et Page 1996 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This Is A Photo Of A-Rod Holding Some Kale. You're Welcome.
Today, we give thanks to baseball for being back and to the New York Post for bringing our attention to this photo of Alex Rodriguez clutching a bundle of kale. The Post ran a story, adapted from a book called Diamond Dishes, about "the secret recipes that fuel" baseball's biggest stars. Among them:...

PETA Protests The Michael Vick Madden Cover That Doesn't Exist Yet
When ESPN and EA Sports announced that they would team up to let fans select the Madden 2012 cover boy, we predicted that the angry loud people would quickly sound off about the selections. The pool is now down to 16 selections, and the shit-stirring has begun: in a totally unoriginal outcome, the ...

India, Pakistan, And The Hopeful Futility Of Cricket Diplomacy
One early spring day in 2007, a curious group of worshipers gathered at Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga, an 11th century temple in Madhya Pradesh, India. They came not to pray for blessings for themselves or their families, but for something that at the moment seemed much more important....

Today's The Day Baseball Fans Everywhere Except Pittsburgh Dream Of World Series Victory
Your morning roundup for March 31, the day a Bellaire, Ohio chair mourns the obese man who sat upon it for the past two years, leaving more than skin behind....

Purdue Is Sorry They Blamed Cheap Purdue Donors For Matt Painter’s Possible Departure
A day after sending out a letter that more or less blamed its boosters for men's basketball coach Matt Painter's meeting with Missouri officials, the Purdue athletic department sent out a hasty (or, as tipster and proud Mackey Challenge donor BigTenObsession calls it, "weaksauce") apology to its mai...

Four Cans Of Corn Will Get You Two Tickets To A Timberwolves Game
Attention, fans of canned vegetables who will also tolerate watching the Minnesota Timberwolves play a game of basketball: buy four Butter Kernel cans of your choosing for a bargain three dollars (string beans, collard greens, you name it), and you can get two tickets to see the 17-53 Timberwolves i...

Coach K, Please Shut Up (Also: Jalen Rose Arrested For DUI)
We do some Duke-hating around these parts. And maybe a hair too much of it, if you ask no one. I mean, hey, Duke lost to VCU in 2007 in the first round, before it was cool....

Young Cricket Fan Tries To Scalp Kidney For Ticket
Young Sanjay Kumar Sen is trying to buy a ticket to the India-Pakistan World Cup of Cricket semifinal, but he doesn't have the 25,000 rupees (about $550) such a ticket commands on the secondary market....

The NCAA May Be Approaching Its Day Of Reckoning
Once upon a time, complaining about exploitation in the NCAA made you the turd in the punch bowl and/or Jason Whitlock. "College athletes should be paid" marked troll territory. Rollie Massimino selflessly forges boys into men, damn it! He's never made a dime off basketball!...

Purdue Not-So-Subtly Blames Cheap Purdue Donors For Matt Painter's Possible Departure
Purdue head coach Matt Painter, who has led the Boilermakers to four straight 25-win seasons, is meeting with Missouri officials in Florida today to discuss their recently vacated head coaching job. The John Purdue Club is in a tizzy over his potential departure, even though this scenario seems more...

The VCU Band Director Is Just As Buoyant In The Wild As He Is At The Games
A dedicated Deadspin reader, known around here as Malik Sealy Dirt Mattress, made it to San Antonio this weekend to see the finale to the Southwest Regional. Out on Saturday night, he and a friend spotted somewhat known-person Ryan Kopacsi, the gyrating director of the VCU pep band and — as Out Spor...

Shaka Smart's Key To Success: Quoting <em>Scarface</em>
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: VCU likes to be the bad guy....

Was Scott Howard Actually Better Than Teen Wolf? A Statistical Investigation
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the past week, they've been applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). The series concludes wi...

VCU Students Need To Step Up Their 'Riots'
Virginia Commonwealth is celebrating their upset in the time-honored small school way: causing more mischief than destruction (that's fire extinguisher smoke, not tear gas). Fans jammed Richmond's Broad Street, and even had an old fashionedwelcome-the-team-back-from-the-airport pep rally. I won't ...

Steven Pearl Laughs On Twitter At Dad's UT Replacement
You didn't really expect Bruce Pearl and kin to exit Knoxville quietly, with great dignity, especially when Tennessee didn't wait a full week before hiring a replacement, Cuonzo Martin, did you?...

VCU Has No Business In The Final Four, And We're Glad They're Here
Last week at this time, we were laughing at the Big East for being a weak conference, despite all the late winter talk about it being the best in college basketball. The evidence proffered was the number of teams left in the tournament. By that logic, the best conferences in college basketball at th...

Your VCU/Kansas Halftime Update
Should VCU hold its 14-point-lead form in the second half and defeat the Kansas Jayhawks, this will be the second time since the tournament expanded to 64 (or more) teams that no No. 1 seeds made the Final Four. The first: 2006 (Florida was a third seed, UCLA a second, LSU a four and George Mason w...

Your Second Elite Eight Open Thread
Virginia Commonwealth and Kansas will play for the right to face Butler in the Final Four next Saturday. The winner of Kentucky/North Carolina will draw UConn. Let the games begin....

Delaware Mother Climbs A Pole To Protect Her Children's Right To Play Street Hoops
Melissa McCafferty knew something was up yesterday, what with the police cars, front-end loader and dump truck carrying a pile of basketball hoops around the corner from her Claymont, Delaware house on Friday....

Your First Elite Eight Open Thread
The Elite Eight will become seven after the Butler/Florida game, which tips off around 4:30 p.m. Seven will become six after Arizona tries to do to UConn what it did to Duke. (It really never gets old.) And then, we'll wait for tomorrow to learn the other two entries into the 2011 Hall of Final Fou...