leitch-old Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Media Approval Ratings: Stuart Scott
Last week, The New Republic, in a post about Sen. Barack Obama calling into a Philadelphia sports talk radio station, unleashed the following groaner:...

Does Anybody Buy What Memphis Is Selling Anymore?
A "bold" proclamation: If Memphis doesn't at least make the Final Four this year, no matter what their record is next year, they're not getting a No. 1 seed. The team has looked downright wobbly so far and just about blew it yesterday. Though at least Derrick Rose was able to keep playing past the f...

Heck, Those Heels Are Out Of Control, Consarn It
Silly East Regional, with your whole going-according-to-seed business: This absolutely will not do. That said, of the four teams hanging around Charlotte next week — wait ... is that North Carolina ... in Charlotte? Boo! — a definitive pecking order has already emerged. That is to say: Don't bet on ...

UCLA's Non-Foul, And Huggy Bear Sober In The Sweet 16
We had no idea there were so many Texas A&M basketball fans out there, but boy, has our inbox been full with people sending us the above photo. Yeah: That kind of looks like a foul....

A Rather Shining Moment In The First Round
• Eliot Spitzer and David Hirshey, soccer pals. • Our new "pal," Bob Costas. • Apparently, some folks aren't happy with ESPN. • Kige Ramsey, charity hero. (Oh, and no bids yet.) • Mark Cuban remains the only blogger allowed in the Mavs' locker room. • Hey, the brackets came out. • We had a few game...

Red Sox, A's Look Like They'd Rather Not Be In Japan
The Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's landed in Japan yesterday — their series starts Tuesday at 6 a.m. ET — after an 18-hour flight. We've never taken an 18-hour flight, but if we did, the last thing we'd want as soon as we got off the plane would be a bunch of photographers ready to take our picture....

Shooting Weapons On Campus Is Always A Good Idea
This is Jorge Reyes, the Most Outstanding Player of last year's College World Series for the Oregon State Beavers. The Beavers are the two-time defending national champions, and they kind of rule the roost a bit over there. They also like to just randomly fire weaponry on campus. Hey, sometimes you ...

All Our Mother Does Is Work. That's How You Get To Be Spanish.
No telling yet if there's been a crime, but this country's seen a fair amount of disagreements over the years....

Friday NCAA Live Blog: 3 ET Games
All right, the last entry in our first-round live blogs is here; sorry, we're not spending our Friday night live blogging. Lame, we know. Anyway, here are your games: Butler vs. South Alabama, Georgetown vs. Maryland-Baltimore County, Texas vs. Austin Peay and Connecticut vs. San Diego. After the j...

The Refs Love A Scuffle
• • We knew it: Hockey refs like the fights too. [Orladn Kurtenblog] • The NCAA tournament's first day, as filtered through potential Indiana coaching candidates. [The Meaningful Collateral] • A day full of tourney quotes. [Awful Announcing] • The Dodgers probably should have left Vero Beach 10 year...

The Cowboys Are Quite Stealth
We are pleased that we don't work in a field as compulsively paranoid as professional football. (The world of online journalism is typically too narcotically enhanced to have time for paranoia.) Every move, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, is in danger of being swiped by another team...

Media Approval Ratings: Buster Olney
When we first moved to New York, Buster Olney was the anonymous, goofily named reporter in The New York Times who knew pretty much everything you needed to know about baseball. He was their star. And then he went to ESPN. He's not the star anymore, but at least everybody knows his name now....

Friday NCAA Live Blog: 12:20 ET Games
All right, we've been told that the Gawker servers are ready to rock today, and we will have no more problems. We have faith! We are not so certain, however, that today's games will be any better than yesterday's. (Duke-Belmont excepted.) The early games aren't inherently promising. We have Gonzaga...


Welcome To Today's Horrific Image
FanIQ discovers the special supplement running in The Tampa Tribune this morning: This terrifying, awful and nightmare fueling cover....

For One Night, We Were All Vince Gill
The initial rush of excitement that the NCAA Tournament brings us often disguises the fact that the games themselves sometimes disappoint. The upsets we crave, the upsets that excite us about all this in the first place — the first weekend is always more of an "event" than the national championship...