There’s no confirmation on this, but a reader sent us this interesting tip: Are Maurice Clarett and his older brother, Michael, serving identical 4 1/2 year sentences in Ohio prisons?
Sad news from the royalty faction of the NBA: the glamour couple that is San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker and Eva Longoria are either perilously close to breaking up, or have already split, depending on where you get your celebrity information from.
Page Six is claiming Parker is to blame. People Magazine says they have split. Bill Simmons’ favorite magazine, Us Weekly, says things are ‘rocky’ at the moment. Longoria’s already been divorced once, and she’s 31. He’s 24.
If Mario Lopez is somehow involved in the split, we’re going to become huge Parker fans. Because we feel for anybody that loses their girl to somebody as effeminate as A.C. Slater.
Who knew the Mcpaper took mulligans? After a pretty pathetic first cut at the don’t-criticize-ESPN story, USA Today takes a second whack today, bringing out big gun Michael McCarthy to chime in on this week’s hottest topic not involving pills and attempted suicide and sketchy publicists.
For those of you that are Whitlocked-out, we’ll spare you the cut and paste details. Ok, fine, just one: “Too many journalists want to collect a paycheck from ESPN rather than cover an institution that’s very influential in the sports marketplace.”
More from Whitlockland: the Overweight Lova’s debut column at AOL is out, and that right there is the best analysis we’ve seen so far.
But wait, there’s more: The New York Post weighs in on Whitlock’s move, and offers up a choice nugget at the end: the KC star columnist is represented by Creative Artists Agency. Is Hollywood ready for Whitlock?
The above link to the compulsively enjoyable Young, Black, and Fabulous, is quite a doozy. It claims Owens and the gorgeous Lathan met at the ESPYs this summer, Owens and his fiancée split up in February not earlier this week, as his trainer claimed - and that Lathan was spotted at Cowboys camp earlier this summer and is BFF with his now-famous publicist, Kim Etheridge.
Nothing like a juicy rumor to cure the Friday morning hangover.
Anybody remember Glenn Foley? Boston College quarterback who managed to stay in the NFL as a backup for six years? In his retirement, hes landed himself a sports talk radio show.
This week, Foley and his cohort, someone named Gregg Henson, invited Jason Whitlock onto their show to talk about Mike Lupica, Mitch Albom, and what it’s like to get shit-canned by the Worldwide Leader.
It turns out Foley, who spent five years in New York, isnt a fan of Lupica. In fact, Foley trashes Lupica for having a massive ego (the shock!) and, apparently, not calling him back once. Foley then hands the baton to Whitlock, who takes down Lupica and Albom. Again.
Although we didnt hear the word of the week, bojanglin, we did hear a vastly underused phrase: shuck and jive.
It should be clear to all that if anyone from the E! network rings you up and the words True Hollywood Story are mentioned, your next move should be to hang up. Then you are to take the phone off the hook, grab your go-bag, and disappear for a little while.
For Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher/full-time cad Derek Lowe, there is nowhere to hide.
According to the plugged-in girls at the Boston Herald, Lowe who notoriously ditched his wife for Fox Sports Reporter Carolyn Hughes - is about to be featured in a scandalous special about athletes and women who love them. The tentative air-date is Nov. 5, though we would recommend to the suits at E! that it should be pushed up into the first week in October when the Dodgers will still be playing.
Sure, the story is slightly over a year old, but the timing couldnt be better. This is the final weekend of the regular season and the Dodgers are jockeying for a postseason berth. Right now, they trail the Padres by one game in the National League West with three games remaining. One victory will sew up at least the Wild Card berth.
What reporter will ask, for the 19th time, about how Lowe hid Hughes name in his celly under Jeff? Or about an alleged drinking problem that prevented the Red Sox from re-signing him?
A morning peek into what sports bloggers around the web are saying, blended with various news, gossip, and analysis. It’s been a wild week. You’ve been a great audience. Fridays rock.
Hold the phone - Screamin’ A. Smith was on CNN talking about the War in Iraq and Oil Consumption? And he wasn’t terrible? Excuse us while we step out of this alternate universe and leap back into reality. (The Nation)
The amazing Astros won their ninth in a row, and coupled with another Cardinals choke, have crept within 1/2 a game of first place. Are we looking at the biggest choke-job ever? Undoubtedly. (Houston Chronicle)
Mets fans probably cried themselves to sleep last night, but one seems to have woken up – possibly still drunk or perhaps in a TO-like haze - thinking this Pedro injury isn’t that bad. (Amazin Avenue)
You didn’t see it, but Daniel Cabrera nearly no-hit the Yankees at the Stadium last night. A Robinson Cano single with one-out in the ninth ruined it. (Camden Chat)
Bill Simmons takes no prisoners in his chats – not even Dan Shanoff was spared. But just to be clear, Mr. Daily Quickie never wrote in to the chat. (Dan Shanoff)
We’re not huge fans of sports talk radio. We’ll get slaughtered for saying this, but we enjoy Jim Rome. New York’s Mike and the Mad Dog aren’t terrible most of the time. And that’s it.
But we enjoyed this. We’ll let the The House Rock Built take it away:
Enter a sports radio program on AM 1270 in Michigan called The Sports Inferno, which featured, live on the air, the most heinous, depraved descent into that mirky blackness captured by our modern recording equipment. For fifteen glorious minutes, our valiant host slides down that spiral slide into the abysmal nothingness of grief and hatred for all the world to hear. Frightening? Yes.
It gets really good about three minutes in. Dozens of memorable lines. This one had us rolling, although it may have had a lot to do with the cracking of the hosts’ voice:
“You’re asking Drew Stanton to run the option in Hurricane Katrina!”
No postseason for Pedro. When you look at the new rotation – 58-year-old El Duque, 57-year-old Tom Glavine, Steve Trachsel, and John Maine – the word imposing does not immediately come to mind.
Lots going on over at ESPN this week. And you know what’s really interesting? We haven’t heard a peep from Jason Whitlock’s bojanglin’ best buddy, Scoop Jackson (far left in this photo). We poked around in his archives today and noticed Scoop hasn’t written in a week. Nothing particularly surprising there. Before his Sept. 21 column, he wrote on Sept. 11, a 10-day lull. Except that when an ESPN source wrote us this email, it got us thinking:
[Nobody] knows how perplexed the home office is at this point about what to do with Scoop. There are varying levels of exasperation when his name [comes] up. Is he done? The real question is about when his contract is up. I can’t imagine a renewal at this point … the boys are very worried about things. [Scoop] was supposed to run a column on Tuesday, but [I’m not sure what happened].
Don’t expect him to take Whitlock on … he’ll want to, but he won’t. I don’t think [Kevin Jackson of ESPN.com] and [John Papanek of ESPN.com] want this going any further. In spite of whatever bluster [Scoop] may show at times, he doesn’t have it in him to launch a full-on offensive against someone like that.
Well that’s good. What fun is there in watching two writers slug it out? Just so bloggers don’t get a bad name calling for Scoop’s head, we’re going to direct you to the following quote, which was pulled from a June 4, 2006 New York Times article (penned, it should be noted, by a freelancer):
As is often the case with sports publications, ESPN.com has committed its share of crimes against literature. One of the site’s ”national voices” is Scoop Jackson. Like the ESPN alumnus Ralph Wiley, Jackson tends to write about sports through the lens of race — by which I mean that Jackson, who is black, takes his own view and determines that it should represent that of an entire race. A Jackson column usually begins with an audacious pronouncement: in an essay on the Duke lacrosse scandal, he wrote, ”On March 13, 2006, something happened.” Which is no doubt true. From there, Jackson haikus his way through strange proverbs (”Every tree has roots. The roots are the lifeline of every tree. Attack or cut down a tree, the roots stay alive. They still grow. The roots are deeper than the tree.”) before arriving at an amusingly harebrained conclusion. Several months ago, Jackson was watching the R&B singer R. Kelly perform the national anthem at a boxing match; the crowd booed lustily, since Kelly was not only butchering Francis Scott Key but also under indictment for child pornography. What did Jackson deduce from this unusual intersection of sports and culture? That Kelly ”forced many blacks to feel something we haven’t been forced to feel in a long time: patriotic.” Huh?
Anyone think Scoop will have a column Friday? Maybe the Worldwide Leader will run it alongside George Solomon’s ombudsman column.
[Update: And checking in on the Terrell Owens situation is none other than Scoop Jackson. Release the hounds.]
There’s no confirmation on this, but a reader sent us this interesting tip: Are Maurice Clarett and his older brother, Michael, serving identical 4 1/2 year sentences in Ohio prisons? 
Sad news from the royalty faction of the NBA: the glamour couple that is San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker and Eva Longoria are either perilously close to breaking up, or have already split, depending on where you get your celebrity information from.
Who knew the Mcpaper took mulligans? After a pretty 
Anybody remember Glenn Foley? Boston College quarterback who managed to stay in the NFL as a backup for six years? In his retirement, hes 
A morning peek into what sports bloggers around the web are saying, blended with various news, gossip, and analysis. It’s been a wild week. You’ve been a great audience. Fridays rock. 
We’re not huge fans of sports talk radio. We’ll get slaughtered for saying this, but we enjoy Jim Rome. New York’s Mike and the Mad Dog aren’t terrible most of the time. And that’s it.
Lots going on over at ESPN this week. And you know what’s really interesting? We haven’t heard a peep from Jason Whitlock’s bojanglin’ best buddy, Scoop Jackson (far left in this photo). We poked around in 
