sports Page 607 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Bill Simmons Will Host A Grantland TV Show On ESPN
Starting this October, ESPN will air what it's calling The Grantland Basketball Show in prime time—"the first Grantland-branded television series." Who wants to see Bill Simmons do his best Harvey Levin impersonation? ...
The NCAA Is Spending More Money Than Ever On Lobbying
With a constant stream of bad press and lawsuits chopping away at its integrity, the NCAA has decided to do what every corrupt institution that has no real reason for existing does when times get tough: throw shitloads of money at lobbyists....
In The O'Bannon Decision, Truth Wins Out Over Rhetoric
Let me start by apologizing. Because of my own involvement in the Ed O'Bannon case, and because of past situations in which the NCAA has misquoted my own personal statements as if they represent the official opinions of the plaintiffs in the case, I can't be quite as analytical here as I might like,...
What Happened To The Art Of An Overhand Curveball?
That's the question Pat Jordan asks in his latest profile:...
Video: Tony Stewart Runs Over Driver During Confrontation, Killing Him
NASCAR driver Tony Stewart ran over a competitor, 20-year-old Kevin Ward Jr., during a confrontation at a sprint car race on Saturday night at Canandaigua Motorsports Park in New York. Ward was killed. ...
O'Bannon Ruling: NCAA Loses
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA antitrust case, knocking down the restrictions against college athletes profiting off their name, image, and likeness. ...
Freelancing Sucks
You may have heard by now about Sports on Earth, the joint venture between MLB and USA Today that "laid off" a bunch of writers earlier in the week. Although the term "laid off" is a bit dicey: Technically speaking, the site only had a few full-time employees to begin with. Everyone else who wrote f...
The One Question To Ask The Commissioner Of The Big 12
Here's the commissioner of the Big 12, Bob Bowlsby, owning the absolute shit out of what's become the NCAA deadenders' Marxism of convenience:...
Sports On Earth is not shutting down, contrary to one online report. But with Gannett spinning off its publishing arm, very big changes are most certainly coming. [Update: It's not shutting down, in the sense that the site is keeping the name and a few staffers. But, yeah, things are going to be dif...
Sports Radio A Force For Good, For Once
The Associated Press has a feature on Gool FM, Somalia's first sports-only radio station. Staffed by 28 people—including four women, which is no small thing—it provides a welcome diversion in a country that's still struggling with some fundamental issues....
How Not To Reform The NCAA
There will be no new release of an EA NCAA Football game this year. The man most frequently blamed for this is a former UCLA basketball star named Ed O’Bannon, who had the temerity to sue the NCAA and EA for using his image without asking permission and without negotiating to pay for it. ...
White And Needy: What I Learned From Richard Ford's Sportwriter Trilogy
Be they neurotic, tragic, horny, or (preferably) all of the above, white guys entering midlife have plenty of novels to reference on their journey. But John Updike's Rabbit series, Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman books, and the like don't offer real-world models of behavior any more than Slim Shady p...
China's Square Running Track: Fact Or Fiction?
A sports complex in China may or may not feature a track with right-angled lanes for running. Is it true? Possibly. The backstory contains just enough logic to make it believable....
Crazy-Ass Italian Sport Combines Rugby With Bare-Knuckle Fighting
There is a sporting event held annually in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. It is called Calcio Fiorentino, and it is an ancient form of football that is essentially rugby, but with a whole bunch of dudes just mercilessly beating the crap out of each other. ...
D.C. Station Remembers The Good Times, When Radio Guys Could Say "Fag"
WJFK, a CBS-owned sportstalker serving the D.C. market, made a big announcement last week. LaVar Arrington, the former Washington Redskins star and longtime co-host of the station's afternoon show, LaVar and Dukes, had moved to Los Angeles to join the NFL Network. Instead of hiring a big-name replac...
Why Pete Rose, Lance Armstrong And Mike Tyson Won't Fade Away
Nice story over at Grantland by Bryan Curtis on the never-ending sagas of Armstrong, Tyson and Rose:...
Nerds On <i>Teen Jeopardy</i> Save Sports Category For Last
"Pro Sports Teams" was a category on Teen Jeopardy this evening and none of the contestants wanted anything to do with it. The rest of the board slowly vanishes while the Sports column remains menacingly unselected. ...
Johnny Damon: An Idiot in Exile
Pat Jordan's latest for Sports on Earth:...
We Live In The Golden Age Of Sports Documentaries
A piece in this week's SportsBusiness Journal is nominally about how HBO Sports has lost its preeminence in the sports documentary biz, and sure enough, it has gutted its in-house doc unit in recent years. But it's heartening to realize that even as the former biggest player scales back, the sports ...