Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen got his face intercepted by a man's fist outside a South Bend bar, and pretty soon everyone started doing the Rashomon thing.

On the occasion of the Sports Fella's appearance atop The New York Times bestseller list, Leitch wrote: "Good ideas win out. Perseverance and new perspectives break through. The old rots and washes away. Sometimes the good guys win." Charles P. Pierce saw things differently, writing of Simmons: "You are not the cosmos, son. Get the fuck over yourself. "

"In an effort to reinvent myself, in a cut throat industry that was becoming more and more competitive the deeper I swam," Jenn Sterger wrote, "I made the decision to go against the grain and remove my implants." This is our generation's answer to Thoreau's Walden. The results of her decision were subsequently Tweeted.

A semi-pro football player tackled his teammate, and Barry Petchesky provided the video.

Dash's gallery of sports-themed Halloween costumes spawned two sequels. The highlight was this cogent piece of media criticism.

Leitch launched his Aughts retrospective with this massive gallery of the decade's towering failures.

With the yank of a ponytail, New Mexico women's soccer player Elizabeth Lambert became an American symbol of something or other, and then all was forgiven after she wore a pretty pink crinkle scarf in the New York Times.

The Clemson rowing team got some exposure ...

... as did Grady Sizemore, whose extensive self-portraiture was swiped from his girlfriend's e-mail account.

And then Tiger Woods, a well-known golfing personage, went and crashed his car into a fire hydrant and a tree in the early morning after Thanksgiving. He had cuts on his face, which may or may not have been caused by his wife, who may or may not have been reacting to rumors of Tiger's cheating heart. I will defer here to friend of Deadspin Chas, who notes that Tiger is the best there was when laying two.

A man has to have goals — for a day, for a lifetime — and that was this man's: to have people say, "There goes frozen, decapitated Ted Williams, the greatest Halloween costume that ever lived." We tip our caps.

Barry Petchesky, by way of the good folks at Herm's Perm, brought you the strange saga of Chase Mejia, a well-traveled Division I wide receiver who somehow found himself at a Miami porn shoot, serving as the western pillar in a fleshy Eiffel Tower — split left, you might say, and running a hard post over the middle.

Many people were none too pleased with our horndog bird-dogging. Brian Cook of MGoBlog led the charge. "Fuck you," he wrote to AJ. "You're a piece of shit." On his own blog, he wrote: "AJ Daulerio Is An Asshole." And elsewhere, he declared the ESPN Horndog Dossier "literally the worst thing the blogosphere has ever done." Sports bloggers literally across the country literally took to the streets and set themselves on fire, literally.

Soon after it emerged that Steve Phillips had carried on a bunny-boilingly ill-advised affair with production assistant, ESPN cut the guy loose. "His ability to be an effective representative for ESPN has been significantly and irreparably damaged," ESPN factotum Josh Krulewitz said, "and it became evident it was time to part ways."

The New York Post broke the story of Steve Phillips' affair with 22-year-old Brooke Hundley. Dash brought you all the sordid details, and, meanwhile, at Deadspin HQ ...

... AJ dusted off the ESPN Horndog file.

"I've never had sex w/ anyone at ESPN....," an ESPN employee wrote in an e-mail to AJ. "But, uh, I just got to Bristol and between me and you, you've to got a lot of people sleeping with a rosary tonight." A rosary, and possibly a 20-year-old production assistant.

Meet Katie Lacey, ESPN horndog.

We got our hands on a copy of Tim Donaghy's book, Blowing the Whistle, which was all set to be published by Random House until the NBA stepped in. That's a nice publishing house you have there. Wouldn't want anything to happen to it.

Meet Erik Kuselias, ESPN horndog, skeeve.

A couple Lions fans celebrated their team's historic victory with a spot of lower-bowl grab-ass that ended with the two of them re-enacting the Ned Beatty piggy scene from Deliverance. And Detroit was happy once again.

Jerry Jones sold 30,000 "party passes" for the regular-season debut of his new football palace, where, in a standing-room section, every passholder was treated to great views of 29,999 other passholders. The scene turned briefly into something out of Lord of the Flies. Sucks to your pass mar!

This lass had a message for Jesus Christ Football Star, and she wore it on her shirt. It's tough to see here, but please note the gray-haired lady in back, looking on in slowly dawning horror.

Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman was arrested for allegedly choking his girlfriend, Internet creature Tila Tequila. The case against Merriman was eventually dropped, but he was nonetheless tried and convicted in the high court of Tila Tequila's Twitter account.

A day after LeGarrette Blount decked Byron Hout, Dash made the persuasive argument that the smirking jackass who started it all got exactly what was coming to him.

The bold-face-type enthusiasts of Fire Joe Morgan reunited for one glorious day on our site and, afterward all that was left of poor Allen Barra was a couple mindlessly contrarian opinions and some hair.

Someone dug up an ancient video of a skeevy Cris Collinsworth in which he declared, absurdly: "I like girls that aren't too bright because you can trick 'em a little bit...high school girls love me. Fourteen to eighteen, I'm a big star with them." And then, even more absurdly, he apologized — and not for that Cosby sweater.

Football, as choreographed by Bob Fosse.

In a handicapped stall at Cowboy Stadium, a guy in a Michael Irvin jersey decided to do to a woman what Jerry Jones did to 30,000 fans with Party Passes. We got the video.

And, lastly, there are the Salisbury-Daulerio Letters, a correspondence that stretched across three batshit posts. It was, as AJ noted, the meltiest media meltdown of them all. Sean has not been heard from since. Nor have we heard from his attorneys and "powerful Pr firm .. from NYC." He is out there, though. Somewhere. I like to imagine him on a beach on South Padre, sipping a tall, fruity drink and pecking away at his ESPN tell-all, espn exposed. He nears the end of the book. He thinks for a moment. He considers a passing cloud. And then he taps out the last line, a line to rival them all — Fitzgerald, Hamlet, Bogie to Claude Rains. Sean Salisbury looks at the screen and smiles wryly. "Sent," it reads, "from my iPhone."

The visualization of the inside of Sarah Palin's mind: "Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports... basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I'm doing that - keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities - smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it's time to pass the ball - for victory." This is what that looks like.

Matthew Stafford, No. 1 pick extraordinaire, sure is having fun on his summer break.

Hey, more Detroit Lions! Who wants to re-live 16 losses in a row? Someone!

Before we witnessed the letdown of LeBrondunkgate, we were led to believe that the throwdown was "as good as it could've been hyped up to be." Insert Zapruder witticism here.

And then TMZ pays $3,000 for the tape before we put out a $10k bounty. Thanks for saving us some cash.

In a meltdown of epic proportions — even for Mad Dog's standards — Christopher Russo admits he needs to find a staff of little Mad Dogs, not little Bow-Wows: "We are the Washington Nationals. Check that: We are the Washington Generals." If only they knew something about the cast of Gone With The Wind.

How athletes are spending their summer vacations: the gallery version. This, folks, is intrepid journalism.

A woman files a civil suit against Ben Roethlisberger, alleging that he sexually assaulted her. ESPN sits on the story for 36 hours.

On July 4, Steve McNair is found shot to death in a Nashville apartment.

If you're reading this, you already know.

Wayne Ellington was drafted late in the first round by the Timberwolves — along with every other player in the NBA Draft — but most will remember his historic night for the time they met his girlfriend. She goes to Drexel and wanted him to stay local, but he's blessed to be going to Minnesota. Tell that to Ricky Rubio.

Joe Morgan decides to tell a story on Sunday Night Baseball. (Stop me if you've heard this before. OK, I'll continue anyway.) It was an utterly harmless story, until it proved to be an "utter crock." (Stop me if you've heard this before. OK, I'll stop.)

Take it away, Dash: "Let's say you love the Chicago Bears. (Relax....it's just an example.) And let's say you don't mind having a few dozen tattoos on your body. That doesn't logically follow that you need 92 Bears autographs permanently inked in your skin."

Simona Halep decides to get a breast reduction — but that was before Alena Schurkova, a professional volleyball player with 32Es, weighed in. "If she does this it sends out the message that girls with big boobs can't play sports and that is just wrong," Schurkova said. Halep hasn't yet reconsidered.

Fact: Chris Forcier is leaving UCLA. Fact: He needs a better press team than his family. Fact: Writing "fact" lots of times in a press release does not strengthen your argument.

Tucker Max and an unnamed ESPN columnist walk into a bar... no, there's no punch line.

Artie Lange was who we thought he was! A much more thoughtful, rational expression of the same sentiment, at least.

"YouTube is filled with grainy cellphone videos of drunken bleacher brawls, but few capture the drama, action, suspense, and heartbreaking childhood trauma of this donnybrook from the Yankees-Marlins series. It's like the Citizen Kane of stadium fan fight clips." Getcher popcorn ready.

What do you do when you win the Stanley Cup and your team's owner is Mario Lemieux? You go to Sewickley and swim with the Cup, natch.

You already know what happened, but it's worth another watch, if only to make Lucky Pierre a permanent phrase in the cultural zeitgeist.

La La Vasquez, Carmelo Anthony's longtime fiancee, is asked to leave her courtside seat in Dallas after an "incident" with some people sitting behind her. Then Mark Cuban and Kenyon Martin got in a fracas. But the hero of this story — La La, of course — got the last laugh when the Nuggets ended up beating the Mavs.

In which Leitch rhapsodizes about the TMI age: "Realize, we are just about a year away, tops, from someone writing one of those gimmick books about staying away from the Internet for six months and seeing what happens, like that couple that had sex every day for a year or that guy who tried to live for a few months as if he were a Civil War general." (Apparently, that's not his next book.) Also, he writes about Simmons and John Danks, but mentioning Rick Ankiel is too painful.

Feliz cumpleanos, Erin Andrews!

The news of Manny Ramirez's steroid news broke, but Deadspin was almost all over it for a few months. The true story of the one time Manny decided not to Be Manny.

Melanie Collins, "or: Reason 1,345 why it's tough to be a female working in sports media."

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then consider these 33,000 words about the decadence of the Kentucky Derby better than anything Hunter S. Thompson ever penned. OK, maybe not. It was worth a shot.

Michael Phelps: Loves the dope, addicted gambler, emotional basketcase, bad tipper, paranoid of paparazzi, loves his mom, won a lot of gold medals. So much we learned from an exotic dancer.

Allison Stokke is up for a Spike TV award as the guys' choice sexiest athlete. If she wins, she might actually collect the prize. It is prestigious, after all.

"Let's review all that is going on here. The guy's name is Dr. Bummer. He's a gynecologist. He has a Steelers jersey that he personalized with his own name in the cheapest DIY way imaginable. He chose to wear said jersey on national television. He miraculously gets chosen to come on down and then decides to bid "69 dollars" in the opening game. And as the ultimate icing on the cake, he wins. The only thing that could have made it better is if he had performed an ultrasound on the pregnant "Barker's Beauty." (I still call them that.)"

The next (and first) school to hire Drew as its commencement speaker is due for... well, something. Wear sunscreen. And do many, many more things, including Porky's Revenge.