and Page 1117 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Isaiah Rider Continues Excelling On Fast Track To Life Imprisonment
Former UNLV great and NBA troublemaker Isaiah (nee J.R.) Rider is back in trouble with the man THE MAN again, after he skipped out on his arraignment hearing , according to TMZ. Rider was supposed to report to court to deal with this whole mess, but missed it for reasons unknown at this time. (My gu...

Bron-Shawn Basketball Beef Gets Hip-Hop Glaze
With Game 4 of the Wizards-Cavs series about to tip off in the Verizon Center comes the news via The Washington Post's (Boooooooo!) Wizards Insider blog that the overcooked rivalry between LeBron James and DeShawn Stevenson has extended into the hip-hop arena. It all started with Queen James waving ...

1st Round, Twentieth Overall: Buccaneers Select Aqib Talib
Talib blew off his scheduled visit with the Cowboys last month. Mario Manningham blew the Cowboys interview off at the Combine. Now I hate the stinkin' Cowboys as much as any kid who grew up a snowball's throw away from Veterans Stadium, but since when do NFL prospects blow off the Cowboys? They're ...

1st Round, Tenth Overall: Patriots Select Jerod Mayo
The Patriots finally picked up a linebacker under 35! And of course, they caught a few people off guard (guilty) by grabbing a guy who was low on many draft boards. Mayo started his Tennessee career at outside linebacker, but moved to the middle in 2007, and while he made a lot of plays (140 tackle...

1st Round, Fourth Overall: Raiders Select Darren McFadden
It's time to bring the mood down a little, dim the lights, turn off the laugh track. Think of this as the portion of Comic Relief when Whoopie, Billy, and Robin would drop the shtick and talk seriously about whatever the hell Comic Relief was supposed to benefit....

Passersby Were Amazed By The Unusually Large Amounts Of Blood
This bloodied but unbowed runner is Alicia Follmar of Stanford, who took a spill at the start of the women's distance medley at the prestigious Penn Relays. She quickly recovered and managed to finish third....

Where, Uh, Whoa, Amazing Highs Happen
Dominating the headlines this Saturday is the shocking (shocking!) admission by the Mavericks' Josh Howard that he, like every one in the NBA who isn't J.J. Reddick, smokes trees in the off-season. Also: baseball players take steroids and politicians cheat on their spouses....

Your Weekend Of Name Recitation And Breathless Speculation Hath Arrived!
Yes, ESPN's draft coverage is underway, four hours before the Dolphins shock the world by picking Jake Long. Now they're saying Chris Long is going to the Rams. Let's tip all the picks hours in advance. No reason to make it so people actually watch the draft. For those who stick around, choose betwe...

Tom Brady Is Out Of The Closet And Bent On Murder
Anyone watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? Apparently Tuesday's episode involved a thinly disguised version of Tom Brady, who was a gay quarterback implicated in a murder. Sample dialogue: "Lincoln Haver is gay? I thought he was dating Natasha Gorski, that hot supermodel." "You can't blame Linc...

Joba Chamberlain Makes Clumsy Pass At Erin Andrews, Becomes Mortal (WITH UPDATE)
Actually I have no idea what the Yankees' Joba Chamberlain said to Erin Andrews at the conclusion of their interview on Wednesday, but whatever it was, Andrews was obviously repulsed. You can check out the video here and judge for yourself. Man, it looks like she just ate a bug. So then can it just ...

The Mountain Men Over The Celibate Crew
Slate's Robert Weintraub, like many of us, loves the old purple prose of early 1900s sportswriting, the Red Smiths, the Grantland Rices, the men who painted epic tales of warriors, grizzled combatants and lardywarks too manly to wear gloves. In an occasional series, Weintraub writes about the week's...

Erin Andrews Likes A Man Who Fears Melanoma
Erin Andrews spilled some of her secrets about what she finds attractive in a man to ab-attentive magazine Men's Health. Of course she prefers the confident, virile strongman, but she doesn't like a peacock. Men scrambling for her attention should be "more laid back" about it, she says, and sugges...

Goodbye, Shaun Alexander
Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander has joined the growing segment of unemployed rich guys. It's amazing that a couple of years ago, he was a top five fantasy pick just and a league MVP. But the foot, man, the foot is not well. And some of the Seattle faithful are happy he's gone. Like porny-named...

ESPN Upgrades Its Spelling Bee Coverage
Hate to ruin your day, but Mike & Mike are out as hosts of the Scripps National Spelling Bee coverage on ESPN and ABC in May. Taking their place will be the perky Tom Bergeron — whose work on America's Funniest Home Videos was once again overlooked by the Nobel Committee — and a very special sideli...

Those Cubbies, They're Out Of Control
Our fear of a Cubs World Series title this year are well documented, and they're not doing much to assuage those fears right now: They've won five in a row and opened up a game-and-a-half lead over our Cardinals despite a creeping fear that this is as good as St. Louis is going to get this year....

Barry Zito Rules The Kingdom Of Fail
Barry Zito and the Giants; has there been a worse investment, ever? That SUV you bought in 2006, perhaps? The first 12 episodes of John From Cincinnati? You've got to hand it to him though; even after struggling through his suckiest performance of the season on Tuesday, he faced reporters afterward...

Four Out Of Five Dentists Think Joe Girardi Is Nuts
Further proof that Joe Girardi is the Frank Burns of AL managers; he has forbidden the Yankees to eat candy or gum. Yes, that should turn the tide. New York would have four or five more World Series trophies if not for the evil of Skittles. Girardi is being really strict about this....

Raging Bull: More Trouble For Chicago's NBA Mascot
As we learned with this whole ugly Isiah Thomas thing, every NBA owner has his tipping point. Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf just may have reached his. It's the story you've heard so many times before: Colorful Bulls mascot Benny the Bull is being sued by an oral surgeon for an aggressive high-...

Flee To The Cleve Tonight, Everybody
The playoffs tip back off tonight, and after a weekend that brought us an amazing Suns-Spurs game and that fun 76ers upset — which we have a feeling will be like a lower-grade version of that Sixers-Lakers Finals: One inspiring win followed by a sweep — we are treated to two doozies tonight....

The Patriots Plan On Doing The Faux Perfection Thing Again
It's a grand sports capitalist tradition to trademark a team's or an individual's achievements. Pat Riley grabbed "Threepeat;" Dennis Green, displaying a self-awareness we wouldn't have anticipated, snatched up "They are who we thought they were." The New England Patriots were all over this last ye...