port Page 687 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Fabulous Moolah
This is fun. Pat Jordan's 1974 SI piece on the Fabulous Moolah: "Lady with a Lock on Life":...

Ex-Oakland Basketball Players Claim Coach Gave Them Eating Disorders
Beckie Francis, the former Oakland University women's basketball coach, was fired last month without much explanation. Now, three former players—and others off the record—have come forth to the Detroit Free Press and accused Francis of intimidating them, criticizing their bodies and pushing them to ...

Vladimir Putin Invites Russia's Critics To “Try Some Viagra”
Russia wiped the floor with the competition at the World University Games, garnering 292 medals—with 155 of them being gold—at the 12-day competition. People complained that Russia brought in Olympians at an event for students, to which president Vladimir Putin says: Play some sports or pop some bon...

WVU Player Commits Robbery In Team-Issued Sweatpants, Gets Arrested
When robbing someone, make sure your victim can't identify you by your football team number plastered on your pants....

Reminder That Baseball Isn't Forever Ruins Erik Bedard's No-Hitter Bid
Astros pitcher Erik Bedard was dominating the Mariners Saturday night, racking up ten strikeouts, five walks and no hits over 6 1/3 innings. Then, he decided not to pitch anymore....

Seagulls Are Invading AT&T Park And Shitting Everywhere
With AT&T Park being built next to the water, seagulls are bound to show up and stop by some San Francisco Giants games as they wind down. Lately, though, the gulls have been visiting in greater numbers, and they're fucking everything up....

This Steve Nash Interview Got Off To A Pretty Horrible Start
"Why are you here?" "I own the team."...

Measuring The Ridiculous Physics Of Disney's <em>Hercules</em>
Two years ago, our friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective applied their usual rigorous statistical scrutiny to a series of basketball movies. We pick up the idea again with this analysis of Hercules, by Anthony Zonfrelli and Dmitri Ilushin....

Can Jason Whitlock Save Sports Broadcasting?
Originally published in Bloomberg View...

You Can't Play A World Cup In A Hospital: Brazil 2014, Argentina 1978
On June 30, Brazil dismantled Spain before a rapturous home crowd in the final of the Confederations Cup, the test run for next year's World Cup. The hosts' surprise win—and what it augurs for 2014—temporarily displaced massive protests as the story of the tournament. June saw hundreds of thousands...

Bringing It All Back Home
Grantland's Director's Cut series began with this gem from Tony Kornheiser: a 1980 Inside Sports cover story on Nolan Ryan:...

A.J. McCarron Scoreboards Johnny Manziel
The tweet has, naturally, been deleted already but here it lives for eternity. McCarron, it turns out, was also Manziel's roommate at the infamous Manning camp where the Heisman winner was sent home for being hungover or a heavy sleeper or whatever....

A Gentle Giant
Jack McCallum is a terrific reporter and writer. He was with SI for many years and still does the occasional piece for them. He is also an author and runs a blog. The blog has lots of fun posts. This one, a tribute to the late Robert Creamer, is tender:...

How Fox Faked Crowd Enthusiasm For Neil Diamond Last Night
Last night's MLB All-Star Game in New York featured a few high moments, several low moments, and one weird moment. Neil Diamond's distorted, off-tempo rendition of "Sweet Caroline" just prior to Mariano Rivera's final appearance as an All-Star was one of the worst—but Fox did its best to cover that...

ESPN Never Had A Golden Age: The Real Meaning Of Olbermann's Return
So Keith Olbermann is returning to ESPN, which a) has to be one of the more expensive press releases in history and b) shows that the company really has come to that age where you start getting deeply sentimental. It all makes sense....

Let Them Wear Towels: How Far Have We Really Come?
Never mind the All-Star Game, tonight on ESPN gives Let Them Wear Towels. Over at ESPNW, Robin Herman asks How Far Have We Really Come?...

LeeRoy, He Ain't Here No More
Pete Dexter's 1980 story on LeeRoy Yarbrough for Inside Sports has a chilling lede:...

A Champ Looks At A Champ
From Leonard Gardner's 1971 New York Times review of the Jose Torres book, Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story:...

The Sportswriter Who Left Her Job After Finding A Million Dollars
You may remember Selena Roberts from her days at The New York Times, where she became notorious for her crusading columns about the Duke lacrosse rape case. Or maybe you know her from her stint as a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where she was part of the rotation that replaced Rick Reilly in...