ns Page 1996 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

How To Freak Out A Ref, By Illini Quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase
Either that referee really didn't want to seem like he had a conflict of interest by high-fiving a player from one of the teams, or he's a germaphobe. Considering it's probably the former, we now know every ref's kryptonite—run after them with your hand up and they'll walk over their own mother to...

Happy Valley Happy, NU Grads Less So, As Matt McGloin And The Nittany Lions Upset Northwestern
Penn State's football program may be on its way to the cathartic comeback predicted here and there at the beginning of the season. After starting the year with consecutive losses to a very good Ohio University team and a pretty bad UVA team, Bill O'Brien's squad has won four straight, including its ...

Beer Of The Week: Blue Buck, In Time For Canadian Thanksgiving
Monday marks a holiday that in Canada is known as Thanksgiving. Any American will recognize the basic outlines of the day: Get together with friends and family and eat until you can compare stretchmarks and then succumb to naps. That doesn't mean it's the same holiday. Care to (U) guess (S) which (A...

Report: Terry Francona Will Manage The Cleveland Indians Next Season
Ken Rosenthal might just be throwing some shit against the wall, but it looks like Terry Francona is headed back to the dugout....

Peyton Manning Will Buy A Stake In The Memphis Grizzlies
Like LeBron James with his stake in Liverpool, Peyton Manning has decided merely being at (or near) the top of one sport is not enough: he'd also like to own part of a team in another. Chris Vernon had the scoop on Thursday, and as he noted then, Peyton Manning joins a strangely star-studded ownersh...

Chipper Jones Predicted The Way The One-Game Playoff Would End Two Weeks Ago
As many have noted, two weeks ago, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked Chipper Jones what he thought of the one-game playoff. He said he thought the new double-wildcard, play-in game system was "stupid," because it potentially puts the second best team in a given league in the position of playing...

"pEnis peniS Penis vagiNa": Your Roundup Of The Best Signs Behind The College Gameday Crew
They could have just done "pEnis peniS Penis peNis," but I guess they get points for being inclusive. Surprise of the day? Gameday is in Columbia, yet none of these incorporate the whole "Gamecocks" thing all that much. Maybe the ESPN cameramen were on the lookout for those....

Report: Larry Johnson Assaulted Another Lady And Told A Security Guard He'd Rip His Vocal Cords Out
Larry Johnson now has five arrests on his record for varying degrees of assault against women—that's three more arrests for assaulting women than Johnson had 1000-yard rushing seasons as a player. This time the details are especially gory. Per TMZ:...

We Now Have A Gay Athlete Who Can Beat The Hell Out Anyone Who Has A Problem With It
Well, Megan Rapinoe could probably beat up your average bigot, but the roster of gay men in sports had been lacking anyone actively participating in a sport and, therefore, anyone who might put the lie to the homophobe's treasured notion that gay people are unathletic or unfit for competition. Kevin...

<em>USA Today</em> Just Couldn't Wait To Troll Braves Fans And Everyone Else About That Call Last Night
Like the call that handed the Seahawks the win over the Packers two Mondays ago, the ruling in the Braves-Cardinals death match was complex enough to trip up the layman. The call on Golden Tate's "touchdown" could, if you squinted, have been justified based on a slippery understanding of the concept...

MLB Removed The Phrase "We Don't Understand The Infield Fly Rule" From Its Twitter Profile
Major League Baseball quietly edited its Twitter profile in the moments after the infield fly debacle in Atlanta tonight, removing the line "We don't understand the infield fly rule, either" from its description....

Braves Fans Attack Umpires With Garbage After Worst Infield Fly Call Ever
Havoc broke loose in the eighth inning of tonight's Cardinals-Braves wild card game after a late—and terrible—infield fly call on a popup to left field that St. Louis couldn't corral. ...

The NFL Is Pissed At The Titans' Defensive Coordinator For Talking Like A Coach
On Thursday, Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator Jim Jerry Gray made the following comments to The Tenneseean:...

Your MLB Wild-Card Deathmatch Open Thread
Hey everyone, the playoffs start tonight! We've got two do-or-die games to watch: The Cardinals are taking on the Braves at 5:07 p.m. EDT, and the Orioles are squaring off against the Rangers at 8:37 p.m. EDT. That's like, seven straight hours of baseball....

Come Chat With The <em>SF Weekly's</em> Joe Eskenazi, Author Of That Terrific Story About Bleacher Report
Earlier this week, the SF Weekly published a lengthy story by Joe Eskenazi about the rise and inner workings of Bleacher Report, purveyors of flavorless, pre-fabricated, market-based sports news. We thought the piece was great. Others thought the piece was not so great....

<em>The B.S. Report</em> Report: "Whaaaaaat?"
Julia Alvidrez, Gawker Media's operations manager, is an unabashed fan of Bill Simmons and everything Grantland. She is also an occasional reader of Deadspin. Every week, she will recap Simmons's podcast, The B.S. Report, for us....

Wisconsin Football Coach Didn't Know The President Of The United States Was On His Campus
On Thursday, Barack Obama gave a speech at the University of Wisconsin. As is the case when any sitting president visits a college campus, a lot of attention was paid to the event. More than 30,000 people reportedly came to watch the President speak....

USC's Robert Woods Couldn't Keep His Balance After A Helmet-To-Helmet Hit, Missed One Play
Above, the uncanny floundering of USC wide receiver and All-American Robert Woods after he got spun around on a helmet-to-helmet hit. The spin itself might have made him dizzy—Woods does a full 180 after the hit—but as Jesse Palmer noted during the aftermath, it was pretty obvious Woods had his "b...

Tom Green Appeared On Arkansas TV To Deliver A Crazed Motivational Speech To The Razorbacks
Nothing can keep Tom Green down—not cancer, retirement, or performing in front of college students who were in kindergarten when his career peaked. The comic is on campus at Arkansas this week, and during a studio hit on KFTA in Fayetteville took it upon himself to apply his resilient attitude to ...

Source Of Robinson Cano PED Rumor Says He's Sorry, TV Station Makes On-Air Apology
Charlotte reporter Dan Tordjman offered a Twitter apology yesterday and his employer, ABC affiliate WSOC, issued an on-air mea culpa in the aftermath of his spreading a false rumor about Robinson Cano being busted for performance-enhancing drugs by MLB....