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The Piggyback Bandit Has Struck Again
Sherwin Shayegan, aka the Piggyback Bandit, hasn't been seen or heard from since his summer star-turn, which culminated with this exhaustive account of his sad adventures by Grantland's Bryan Curtis. But earlier this week, Shayegan was back at it after a basketball game at a midwestern junior colleg...

Mark Grace Gets Jail Time For All Those DUIs He's Been Collecting
Former MLB first baseman and Diamondbacks color commentator Mark Grace is going to jail because he can't stop driving around Arizona while drunk. Earlier today, Grace pleaded guilty to endangerment and DUI, and was sentenced to four months of work-release jail time and three years of supervised pro...

Arizona's Justification For Trading Justin Upton Is Insufferable
The Arizona Diamondbacks' decision to trade Justin Upton to the Atlanta Braves for Martin Prado, Randall Delgado, and a handful of prospects is a curious one. Upton had a relatively disappointing season in 2012 (he still posted 2.5 WAR according to Fangraphs), but he looked like the second coming o...

John L. Smith, Who Succeeded Bobby Petrino At Arkansas, Will Spend Next Year Coaching A Terrible DII School For About 8% Of His Old Salary
Arkansas's John L. Smith was one of the more colorful characters of this past college football season. The coach of an awful football team whose location he couldn't quite remember, Smith had very little money in the bank as of September, and negative $40 million as of October. Through it all, Smith...

Vince Young Is Just Another Bored College Student Again
Cam Newton's decision to re-enroll at Auburn has been a quiet storyline this week, but Newton's not the only national-title-winning QB again giving school the old college try. Vince Young is back in the classroom at the University of Texas, and he more or less began the week with sharpened pencils a...

Joe Flacco, The Big-Armed Oaf Who Saved Baltimore
Joe Flacco has played five full seasons in the NFL, and in each one, he has thrown for less than 4,000 yards and completed less than 64 percent of his throws. He has never been sacked fewer than 30 times, and he has never thrown more than 25 touchdowns. Flacco turns 28 tomorrow. He'll be a free agen...

Aaron Murray's Heart Told Him To Return To Georgia, But The QB-Heavy Draft Class Probably Helped Too
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: The Bulldogs QB is coming back for his senior season....

Derek Anderson Wants To Kiss And Make Up With Cleveland
Let's go back to the halcyon days of 2007, when an unheralded sixth-round pick named Derek Anderson outplayed Charlie Frye and Brady Quinn to become the Browns starter. Anderson would make the Pro Bowl and win 10 games as he led Cleveland to its best season since Bill Belichick was head coach. Ander...

Jadeveon Clowney Decapitated Vincent Smith, Then Palmed The Football
Today's Outback Bowl in Tampa has brought the best of the Big Ten-SEC rivalry, and the top player in college football—yeah, we said it—had his way with Michigan's offensive line. Here's Jadeveon Clowney putting Wolverines running back Vincent Smith in a very bad place. [ESPN]...

College ShameDay: What Is The Heart Of Dallas? How Long Can Pat Fitzgerald Hold A Car Above His Head? Your New Year's Day Bowl Games FAQ
Our weekly college football shame index previews the New Year's Day bowl games. ...

33 Bowl Games Ranked As If They Were Dishes
The custom of calling post-season collegiate contests "bowl" games stems from the granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl, so-called for the eponymous bowl-shaped stadium. But our first association with the word "bowl" of course is as a container, most often for food, keys, change, or cereal milk and ...

Chuck Pagano Returned To Coach The Colts This Morning
The Indianapolis Colts have been the feel-good story of the NFL this season, what with their turnaround from the league's worst team to the AFC's fifth seed while head coach Chuck Pagano stepped aside to battle leukemia. Today, three months since his diagnosis and two months since he learned his can...

Forbes's 2012 List Of The Most Valuable Teams In College Football Reads A Lot Like The 1936 AP Poll
Forbes's latest best guess at the most valuable college football programs is out, and if you're a Texas fan, congratulations: Your slavering devotion to the Death Star of the Big 12 has paid off once again. You're number one! Granted, you're in the "also receiving votes" category in the AP's poll of...

What People Said About the Piece of Shit Video Game the NRA Made Six Years Ago
Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere on the Internet. ...

Alex Smith Has A Good Shot At Setting An NFL Passing Record This Season
It's been more than a month since Colin Kaepernick became the man in San Francisco. The Niners were 6-2, and Alex Smith's numbers were sparkling—not just for his supposed game-manager image, but up there with anyone in the league. And then Smith took a couple of hard hits in the first half of a game...

Andrew Bynum Finally Explains What's Going On With His Hair
Man, Andrew Bynum is such a bummer. Yesterday, he spoke to reporters about the status of his weakened knees, and he didn't have much to offer in the way of encouragement. His left knee still hurts a lot, his right knee is not as swollen as it used to be, and he has taken up swimming. That about cov...

Mark Sanchez Will Stay The Jets' Starter, Reportedly Against The Wishes Of Woody Johnson
Despite Greg McElroy's season-saving drive against the Cardinals—the most celebrated 5-for-7 in team history, perhaps—Mark Sanchez is still the Jets' quarterback. Sanchez will start Sunday in Jacksonville, McElroy will return to holding a clipboard, and the Jets drama train rolls on....

Report: Arkansas Will Hire Wisconsin's Bret Bielema To Be Its Football Coach
Yahoo's Pat Forde was first with the news a few minutes ago that Bret Bielema will be leaving Wisconsin for Arkansas. This follows a bizarre day in which Mike Gundy's and Chris Petersen's names kept getting bounced around. Bielema had gone 68-24 in Madison and coached the Badgers to three consecutiv...

College ShameDay: Who Embarrassed Themselves In 2012? (Besides USC, Iowa, And The Tom Selleck Impersonator At Boston College)?
Our weekly college football shame index. ...

ESPN Screwup Lets Viewers Listen In On Jimmy Dykes And Dave O'Brien Talking About The National Anthem Singer's Clothing
In yet another technical blunder that led to inadvertent viewer eavesdropping on ESPN talent, a "live look-in" during ESPN's college basketball coverage last night patched in audio of the upcoming Syracuse-Arkansas game instead of the intended live-action Georgia-USF game. It just so happened that...