et Page 1744 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Mike Tyson Tweets About Eating Evander Holyfield's Ear With Holyfield's Own Line Of Barbecue Sauce
Sometimes the internet is a great place to read things. Sometimes the outsiders it has empowered wow us with their ideas. But sometimes this happens:...

Nets Fans Will Get Excited For Anything—Even Drafting A Guy Of Whom They've Never Heard
Brooklyn Nets fans had to wait a long time to participate in the NBA draft—the team had no picks last year and didn't select until late in the second round tonight. So when the team chose Turkish forward Ilkan Karaman with the 57th overall pick, they didn't let their unfamiliarity with the big ma...

Is <em>USA Today</em>'s Veteran Gambling Guy Buying Twitter Followers?
Remember our old friend Sarah Phillips, the internet huckster and former ESPN columnist? One of her many tricks, we learned, was to buy followers on Twitter—a new scheme for a new era. The more followers you have, the more influence you can claim to have. In a monetized social-media landscape, the T...

"A Neat Kid": Your Passive-Aggressive 2012 NBA Draft Scouting Roundup
The NBA draft is getting underway now, which means that it is time for our annual roundup of faint praise, backhanded compliments, and snickering passive-aggression directed at the gifted players about to become honest professionals. Players are listed in the order of Chad Ford's latest mock draft....

Shock! Rafael Nadal Loses In Second Round Of Wimbledon To—Wait, Who? Lukas Rosol!
So: Greatest upset in Grand Slam history?...

Matthew Stafford As The 14th-Best QB: Is Ron Jaworski Crazy, Or Are The Rest Of Us Overrating Stafford? Discuss!
Ron Jaworski's been counting down his list of the best NFL quarterbacks, and Matthew Stafford, despite clocking in the top five in most statistical categories, landed at No. 14. Is Jaws right, and Stafford's sample size too small? Or could you stick a lump of Shaun Hill-shaped beef behind center, an...

How A Career Ends: Danny Manning, No. 1 NBA Draft Pick In 1988, Savored His Garbage Time In 2003
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today, with the NBA draft beginning in a matter of hours: Danny Manning, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1988 draft. ...

Better Know An Umpire: Mark Wegner
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...

FBI: Ex-Stripper Mistress Of Warriors Coach Mark Jackson Extorted Him With His Own Dong Shots
The Smoking Gun has the full details, but here's the gist:...

What Happened To John Van Benschoten? The Former Pirates Pitching Prospect Laments The Hitting Career He Never Had
John Van Benschoten, the Pirates' first-round pick (eighth overall) in 2001, didn't have a good big-league career. In 90 innings of work spread over three seasons, Van Benschoten, mostly as a starter, racked up 65 strikeouts against 68 walks and a 9.20 ERA. We ranked him 76th on our list of the 100...

How To Build A 21st-Century Bullpen With Failed Hitting Prospects And A Radar Gun
Earlier this month, Sean Doolittle made his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics. It wasn't an obviously momentous event: The left-hander took the mound with two outs in the top of the fifth, with the A's trailing Texas 5-0. He struck out Nelson Cruz to end the inning, then pitched a perfect...

Prince Fielder Found Himself In A Rundown, And Somehow Emerged Safely
Prince Fielder hit the deck no fewer than three times during tonight's Tigers loss in Arlington to the Rangers, but did so no more bizarrely than here in which the portly first baseman ran his way out of a rundown, waving his arms like a man fleeing a burning building along the way....

Clyde Drexler Denies He Said Dream Team "Kept Waiting For Magic To Die"
Dream Team, Jack McCallum's exhaustive account of the life and times of America's 1992 Olympic men's basketball team, was already looking like the most anticipated sports book of the summer when we ran a brief excerpt yesterday, one that dealt with Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler and his comments on how...

Mike Trout Continues To Do Ridiculous, Impossible Baseball Things
This is Angels center fielder Mike Trout's first full season in the majors. He's not only made his mark at the plate (league-leading .331 batting average) and on the bases (league-leading 21 stolen bases) but in the field as well....

Ladies, Chad Ochocinco's Marriage Proposal Will Have You Sopping Wet
Chad Ochocinco proposed to model/TV person/Antoine Walker-dater Evelyn Lozada back in November of 2010, with the wedding set for next week. But the details of the actual proposal have gone shrouded in secrecy, until Lozada spilled the beans on a radio interview last week....

Because This Stuff Never Gets Old, Here's Carmelo Anthony Scaring People By Pretending To Be A Wax Figure
Melo got his sculpture at Madame Tussauds in Times Square yesterday, and in between saying things like "my time is coming," he did that thing where he stands stock-still until unsuspecting ticket-buyers get close enough to spook. There were no reactions as magical as this one, but Anthony's timing...

Bristolmetrics: Nobody Cared About The Roger Clemens Trial Except ESPN
When last we met, the Jerry Sandusky trial was largely ignored, the Heat were once again all over SportsCenter, and hey, ESPN did a good job covering a perfect games and a no-hitter. What would this week bring? ...

Even Italy's A Little Racist Toward Mario Balotelli
This cartoon ran in Sunday's Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy's top-selling sports newspaper. It's Balotelli, fresh off the Azzurri triumph over England, climbing Big Ben. (Fun fact: It's officially "Elizabeth Tower" now.) Yes, Balotelli is playing the part of a giant gorilla, and yes, 90 percent of Euro...

Better Know An Umpire: Fieldin Culbreth
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...

The College Football Playoff Is The Best Sports Innovation Of Our Generation
I remember being baffled by college football from the very beginning. I was the only sports fan in my family. My parents didn't give a shit about sports. My brother and sister didn't give a shit about sports. If I wanted to learn how different sports functioned—how to watch them—I was more or less o...