sports Page 620 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Poll: White People Don't Want College Athletes To Be Paid
A poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News finds that a sizable majority of Americans are opposed to paying college players. Well, white Americans. ...

Columbus Crew Broadcast Features Soundtrack Of Woman Having Sex
Saturday's Columbus Crew vs. Philadelphia Union match broadcast on Time Warner Sports Channel featured a bonus, sexy interlude midway through the second half....

Cubs Fire Team Psychologist Who Didn't Seem To Actually <em>Do</em> Anything
After five seasons, the Cubs have parted ways with team psychologist Marc Strickland, apparently over the initial protests of ownership. Now you might assume that Strickland was fired only because you can't fire an entire 40-man roster, but it sounds like Strickland was no ordinary shrink....

Omaha Cable System Cuts Away From Creighton Game To Show Pac-12 Action
Creighton and Xavier are locked up in a Big East semifinal thriller. Bluejays fans back home in Omaha can't watch, though, because we're told Cox Cable switched Fox Sports 1 feeds to the Pac-12 Stanford-UCLA game, which is what follows the one from Madison Square Garden. Fox Sports 1 tweeted quickly...

Jeff Ma & David Frohardt-Lane: What's Sports Betting Really Like?
By now, it's almost a given that public discussion of sports betting will result in nothing of real value being said. It can be entertaining, but is typically vague, or cagey. But not today! We have Jeff Ma, who hosted Sloan's gambling panel, and David Frohardt-Lane, who participated, to give you so...

Ben Hogan Isn't Walking Out Of That Sand Trap
And speaking of Dan Jenkins, our pal Bryan Curtis recently profiled him for Grantland. It's worth your time:...

The NFL Made EA Sports Take The Ambulance Out Of <em>Madden</em>
Over at SI's Extra Mustard, Jon Robinson has a wonderful look at eight features the NFL forced EA Sports to remove from its Madden series of video games. They are, roughly, what you'd expect: a whole lot of things related to player safety, including helmets popping off, coaches being run over on the...

Every White Basketball Player Gets Compared To Larry Bird
This week's SI cover on the left; the Nov. 28, 1977, cover on the right. While we're doing throwbacks, here's Josh Levin in 2005, on the folly of white-on-white hoops comparisons. [Slate | SI.com]...

The Best Part Of The Sloan Conference Is All The Pro Sports Gamblers
By now, we've heard about all the different kinds of geniuses and salesmen and Malcolm Gladwells at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. It's true, you'll find all kinds of wonderful nerds there. What they don't tell you is that the guys having the most fun are probably the sports bettors, wh...

Ken Griffey Jr. Did Not Enjoy This ESPN Interview
Ken Griffey Jr. did a spot on SportsCenter today to talk about a partnership with Upper Deck trading cards or something, and he acted like a guy who would rather have been anywhere else. Griffey's eyes are the cold, dead eyes of a man who is on his 14th PR hit of the week....

Dan Jenkins: His Ownself
Dwight Gardner reviews Dan Jenkins' memoir, His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir today in the Times: ...

Which KNBR Employee Is Downloading Huge Amounts Of Porn At Work?
A tipster just sent us a picture of the above sign, which was recently posted in the KNBR sports radio studio in San Francisco. That's the same radio station that employs Damon Bruce, and is essentially the west coast's answer to WEEI. So, really, it's not all that surprising that such a warning nee...

Angry Dad Is Very Upset About How Local Swim Team Is Being Run
Everyone knows that hockey dads and football dads and lacrosse dads are crazy, but did you know that swimming dads can be just as nuts? They can! A tipster just forwarded us the following email, which was sent by one angry parent to the other members of his kid's swim team board (names have been red...

Mike Francesa Talks Oscar Movies
A sample: "I saw The Werewolf of Wall Street, and I just did not think it was well done." ...

The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games
It is no secret that the NCAA Football game series included actual players—jersey numbers, heights, weights, hometowns, etc.—an EA Sports producer admitted it under oath, and documents show the NCAA was well aware. So why not go whole hog, put their names on the backs of jerseys in the game, and cut...

This Kid Is A Fan Of Basically Every Sports Team Ever
There are bandwagon fans, and then there's this guy. A tipster made us aware of his existence. His rooting interest? All of the teams, everywhere. It's rather impressive, because that's a lot of money to spend on apparel....

The Best Sports Movie You Can't See
Check out this lovely tribute to the late Paul Hemphill by Richard Hyatt:...

"Pasta In Excess," And Other Self-Reported NCAA Violations At OU
The Oklahoman did some fun open-records spelunking and got ahold of some of the University of Oklahoma's self-reported NCAA rules violations. These are of the silly, picayune, "failure to hop on one foot 13 times while reciting the NCAA's mission statement in between texts to recruits" variety, incl...

A Clutch of Odd Birds
Here's Pat Jordan's 1971 Sports Illustrated pool room story, "A Clutch of Odd Birds":...
