the Page 863 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Carolina Panthers Logo Gets An Update
The new logo, the first since the team's expansion year, is "modernized" to "provide a more aggressive, contemporary look" and make it more "three-dimensional." The "subtle updates" reflect a "tougher, more defined panther." Lots of corporate buzzwords needed just to say they got rid of the eyebrows...

What Earned This On-Air Double-Bird From San Francisco's NBC Affiliate? News The Raiders Hired Dennis Allen
This is actually from Wednesday's 6 p.m. newscast on KNTV in San Francisco, during which a CSN Bay Area producer in the background appears to react quite negatively to the Dennis Allen news being delivered by sports anchor Henry Wofford. We're not sure how someone working on TV wouldn't know he i...

Charles Oakley's Friends Want You To Let Him Cook In Your House
Charles Oakley has had an interesting career. From down and dirty hustle man for the New York Knicks, to personal valet and muscle man to His Airness, Michael Jordan, Oak's services have always seemed so brutish....

I Witnessed Carl Lewis Murder The National Anthem
Maybe Steven Tyler's performance of the Star Spangled Banner before the AFC championship game was the worst rendition ever, maybe not. It's on the list, anyway. And the list jogged my memory: On Jan. 21, 1993, I was in Brendan Byrne Arena when Carl Lewis sang the National Anthem....

A Graphic Guide To Understanding <em>USA Today</em>'s Purchase Of The Big Lead
The old new paradigm got a piece of a newer paradigm this week, as once-revolutionary USA Today acquired the Big Lead. What does this mean? Blog posts slipped under your hotel-room door? We pulled some numbers from the press release to illustrate how it all might fit together....

What Do Premier League Stars Read When They're Not Busy Not Reading?
It's time for the 2012 Premier League Reading Stars program, in which England's schoolkids are encouraged to read by professional athletes pretending to love books. To kick off the program, 20 Premier Leaguers—one from each club—were asked to name their favorite adult and children's books. The resul...

FBI Docs: The Story Of The 6-Foot-8 Redneck Ex-Con Who Terrorized George Steinbrenner With Jet Skis
Ah, Tampa. The balmy breeze. The sandy white beaches of acceptable granularity. The lingering fury of the most dyspeptic owner in baseball history. I speak, of course, of George Steinbrenner. Welcome back for another edition of "The Boss Files," our document-driven retrospective of Steinbrenner's li...

Lawrence Taylor, On If He Is A Changed Man After Getting Busted With An Underage Prostitute: "No"
In a meandering and bizarre interview aired Wednesday night on Showtime's Inside The NFL, Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor attempted to respond to questions about his 2010 arrest for soliciting an underage prostitute but mostly left the impression that more trouble's in his future....

A Chronicle Of Doing It: Nike And Destruction
Republished with permission from The Classical....

A Slapshot To The Ear Can Do Some Serious Damage (NSFW)
On Saturday, during an off-day practice in Pittsburgh, Alex Ovechkin took a shot on net. It went high, caromed around off the glass, and struck Matt Hendricks directly in the ear. Above is the "after" picture. The graphic photo below shows the damage: an inch-long gash in the cartilage....

This Is What Happens When You Accuse Steven Tyler Of Butchering The National Anthem
Our post Sunday asking whether Steven Tyler's pre-AFC championship performance of the national anthem was the worst ever drew a flood of reader feedback, both in the form of poll responses and in writing. Here's an update on the poll results, as well as a sampling of your reaction to Tyler's perf...

Jason Richardson Entered A Game In The Middle Of A Play Last Night And Got Away With It
The Magic scored just 56 points and made only 16 field goals in their blowout loss to the Celtics, who were without Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen. But that might not have been the worst of it for Orlando: At one point here in the third quarter, they had just four players on the court during a defensiv...

The Worst National Anthems Ever
These are the five we included in our poll on Sunday. As of this writing, Roseanne Barr's version is the "worst anthem" clubhouse leader by a substantial margin (she has nearly 50 percent of the vote, with Carl Lewis checking in at 28). Facebook users can vote here....

Randy Moss Is A Sideline Reporter For The Pro Bowl, But, Unfortunately, It Is Just Some Guy Named Randy Moss
It takes a lot to make one really angry about the Pro Bowl. No one cares about the Pro Bowl—not football fans, not gamblers, not even the players in the game. It's a nice Hawaiian lark before the Super Bowl....

Ladies And Gentlemen, The Cubs Of Tomorrow
The Idaho Cubs, presented without comment, but with "Party Rock Anthem." [via Big League Stew]...

Tennis Players Bill Simmons Would Do: Another Classic From The Secret Sports Guy Vault
It's a curious quirk of the internet that almost nothing survives of Bill Simmons's pre-ESPN work. After seeing last week's newly unearthed column from Simmons's AOL Digital City days, a reader sent along another Boston Sports Guy entry rescued from the dustbin of history. If you've got any old Simm...

Chuck Giampa Takes You Inside The Spacious Mind Of A Judge
This is from Friday night but that does not make it any less awkward or cringe-inducing. Chuck Giampa, along with his 132-world-championship-matches-officiated mind, made his Showtime boxing debut. It...did not go well....

Steven Tyler's "Star-Spangled Banner" Was Terrible. But Was It The Worst Ever?
Aging rockers often struggle to hit high notes, but Steven Tyler's juxtaposition of screaming and a languid pace made his rendition of the National Anthem before the AFC Championship in New England especially difficult to listen to. (His liberal lack of adherence to the actual lyrics didn't help.)...

Yes, This Is CBS Host James Brown Interviewing A Fake Baby
It took CBS all of 15 hours to do something more embarrassing than prematurely reporting Joe Paterno's death. Here's a clip from the network's The NFL Today, something we're pretty sure is an advertisement for E*Trade—though we thought FCC rules mandated such things needed to be disclosed to the ...

There Will Be No More Kegs Or Student U-Hauls At Yale Athletic Events
After one woman was run over at the Harvard-Yale tailgate in November, Yale announced today that they've banned kegs and student-driven trucks from the tailgate, which will now end at kickoff. Guess that means more Ivy League football for all?...