br Page 1012 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The World's Biggest Pickup Basketball Game
Our friends at Bodog.com have the West listed as 4-point favorites for tonight's NBA All-Star Game, which makes sense. The West has won three of the last four All-Star games (though the East won last year). And the players from the hometown team seem to always want to give it a little bit more tha...

Man, Tommy Maddox Has Really Let Himself Go
You know, we understand that beards are the big thing in the NFL playoffs right now, but honestly, we had no idea this guy was a starting quarterback in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday. (He's from the World Beard Championships, in case you were wondering.)...

Need Tickets ... Need Tickets ...
We were complaining, oh, two posts ago, about not enough fans being appropriately ecstatic about the conference championship games this week, but in the host cities, that's anything but the case. It's time for our weekly look at the most expensive tickets on eBay (those that actually have a bid) f...

The Broncos' Secret Success Ratio
As evidenced by our 3-5 record of predicting playoff games so far (straight up, no spread), we're notoriously lousy at pigskin prognostication. It's not like this has been the easiest postseason to predict anyway; we can only think of one prediction system that would have led to a correct Steelers...

Jake Plummer, Buzzsaw Soul Crusher
As we enter in to the biggest week of Denver quarterback Jake Plummer's life, leading up to the AFC Championship Game hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers, we feel obliged, as the only fans of The Buzzsaw That Is The Arizona Cardinals on the planet, to ask: How in the hell is this guy a game away from ...

The End Of Shaq Is Nigh
We couldn't have been more thoroughly depressed by last night's Lakers-Heat matchup, otherwise known as Shaq-Kobe II (or IV, or whatever). Aside from the much-heralded but mostly boring "peace accord" between Shaq and Kobe, and aside from the game itself (the Lakers finally beat Shaq), we were dow...

We Have To Ask ...
Suggested questions for today's ESPN SportsNation chatters ... • 1 p.m. NFC Conference Championship: Come on, it's Panthers vs. Seahawks, people! Won't someone please ask a question? Um, anyone out there? Hello? • 1:30 p.m. Spurs SF Bruce Bowen: As both a good long-range shooter and an excellent d...

NFL Playoff Roundup: One Big Idiot Kicker
• Ordinarily, we come down on the side of kickers, if just because we have much more of a physical resemblance to them than 350-pound ogre lineman. But it's pretty much impossible to feel much sympathy for Colts gakker Mike Vanderjagt, whose missed field goal yesterday was somehow the perfect endi...

Tom, Interrupted
I was curious about how Patriots fans would react to the loss last night, since they have so infrequently experienced that thing called losing. Understandably, not many Pats blogs have been updated. But a few of the diehards who realize the therapeautic nature of blogging did manage get some thoug...

Ah, the Joys of Baseball Trade Rumors
We're admittedly a little tingly about this rumored Abreu-for-Manny-for-Miggy scuttlebutt that's been tossed around, oh, the last couple months. As a Philly fan, it'd be easy to see the town completely embracing Ramirez. Granted, they'll get on him about that whole "hustle" thing, but the same com...

Playoff Pants Party! Patriots at Broncos
Once again we find the Patriots fighting in one of those "respect" games. This week, the disrespected team is the Denver Broncos, who really nobody has any faith in whatsoever regardless of their record, Jake Plummer's "maturity" and the fact their defense has been surprisingly solid all year—with m...

Brett Favre's 2005 Continues to Suck
2005 wasn't an easy year for Brett Favre. It started off with that whole Javon Walker contract dispute, then detriorated into a miserable season in which basically his whole team got injured, his coach got fired and more insistence from NFL fans that he just hang it up. And in the middle of all th...

What Could Be The Greatest Sports Story Ever
The man you see in this picture is Kevin Rogers. A football lifer, he is most famous for being Donovan McNabb's quarterback coach at Syracuse. He and his wife Betty are the parents of three. Earlier today, Rogers was hired by new coach Brad Childress to become the quarterbacks coach for the Minnes...

Cabrera's Linguisitic Transgressions
On the surface, the news that a complaint has been filed against Florida Marlins wunderkind outfielder Miguel Cabrera for an incident outside a Venezuela club seems pretty rote, just another athlete "scuffle" at a bar. But the story from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel confuses us so much we can't...

Engine No. 42 Makes The Hall
It's a happy day here at Deadspin headquarters: Former Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter has made the Hall of Fame. He was the only player elected to the Hall; Goose Gossage and others (including, unfortunately, Willie McGee) did not make it in....

Look Out For The Black Mamba. (Relax, We Don't Mean Literally)
We hate to be the ones who have to point this out, but after all we've made fun of him for — with our personal favorite still being Chuck Klosterman's notion that the Lakers are like "an eighth-grade intramural team which happens to have one kid with a mustache" — it's worth noting that the man no...

Fiction Is Actually Stranger Than Kobe's Truth
Further showcasing the almost impressive casual racism of the porn industry, a reader sends us the link to this very special porn film: Tobey Bryan's Backcourt Violation, from our classy friends at Hustler....

Elsewhere in College Basketball...
• #5 Florida 90, Georgia 72. Gators push it to 14-0 by hammering the Bulldogs. Currently, there's not a ranked team on Florida's schedule other than Kentucky, and I'm not sure if they should count. • #12 Maryland 70, Miami 84. Miami hits 12-of-19 three balls to beat the Terps. Nice win, but I'll nee...

Playoff Pants Party: Jaguars Vs. Patriots
This is the late game tomorrow night, which means, if you plan your day correctly, you should be properly hammered enough by halftime to confuse that dude in the corner with some ex-girlfriend who did you wrong. (Or, for female and non-traditional male readers, uh ... OK, we're not sure what the ...

New Vikings Coach Sporting Rare Mustache/Baldness Combo
Today, the Minnesota Vikings will announce that Eagles offensive coordinator Brad Childress will be their new coach, or, if you can't resist making the same joke everybody else is making this morning, captain of their ship. Childress has been with the Eagles for seven years, and, having seen Requi...