usatoday - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! The Mets are still paying $1.19M each year to a guy who retired decades ago
July 1 in baseball is Bobby Bonilla Day, when the Mets pay $1,193,248.20 to their former third baseman, who hasn’t set foot on a major league diamond since 2001, as part of a deferred payment plan. It’s a check the Mets have been cutting annually since 2011, and they will send a seven-figure sum to ...
Idiots Argue Modern Ballplayers Are Fat In Stupid <i>USA Today</i> Op-Ed
Two professors and the CEO of a weight-loss company published an op-ed in USA Today—based on their recently published research letter—arguing that the vast majority of baseball players are too fat, and that they “owe it to themselves and to the children who look up to them as role models” to get in ...
Did Dana White Confirm That He Pays <i>USA Today</i> For UFC Coverage?
Within mixed martial arts circles, it has long been taken as a given that the UFC pays USA Today for coverage. As the rumor goes, the UFC buys advertising from USA Today with the tacit understanding that USA Today will cover the sport, and do so favorably....
<em>USA Today</em> Article On Zimmerman Verdict Quotes A “Howie Felterbush”
Here's the original article, which we're assuming was reported by a former KTVU employee. ...
NBC's Fake <em>USA Today</em> Pages Actually Text From The <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>
You may have noticed NBC running these stupid, horribly-Photoshopped USA Today pages on their sports broadcasts recently. The mockups were inane enough before we realized the text was plagiarized from a Chicago Sun-Times article about this year's Notre Dame-Michigan football game....
Al Neuharth's Scant Positive Journalistic Contributions Were To Sports
Al Neuharth’s obituary in the New York Times was notable as much for what it did say as what it didn’t. What it did say: The founder of USA Today and driving force behind Gannett’s dubious rise to “a communications Leviathan” profoundly changed the newspaper industry. What it didn’t say: Anything mu...
Chris Culliver Was Asked Almost 100 Questions Today About His Anti-Gay-Teammate Comments
The past week in sports has been so gay! We've had Manti Te'o saying he's "far from" gay last Thursday; we've had Ronaiah Tuiasosopo claiming he's trying to recover from his gayness (good luck with that, champ); we've had that SI photo of the two 49ers fan-dudes making out at a gay bar; we've had an...
<em>USA Today</em> Just Couldn't Wait To Troll Braves Fans And Everyone Else About That Call Last Night
Like the call that handed the Seahawks the win over the Packers two Mondays ago, the ruling in the Braves-Cardinals death match was complex enough to trip up the layman. The call on Golden Tate's "touchdown" could, if you squinted, have been justified based on a slippery understanding of the concept...
Lane Kiffin Somehow Has Too Much Integrity For The Coaches' Poll
Earlier this month, the results of the first Coaches' Poll were released. No surprises—LSU first, Alabama second, USC third. In the preseason, the poll is useless except as a talking point, and anonymous unless a coach wants to volunteer that information. Arizona's Rich Rodriguez didn't mind, admitt...
Photo Without Commentary: Two Canadian Dudes At The Olympic Village
Here's a photo of two dudes being dudes at the Canadian part of the Olympic Village that was just uploaded to USA Today's Pinterest board. And here's a photo of just one of the dudes before the other one came by to grab a look outside. There is no back story....
Is <em>USA Today</em>'s Veteran Gambling Guy Buying Twitter Followers?
Remember our old friend Sarah Phillips, the internet huckster and former ESPN columnist? One of her many tricks, we learned, was to buy followers on Twitter—a new scheme for a new era. The more followers you have, the more influence you can claim to have. In a monetized social-media landscape, the T...
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....