F.Y.I., non-football fans: this weekend is sort of a big deal.
The undefeated Patriots are playing the undefeated Colts. For sports fans, this kind of match-up is usually seen as exciting. Sadly for everyone else, the game won't have any funny ads.
The profits from the game aren’t limited to CBS. Bookies are doing pretty well too. "Without question, this will be the most wagered-on game of the 2007 regular season," Michael Seaton, general manager of Spread Media Inc. told the L.A. Times.
Right now, New England is up 6 1/2 on the point spread, but we're on Team Bridget. Go Colts!
Say what you will about Americans, but we mostly keep our clothes on at professional sporting events. The same cannot be said for the British.
Yesterday, the Giants beat the Dolphins at Wembley Stadium in London. During half time, a streaker with a strategically placed sock showed the teams how it’s done in England.
NSFW clip after the jump.
Have you heard? Rudy "Flip-Flop" Giuliani was recently outed as a dirty politician who'll say or do anything (even root against his precious New York Yankees) for a vote. And the Daily News has proof!
• Presidential hopeful (and devout Yankees fan) Rudy Giulani recently admitted he's rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series. If the man can't maintain a firm stance on baseball teams, how can we trust that he'll stick to his avid pro-choice agenda?
• Disappointed Kelly Rowland fans are tersely informed that there will be no concert or ticket refunds. Then again, hadn't they already essentially thrown their money in the trash by purchasing tix to a Kelly Rowland concert in the first place?
• Jemma Ward is neither Chinese nor Indian, yet she was on the cover for the premiere issues of both Vogue China and Vogue India. That girl is fierce.
• Lindsay Lohan is a living, breathing testament to the fact that nothing cures long-term drug abuse and chronic alcoholism like dirty rehab sex and covert pill-popping.
Last week, Dan Patrick signed with Sports Illustrated, presumably for more money than ESPN was offering him. This week, Rick Reilly, longtime SI columnist, made the opposite move, also presumably for more money.
Patrick and Reilly have played ESPN and SI against each other for their financial gain. But the network and magazine are stupid to engage in these lateral trades. Anyone who cares about following the work of Dan Patrick and Rick Reilly already watches ESPN and subscribes to Sports Illustrated. To the rest of us, all white guys reporting on sports look the same.
UPDATE: Rick Reilly confirmed the pay increase, saying "the money [at ESPN] is ridonkulous."
Marion Jones' teammate refuses to return her gold medal. And you know, we sorta see where she's coming from. After all, it's not like she's the one who accidentally-on-purpose confused steroids with fish oil and humiliated her country. [CNN]
Kimberly Bell, Barry Bonds's ex-wife, has a six-page spread in the November issue of Playboy.
Why would Playboy put Bell, who is 36, in the magazine? Well, for one she's hot. But mainly, she spills the beans on Bonds.
Bell, along with basic logic, says Bonds was on steroids, which caused his testicles to shrivel and led to erectile dysfunction.
Even when his recticle was functioning, apparently Bonds wasn't much of a lover. Just like his home run record, his wife's orgasms were fake. As she said,
When you're dealing with somebody who's that selfish, with that kind of ego, you learn to exaggerate your reactions to make him feel better.
And we always thought of Bonds as a performance player.
This tattoo is on Vince Young’s back, just in case anyone confuses him with R. Young.
[SportsWrap BeRecruited]
If they were so desperate to root for a deadbeat dad, Matt Leinart would have been fine. [Deadspin]
Lance Armstrong gave us (and Sheryl Crow) quite a scare when we read an article detailing how a yellow jersey-wearing American bicyclist "will have to forfeit his Tour de France title after arbitrators Thursday upheld the results of a test that showed [he] used synthetic testosterone to fuel his spectacular comeback victory."
We laughed. We cried. And then we realized it was just a boring article about some dude named Floyd Landis. [CNN]
New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick is fined $500,000 (and the team $200,000) after he was caught unnecessarily cheating to beat the worst team in football. Or, as one Daily News opinion letter summarizes it, "Belichick is a low-down rotten skunk varmint slug of a four-flushing cheat, and not a gentleman at all." [NYDN]
"The NFL is looking into claims a New England Patriots employee was videotaping signals by Jets coaches on New York's sideline during the season opener," reports Sports Illustrated.
In response, New England cornerback Ellis Hobbes responded: "We put too many hours in as individuals and a team to have to go out and cheat," he said. "If it's true, obviously, we're in the wrong. But I'm standing behind my team, my coaches. I don't think we do that stuff."
Translation: "We only cheat when we're playing against the good teams, not when we're up three touchdowns and a field goal against a crappy Jets team that already lost its quarterback."
The Yankees may have taken the last two games in a clutch series against the first-place Boston Red Sox but the wet blankets over at the New York Times are warning baseball fans not to start celebrating just yet.
An amusing (and slightly overreaching) article in today's Times is claiming that "pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during [Tuesday night's] game…just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season."
Confused? Sounds like you need to brush up on your archaic Norse mythology!
If yesterday's Page Six "revealed" Mickey Mantle's fondest memory of Yankee Stadium (it was, as they say, a "job" well done, under the right field bleachers) then why is that we already read the exact same anecdote on the internet…more than a year ago?
Despite being recently outed as a puppy-killer, a genital herpes carriers and the worst (alleged) pot-smuggler in the world, it seems that NFL star Michael Vick still has his fair share of supporters.
Says New York Knickerbocker (and the self-proclaimed best point guard in the NBA) "I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors."
And, he's absolutely right!
According to Wikipedia, dog fighting is, in fact a sport. An illegal blood sport, in which two canines "literally bite and rip the flesh off of one another while the onlookers root and place bets."
Cracker Jacks, anyone?
[via Dlisted]
Two days after legendary player/announcer Phil Rizzuto's death, the Yankees are back to doing what the do best: annoying the hell out of the rest of the country.
Moments after the New York Yankees continued a month-long stretch that has seen them climb from the bottom of the AL East to pull within a once unfathomable four games of the first-place Red Sox by defeating the Baltimore Orioles Monday night, stunned and enraged baseball fans across America took a moment to shake their heads in disbelief and curse dejectedly at the relentless inevitability of Yankee glory.
The Yankees, coming off a decisive three-game sweep of the Central-leading Indians, have won nine out of their last 10 games, catapulting them to the top of the wild-card standings, restoring the team's infuriating confidence, and instilling a sinking sense of impending misery among all non-Yankee fans.
Tennis, anyone?
• Cartoonists around the country raise their pens, grab their sketchbooks and blast Barry Bonds in angry cerebral comic strip solidarity.
• Congratulations to steroid impresario Jose Canseco, who may have succeeded in effectively ruining professional sports.
• From Idolator: "The next issue of Rolling Stone has as its cover subject High School Musical cutie/frequent Bop subject Zac Efron, who is captured in an awkward pose that looks like he's sheepishly feeling himself up while showing off his Tegan and Sara-inspired haircut."
• O.J. Simpson still having trouble grasping the whole "I owe $38 million to the parents of that guy I murdered" concept.
To get us interested in sports, you're gonna need to throw a doping or dog fighting scandal at us — and maybe we'll flinch. Unless, of course, you're the New York Yankees and you're trying to unload your in-house broadcast network that, when it launched, you touted as the pitcher's meow. Now Fortune cutie Tim Arango and fellow byliner Jon Birger break news that the YES Network is being shopped around, even if all parties involved won't own up to it.
Co-owners Goldman Sachs and former New Jersey Nets owner Ray Chambers are looking to dump their shares and cash out, while the Yankees, supposedly want to keep playing ball with their 36 percent share. But with the asking price somewhere in the neighborhood of $3-3.5 billion, that new $1.2 billion stadium to pay for (less the city's subsidies), plus that expensive roster of players they insist on maintaining, perhaps selling off is the only viable option. And potential bidders like Comcast, for sure, would love to add it to their line-up of extra fees to charge you with.
Oh how we love a good exercise in copyright law. Like the one we're about to see with sports and entertainment broadcasters, who always find room in their programming to recite a ditty like this one from Major League Baseball: "Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited." Turns out, such statements might be illegal-ish, since, in essence, they strip law-abiding folks from taking part in lawful use of the broadcast, which may or may not involve drawing cocaine dots on Barry Bonds' upper lip.
In a Federal Trade Commission complaint brought by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (backed by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo), the argument is being made that such warnings unfairly prohibit First Amendment use of the copyrighted content. Like making video mash-ups of hot soccer players – who often find themselves with their shorts torn or around their ankles – for the ogling eyes of YouTubers. Which is certainly a position we can get behind.
George Best, arguably the greatest British soccer player of all time, once said of David Beckham: "He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle, and he does not score many goals. Apart from that, he's all right."
So begins Aleksandar Hemon's utterly amazing article in yesterday's New Republic, conservatively titled, "Why David Beckham Sucks." Hemon then goes on to chronicle David Beckham's lackluster soccer career, noting his minimal achievements and sporadic successes, and ultimately characterizes him as underwhelmingly mediocre. At least, from a technical standpoint.
