For various reasons, we’ve had a surge of new readers this week, and it is appropriate that the newbies become well aware of our affinity for sharks. Remember when we found that captivating footage of an octopus eating a shark? Good times.
Today what we’ve got is shark on shark crime. It appears as if someone has caught a shark on the line … until another shark lunges out of the water and attacks the caught shark. Seconds later, the water turns red. Cool.
* Yes, we have seen the terrifying footage of a woman getting attacked by a Great White and losing her leg; sadly, we won’t be posting it. It’s beyond scary, and we feel really, really bad for the girl.
On the off chance that you’re at your wits end with the bizarre Terrell Owens saga, we’ll try to limit our obsession with the Cowboys receiver to one post today.
There are eight million and three theories flying around the net about just what the heck happened to the Cowboys star, but for reasons unknown, we haven’t seen this one, which comes from a reader who may or may not know a thing about drugs:
Painkillers are an easy way to get high. Did the publicist tell the police it was suicide to steer police clear of the fact that TO may have been trying to get high? Do you know how many people use painkillers to get high?
Uh no, we don’t. But we like it!
A last word on the suicide angle: If it all hinges upon Owens saying, ‘yes’ when asked about harming himself, well, that’s pretty weak. If you’ve ever been hopped up on codeine during an illness, you’ve probably mumbled some dumb shit to your wife/girlfriend/fiancée that has gotten you in trouble. Right?
Friends or foes? You make the call. Yesterday, the face of ESPN.com�s Page 2, Bill Simmons, had a marathon chat session in which he clowned on us, talked about his former Page 2 cohort, Jason Whitlock, and mentioned Laguna Beach. The fellas over at Kissing Suzy Kolber have already killed him for it. Full details and our analysis after the jump �
We’re hoping that ESPN’s Ric Bucher isn’t pulling a Mort with this: Bonzi Wells to the Rockets, for two years, $5 million. This is pretty fresh news, so we don’t yet have a 3,000 word dissertation on the acquisition by John Hollinger. You’ll have to settle for our bleary-eyed breakdown: For what was left, a job well done. But not a championship acquisition.
Wells is an incredible wing talent – but he’s had his share of problems off the court over the years. He’s been suspended by just about every coach he’s played for in the NBA, he’s gone after coaches, officials and fans, and he’s about to play for his fourth team in five seasons.
The biggest question is what position Bonzi will play. He’s no point guard, so that leaves time for him at the 2-3. Except those positions are currently manned by Tracy McGrady (one of the best talents in the league) and Shane Battier (one of the best defenders in the league). The most logical explanation is for the Rockets to go small, with Yao, three wings – Battier, T-Mac, and Bonzi – and a point guard.
We already had the Rockets as a playoff team – assuming T-Mac’s back holds up – but Bonzi doesn’t appear to be the acquisition to put this team into the upper echelon alongside Dallas, Phoenix and San Antonio.
A morning peek into what sports bloggers around the web are saying, blended with various news, gossip, and analysis. Be honest: Haven’t you popped a few too many percocet and needed the assistance of the EMT folks? Broken bones are pain, people.
You want to know what a pennant race feels like? Then read these comments during the Astros pulsating 6-5, 15-inning victory last night over the lowly Pirates. That’s eight in a row, folks. (Crawfish Boxes)
Not sure how we missed this, but Richard Oliver, thanks. (San Antonio Express-News – near the bottom)
Au revoir, Odell Thurman. A couple failed drug tests and now an embarrassing DUI have got him suspended for the entire season. (Eye of the Tiger)
Barry Bonds update: His trainer is in a jail cell, Bonds is returning next year, he’s facing tax evasion charges, and oh yeah, he’s only 21 home runs shy of Hank Aaron’s immortal record. (New York Times)
BREAKING! Jen Sterger has advice on what to do if your girlfriend finds out you’ve Tivo’d late night Skinemax. First off, what douche does that? There’s new stuff EVERY NIGHT. (The Big Picture)
Portions of Screech’s sex tape have been released! But it’s disappointing. Who wants to witness a bearded and bespecled loser talking? We need T&A, dammit. (TMZ.com)
Tracy McGrady showed up at a Janet Jackson party in New York City, and if you scroll down, you’ll see him swimming in his sweater. (Young, Black, and Fabulous)
We’re about a month away from the start of the NBA season, and to get you pumped/geeked/stoked for all the madness of LeBron and D Wade and Kobe, we decided to interview SI.com’s Kelly Dwyer, a hoops junkie who parlayed a blog into a pretty sweet gig. He also probably wishes he had a cool photo of himself napping on a couch, mouth slightly ajar, while wearing a backpack. He does not. We peppered him with questions about LeBron, NBA thuggery and LeBron’s mom; he responded with answers about strippers, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the disaster that is the Knicks. Get crunk, people.
Q: Is Zach Randolph the most troubled player in the NBA? Or is it Ruben Patterson?
It’s all relative, especially to those of us that grew up with Jerrod Mustaf, and breathlessly read accounts of Steve Kerr and Jud Bucheler chasing strippers off the party swing at some swank Florida club in the late 90’s.
Q: Greg Oden next year. You believe the hype? Why? Why not?
I believe I’ve also used a staircase to aid in balance while attempting to dance. Not that I needed the help. I hear “September,” by Earth, Wind and Fire, and it’s straight to the banister.
Q: How/why is career criminal Eddie Griffin still in the NBA?
His facial hair somehow makes Kevin Garnett’s goatee look good by comparison. And, if what we’ve read is true, Eddie is the sort of player Rick Pitino has been known to call “multi-versatile.” The NBA appreciates a good multi-tasker.
What a morning. Inexplicably, in our thirst for all the Jason Whitlock vs. ESPN information we could cobble together, we kind of missed this: Terrell Owens may or may not have tried to kill himself.
So we just caught the press conference – by the way, props to ESPN for using a hard news guy like Bob Ley in the studio today – and our uninformed, thousands-of-miles-away guess is that Owens didn’t try to kill himself.*
Why would he commit suicide? Because he sometimes acts bi-polar? Because he grew up without a father? Because he’s an insecure nutjob? Because he’s afraid of the Eagles? We couldn’t come up with a logical explanation for TO taking his own life – although you may argue that those who suffer from bi-polar disorder don’t always act in a logical manner. (For the record, TO has never been diagnosed as being bi-polar – unless ESPN’s Michael Smith just got out of med school and we missed the memo.)
At the most eagerly-awaited press conference since Kobe Bryant boffed a Colorado hotel worker, TO opened by saying he just got off the practice field. And that he mixed his pain pills with supplements (which is just a stupid thing to do, but whatever). And that he plans to play this weekend against the Texans.
It should all be up on You Tube momentarily. For the three of you who haven’t studied the police report that appeared on the Smoking Gun, we’ve got it below.
Hey, this is perfect! It goes great with the reports from the Baylor University Medical Center that doctors reportedly tried to induce vomiting on Terrell Owens after the star receiver tried to kill himself. Awesome. The TO press conference is at 3:15, and we’ll be posting out thoughts after that.
Wait, you mean Chris Mortensen was wrong? Pretty boy/soon-to-be baby daddy Matt Leinart won’t be starting at quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals this week in a pivotal road test against the Atlanta Falcons?
Ok, got it.
Errors happen. Surely, ESPN regrets the error. (If you’re curious about our NBA shootaround article last month, we’ll be tackling that one tomorrow.) After Dennis Green announced the Cards were sticking with Warner Tuesday, ESPN went with this curious and annoying headline: “Cards Change Mind, to Stick with Warner at QB.”
It’s virtually unconscionable that ESPN can get away with something as blatantly wrong as this. Such is life at the Worldwide Leader. The guys at Pro Football Talk, the ultimate morning NFL must-read, took it a step further and spoke to some league execs about the colossal error:
“These guys have no accountability and when they are wrong (and if you add it up, it may be more often than not) they just let it slide,” said the source.
Our initial guess was that Arizona coach Dennis Green spoonfed the item to ESPN … but if that were the case, wouldn’t Denny have shared the info with the local beat writers, too? Since he didn’t, our guess is that perhaps Mort talked to angry owner (or some such executive) in Arizona who felt the QB change was necessary. After the harrowing loss to the Rams, any NFL fan could have made the leap that Leinart should get a shot as the starter. But for Mort to run it as gospel seems pretty irresponsible.
We tapped an NFL beat writer, who offered up this guess:
I don’t think for a second that Dennis Green was the leak on the Leinart story. I don’t know who is, but I think these days the ESPN guys just throw enough shit at the wall to see what sticks…The guy is a joke. The motto among [writers] is that if we see it on ESPN, we don’t believe it unless it comes from [John] Clayton.
So this morning, before Terrell Owens tried to go all Kurt Cobain on us, we were alerted to this comical piece in USA Today about the firing of ESPN’s Jason Whitlock.
Immediately, it reminded us of a classic scene in the Godfather where Michael Corleone (Pacino) wanted to kill a New York City cop. His first order of business, though, was to make sure his family controlled the newspapers, so that after the killing, the Corleone family could muck up the officer’s name in print. Michael Corleone would be proud of the ESPN suits who planted this in USA Today:
On that blog, Whitlock says he doesn’t “have a problem with ESPN. It’s a great network.” He says Mike Lupica, often on ESPN, “is an insecure, mean-spirited busybody,” and, Whitlock, an African-American, talking about espn.com columnist Scoop Jackson, says, “The publishing of his fake ghetto posturing is an insult to black intelligence.” Writes Whitlock: “ESPN does not tolerate criticism.” Except some criticism. Lupica, on Reporters, often smirks at ESPN. ESPN’s Mike Golic publicly criticized ESPN’s hiring of Tony Kornheiser for MNF. Chris Fowler, host for College GameDay, wrote a recent espn.com column suggesting marketing considerations play too big a role in picking the show’s college sites. And ESPN has its own ombudsman, George Solomon, who nitpicks on a regular basis. Says ESPN’s Josh Krulewitz: “There are numerous examples of allowing people to voice diverse critical opinions of our company, including Jason himself. These are personal attacks that went too far.” Media people can sometimes come across as aggrieved, even petty. But that’s so misleading.
If there are any young journalists reading, you learn this in J-School 101: When a publicist is feeding you something, make sure to fully check it out. It doesn’t appear as if Hiestand bothered to contact Whitlock about this item, but he made sure to get the ESPN side. Clearly, this Josh Krulewitz fellow fed Hiestand the Lupica-Golic-Fowler stuff, which is, laughable.
Hell, what does “smirks at ESPN” mean? And Golic didn’t criticize TK, he just said Kornheiser stunk up the season-opener (though Golic may have just been jealous that he wasn’t the one in the booth). And while we have expressed continual love for Chris Fowler’s professionalism, his column in question is hardly anything that would warrant a slap on the wrist from the Worldwide Leader.
Now, the philosophy has been rethought by upper management. For the first time, the competitive landscape of football programming is a frequent consideration. Serving the needs of ABC’s new prime-time package of games is often a priority. The decision on GameDay’s site is less a clear-cut “best game” philosophy now and is more complicated, made on a landscape where terms like “synergy” and “branding” live. Please know this: Lee, Kirk and I have no say in decisions on GameDay’s location. But as host of the show for 17 years, I am mainly concerned with the show’s specific legacy, not the global college football landscape.
Later, Fowler gets the other side of the story from some suit at the network.
When Hiestand spoke to Krulewitz, why not ask about TJ Simers getting booted from Around the Horn for criticizing the network with these harsh words: “I hate it. I hate that show. But I hear a cash register going off in my head when I do it?” Or Kornheiser’s suspension from his radio show for poking fun at ESPN? Or John Feinstein’s disappearance from behind the camera for slamming ESPN’s adaptation of his memorable book, Season on the Brink?
As bloggers, very rarely will we ever break news about NFL signings, NBA trades, or MLB injuries. Occasionally yes, frequently, no. But what we can do, as sports fans, is attempt to call the largest and most powerful sports entity on the planet, ESPN, when they fuck up. Because it doesn’t appear as if anyone else is.
We’re hoping that ESPN’s Ric Bucher isn’t pulling a Mort with this: Bonzi Wells to the Rockets, for two years, $5 million. This is pretty fresh news, so we don’t yet have a 3,000 word dissertation on the acquisition by John Hollinger. You’ll have to settle for our bleary-eyed breakdown: For what was left, a job well done. But not a championship acquisition.
A morning peek into what sports bloggers around the web are saying, blended with various news, gossip, and analysis. Be honest: Haven’t you popped a few too many percocet and needed the assistance of the EMT folks? Broken bones are pain, people.
We’re about a month away from the start of the NBA season, and to get you pumped/geeked/stoked for all the madness of LeBron and D Wade and Kobe, we decided to interview SI.com’s Kelly Dwyer, a hoops junkie who parlayed a blog into a pretty sweet gig. He also probably wishes he had a cool photo of himself napping on a couch, mouth slightly ajar, while wearing a backpack. He does not. We peppered him with questions about LeBron, NBA thuggery and LeBron’s mom; he responded with answers about strippers, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the disaster that is the Knicks. Get crunk, people.
What a morning. Inexplicably, in our thirst for all the 
So this morning, before Terrell Owens tried to go all Kurt Cobain on us, we were alerted to 