would come up with “has herpes”.

By the way, we could have posted a photo of this Alan guy but… why?

Links:
[With Leather]: SARAH SPAIN IS A GIGANTIC TEASE, PART 1
[LAist]: Interview with Sarah Spain

Categories
College Football

Nick Saban defends "coon-ass" story



I’ve got coon-ass friends!

Yesterday, Nick Saban got in trouble when he told an anecdote by one of the members of the LSU board of trustees. You can listen to the audio here but here’s the transcript:


He was walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl. He calls me. There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coon-ass guys that talk funny. I can’t talk like them, but he can. Most people in Louisiana can. He says, ‘Hey you see where coach Saban signed up with Alabama – you know however they talk and the board of trustees guy says, ‘yeah I saw that’ and he says, ‘that son of a bitch, I feel like he’s f’ing my wife.’

And then Nick Saban has a nice chuckle. But now that he’s catching some heat about it, he released this statement:

Those comments need to be placed in the proper context so as to understand the meaning of what was said. The words were used in paraphrasing a story told to me by a friend. I was simply using the same wording used by the person who told me the story.

The term in question is not language that I use or condone, and I can understand how some would take offense. However, I think it must be noted that those comments were made off the record and the words merely reflected an anecdote that was told to me using that language.

For the record, “coon-ass” is a derogatory term for cajuns and Saban’s defense that he was merely relaying a story is weak at best. It is unclear whether Saban then went on to tell a joke, “Say, did you hear the one about the Jew, the Catholic, and the Colored Boy who went to heaven?”

Links:
[Sun Sentinel]: Slur puts Saban in midst of uproar

[Wikipedia]: Coonass

Categories
Boston Celtics

Top 10 Dumbest in-game Injuries: #3 Tony Allen

[Sportscolumn is running down the ten dumbest in-game injuries in sports.  Here’s #3.]

With three minutes remaining in the third quarter of a game versus Indiana, Boston’s Tony Allen decided to woo the crowd with a high-flying dunk after a foul had stopped play on the floor. After missing the wide open jam, Allen landed awkwardly on his left knee and crumpled on the famous parquet hardwood. Allen tore two ligaments in his knee which led to ACL reconstructive surgery, along with having cartilage repaired. The luck of the Irish was definitely not on Allen’s side during that game as the stupid slam will keep him out of the lineup for the rest of the season.

Back to #4 | Forward to #2

Categories
NHL General

Odds and Ends: The state of the NHL


We’ve been neglecting hockey lately but since so much has been made of the ratings of the NHL All-Star game, we thought we’d point you over to two blog entries. First, let’s blame Gary Bettman. Second, perhaps all this angst over the state of the NHL and specifically over the Versus ratings are overblown. However, the big difference between college basketball and the NHL is that the college basketball postseason is a must watch event and the NHL postseason is a “is it on?” event. Finally, we have a sign from a female fan that needs to go into the Fan Sign Hall of Fame.

In other news…

[The Offside]: Fireball soccer? Maybe hockey would be more popular if we dipped the puck in gasoline first.

[Awful Announcing]: Wait, why do black people get two Thanksgivings?

[Can’t Stop the Bleeding]: High School wrestling will never be the same in Minnesota

[Yahoo]: Next time you think NFL players are paid too much

[The Hater Nation]: The best Barbaro story picture

[The 700 Level]: How is it that Freddie Mitchell still in the blogosphere?

And finally…. why white people shouldn’t rap: “take a big dump on the bears”? This type of thing happens every year. Remember when some urologist decided to battle TO? People… please… just stop.

Categories
NFL General

So how long have you been a black quarterback?


Butch John is his name (we’d hate to know what his porn name is) and he was a reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. According to sports lore, he was the guy who asked Doug Williams, “So, Doug, how long have you been a black quarterback?” Except, well, he didn’t.

According to John, he actually said, “Doug, it’s obvious you’ve been a black quarterback all your life. When did it start to matter?'” Doug Williams mishead him and replied, “What? How long have I been a black quarterback?” and the rest is history. The problem is that a ridiculous question is so much funnier than a thoughtfully posed question so it’s unlikely that the truth will ever spread the way the story of the stupid question spread. It’s like when an athlete gets arrested and it makes the front page but when that athlete is exonerated, it’s a small blurb on page 10.

So here we are doing our part to set the record straight. When people google “how long have you been a black quarterback”, hopefully they’ll read the truth of the statement. Or they can just keep making fun of it like we did on Poor Man’s PTI last week. Sadly the latter is more likely.

Links:

[Orlando Sentinel]: Dumbest question was never asked

Categories
NBA General

Around the Rim: Knocked Out


1. The Mamba Strikes
Kobe Bryant is in trouble again for something he claims was unintentional, but at least there is no police involvement in this case. Bryant said that he was “shocked” to be suspended for last night’s game because of an elbow to the face of Manu Ginobili during the Spurs-Lakers game on Sunday. David Stern turned down an appeal hearing that was requested by Bryant yesterday. Last year, Bryant was suspended for two games after a stiff forearm to the throat of Mike Miller. The Mamba says that he felt awful after he realized Ginobili had gone down, but he also felt awful in a tearful press conference after being accused of rape. That doesn’t mean he didn’t sleep with a gold-digger.

2. Hopeful Hornets
One of the best point guards in the league could be back on the court by Friday; that’s because Chris Paul says he’s feeling great and ready to get on the floor. The Hornets have been destroyed by injuries this year after having a solid start to the season, but New Orleans has still been able to hold their own of late and win seven of their last ten. Desmond Mason and Tyson Chandler have been impressive in Paul’s absence and their numbers could get better when their leader returns. Even though Paul leads the team in scoring, he is much more focused on distributing the rock.

3. The Big Benchwarmer
After missing almost the entire season so far, Shaq made his long awaited return last week. But after playing in only two games, he’s been placed back on a very sturdy shelf. The Diesel hurt his calf in practice on Monday and is considered day to day. It looks like this could be the beginning of a series of nagging injuries for the big fella. O’Neal use to claim that despite his regular season obstacles, he would always be ready to go when the playoffs rolled around. But his age is catching up with his body and the results have not been pretty. Considering Shaq’s current conditioning, he’ll need to be completely healthy for a full four to six weeks before the postseason begins to be at his best when it counts.

Tuesday’s Player of the Day: Gilbert Arenas vs. Detroit 44 min, 36 pts (FG: 10-20, 3FG: 5-12, FT: 11-12), 7 reb, 11 ast

Wednesday’s Game to Watch: San Antonio (32-14) @ Utah (29-17) This is a great match-up despite the team’s struggles of late. Tim Duncan is currently playing some his best ball of the year, as he usually does during the Spurs yearly rodeo road trip. Utah has only lost six games at home and owns a commanding lead in the Northwest Division behind the play of Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams. The Jazz have been considering moving Andrei Kirilenko and bringing in someone like Ray Allen or Vince Carter since AK-47 just can’t seem to play up to his standards. Tonight, Kirilenko will need to step up against Bruce Bowen to possibly save in job in Utah.

Buzzer Beater: In case you hadn’t noticed; the Bucks suck. This January, Milwaukee has gone a pathetic 2-12. But things could be changing for the Bucks soon because Michael Redd has said that he could return by next week. That would put Redd in the lineup against Orlando. Currently, the Bucks are four games behind eighth place in the East; which isn’t exactly a death sentence in a fairly pathetic conference. Redd has been rehabbing since going down with a strained patellar tendon in his left leg, leaving his team with a 27.7 point hole to crawl out of every night.

Categories
New England Patriots

Tom Brady is living the dream


At the risk of turning into some sort of gossipy knitting circle, we do have to report that the rumors are indeed true — Tom Brady is dating Gisele Bundchen. US Weekly has a photo of them walking back to her NYC apartment where they probably spent all night looking at game film.


Gisele: Tom, are you sad you threw that interception to Marlon Jackson and won’t be in the Super Bowl?
Brady: Yeah… sure. (thinking: who cares? This is better than the SB.)

Let us remind you that Tom Brady was a sixth round draft pick who got his chance cause Drew Bledsoe punctured a lung against the Jets. And now he’s trading in Bridget Moynahan for a 26 year old Brazilian model. Forget about Wally Pip. Drew Bledsoe should be the new Wally Pip in sports references… hell all references.

By the way, shouldn’t Brady be smiling more?

Links:
[US Weekly]: Tom & Gisele Step Out Together