sports Page 615 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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 ...
Idiot's Apology To Erin Andrews: "15 Lbs. Heavier, She'd Be A Waitress"
WEEI/NESN personality Kirk Minihane apologized on-air today for calling Erin Andrews a "gutless bitch," only to immediately follow it up with the assertion that "if she weighed 15 pounds more, she'd be a waitress at Perkins."...
Drowsy Baby Too Tired To Watch Blue Jays Get Blown Out
It's OK, little Blue Jays baby. We understand if you're tuckered out. You had an exhausting day that presumably included eating, keeping your head upright, and screaming. Besides, the Blue Jays aren't going to pull off a 13-run comeback. It's the eighth inning. Go to sleep....
Report: Thomas Vanek Involved In Federal Gambling Investigation
Minnesota Wild winger Thomas Vanek was in a federal courthouse today, and in a statement he says he's somehow involved in a federal case against three men charged with running a sports betting ring out of their upstate New York bar....
Introducing The Three-Point Line Benefited Big Men Most
After the NBA introduced the three-point line in 1979, it would have been be intuitive to assume that guards, who shot a disproportionate amount of the new and more efficient three-point shots, benefitted most from it. But a new study from the Journal of Sports Economics claims that after the three-...
Big 12 Commish Is Full Of Shit About Pay-For-Play Killing The Olympics
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby spoke to reporters during a press conference this morning, and spent a good deal of time painting a bleak picture of the future of college sports. What does Bowlsby see on the horizon, in a post-O'Bannon world? Athletes unionizing! Massive program cuts! The death of...
"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Sports Song" Is All You Need To Know About Sports
"Weird Al" Yankovic's fifth music video—out of the eight he's releasing for his new album Mandatory Fun—is for "Sports Song," a pastiche of teams' fight songs. It skips the pretense and gets honest: The team we root for is good, and yours sucks....
How Rupert Murdoch Could Go To War With ESPN
The blockbuster news that Rupert Murdoch bid $80 billion for Time Warner—and was at least temporarily rebuffed—points to an impending seismic shift in the media landscape. And, as the New York Times points out today, nowhere would that shift be felt more than in the business of televised sports. A F...
MLB On Gwynn All-Star Snub: "Didn't Want To Single Out One Individual"
MLB and Fox issued a joint statement tonight on the much-criticized absence of Tony Gwynn's name from last night's All-Star Game/Derek Jeter slurpfest. Their explanation:...
Prayer Is The Only Thing That Can Save The Ryan Hall Documentary
The 41st Day, filmmaker Tim Jeffreys' documentary chronicling U.S. marathoner Ryan Hall's late, great career, updated its Kickstarter page today. More than two years after it exceeded its fundraising goal and collected more than $57,000, the film is not yet finished. And no, there is no end in sight...