States Passing 'Tim Tebow' Bills for Home-Schooled Athletes: Twenty-five states have passed bills allowing home-schooled students to play sports at public schools, a movement sparked by an obscure Denver Broncos quarterback who played for Nease High School near Jacksonville, Fl., despite never stepping foot in the place as a student. A bill before Virginia's legislature is hotly debated. "I support choice, but if you've chosen that, you can't use public schools as an a la carte system," said William Bosher, a former state superintendent of schools. "It's football today. Tomorrow it's a National Academy of Sciences project. The next day it's homecoming queen. Where does it begin and end?"

posted by rcade to general at 07:01 PM - 15 comments

An Open Letter from Kenny Powers to Tim Tebow: "The more I read about Tim Tebow, the more I see similarities to my own life story," writes Kenny Powers. "Though neither the strongest nor the fastest, he excels at sports. Many experts doubt the remarkable lad. They tell him he throws funny, and that he doesn't have the right physique for the game. It's science, they say. He'll only go so far. But the Gifted Young Athlete refuses to let the doubters shit in his Wheaties."

posted by rcade to general at 01:41 PM - 3 comments

For Your Soul: So, here’s the game: The Jon Lovitz Devil has consigned you to an eternity of being stuck in traffic in a wheezing Ford Escort without air conditioning, and the only radio station plays Michael Bolton 24 hours a day. But you have one chance to escape your fate. You get to choose one athlete, at his or her peak, and one sport. Ever. And if that athlete wins, you get a whole different eternity, with chocolate-covered strawberries, DirecTV and a deck that overlooks the ocean. Ah, but there is one catch. You get to pick the athlete and sport. But the Jon Lovitz Devil gets to pick the terms.

posted by gfinsf to general at 06:18 AM - 49 comments

Cat-Murdering Dog with Dorito's Wins Super Bowl Ad Meter: The USA Today Ad Meter panel's top pick during the Super Bowl was a spot -- produced on a $20 budget -- featuring a Great Dane that murders and buries the family cat and buys his owner's silence with Dorito's brand tortilla chips. The runners-up also featured canines in a VW spot about an overweight dog and a Skechers spot with a sneaker-wearing bulldog outracing greyhounds. The game's non-football content also featured a rapper flipping the bird during a Madonna halftime show that was highlighted by a slacklining acrobat.

posted by rcade to general at 11:25 AM - 37 comments

Florida Requires Pro Sports Teams to Take In Homeless: Two Republican state legislators in Florida have introduced bills that would require the state's pro sports franchises to house homeless people in their stadiums or give back the millions they've received from the state. "I want to make good citizens out of them," said state Sen. Mike Bennett (R-Bradenton), who authored the legislation with state Rep. Frank Artilles (R-Miami). A never-enforced 1988 law required teams that take state money to house the homeless when they're not playing. "The rule was you took the money you were supposed to use it for a program for homeless people and you didn't do it and therefore we want our money back."

posted by rcade to general at 10:06 AM - 10 comments

Do Sports Build Character, or Damage It?: Mark Edmundson, a University of Virginia English professor, asks the question through the lens of his own experience as a mediocre high school football player: "Over time, I came to understand that the objective of the game, on the deepest level, wasn't to score spectacular touchdowns or make bone-smashing tackles or block kicks. The game was much more about practice than about the Saturday-afternoon contests. And practice was about trying to do something over and over again, failing and failing, and then finally succeeding part way. Practice was about showing up and doing the same drills day after day and getting stronger and faster by tiny, tiny increments, and then discovering that by the end of the season you were effectively another person" (via MetaFilter).

posted by rcade to general at 09:52 AM - 7 comments

CBS Launching Fantasy Sports App Store: CBS Sports is opening up its fantasy sports services and data to third-party developers, according to TechCrunch. An app store will launch Jan. 31 that can offer free and commercial apps. CBS will take a 30 percent cut on sales of the latter. API documentation and more details are available from the CBSSports.Com Development Center.

posted by rcade to general at 09:44 AM - 1 comment

NBC Makes Run at ESPN with NBC Sports Channel: On Jan. 2, NBC is mounting a challenge to the ESPN empire with the launch of NBC Sports Channel, a renamed and revamped version of Versus. The NBC networks offer Sunday Night Football, the Olympics, PGA golf and the NHL and recently added Major League Soccer, an NFL divisional playoff game, Thanksgiving night game and three Super Bowls. The company wants to add college football, Major League Baseball, Nascar rating and NFL Thursday night games as rights come up in the next few years.

posted by rcade to general at 11:20 AM - 13 comments

Philly Sportswriter Bill Conlin Accused of Child Sex Abuse: Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter Bill Conlin, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, retired Tuesday after being accused of sexually molesting four children -- including his niece -- in the '70s when they were ages 7 to 12. Several parents of the children were told at the time, and some confronted Conlin, but no one called police, according to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Conlin's niece Kelley Blanchet, one of the alleged victims, said, "People have kept his secret. It's not just the victims, it's the victims' families. There were so many people who knew about this and did nothing." The four provided videotaped testimony to police last year but the crimes were beyond the statute of limitations. Conlin wrote a column about the Sandusky allegations last month, suggesting that it's easy to say you'd do the right thing if you witnessed sex abuse. "Everybody says he will do the right thing, get involved, put his own ass on the line before or after the fact," he wrote. "But the moment itself has a cruel way of suspending our fearless intentions."

posted by rcade to general at 07:43 PM - 6 comments

George Vecsey Quitting New York Times Column: George Vecsey is stepping down after almost 30 years as a sports columnist for the New York Times. One of the most prominent columnists in sports who does not appear on television, Vecsey is also known for books on baseball and coauthoring Coal Miner's Daughter with Loretta Lynn. He writes, "If I have one regret -- one pitch I'd like back -- it is my upbeat commentary during the McGwire-Sosa home run frolics of 1998, after Steve Wilstein of The Associated Press spotted androstenedione in McGwire's locker." As for his favorite moments, he writes, "[T]he Olympics and the Tour de France were great, but my eight World Cups of soccer, so far, were the best sporting events on the planet."

posted by rcade to general at 11:08 AM - 3 comments

Walter Iooss, Jr., Talks About Shooting Famous Athletes: Walter Iooss, Jr., a Sports Illustrated photographer for more than four decades, dishes some dirt in a great story for the magazine on his experiences shooting star athletes such as Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tiger Woods and swimsuit models including Cheryl Tiegs and Paulina Porizkova. "All the guys who are perceived as a------s are a------s. Randy Moss, Albert Belle, especially Barry Bonds," he writes. "Brett Favre, on the other hand, was a party waiting to happen, back before he cleaned up his act. When he was young, he and his agent, Bus Cook, sometimes arrived at the shoots with beers in their hands."

posted by rcade to general at 06:45 PM - 6 comments

This Is the Classical: Kickstarter-funded sports site The Classical launched over the weekend. Just in time for the NBA's return, FreeDarko founder (and all-around great name haver) Bethlehem Shoals discusses the state of the NBA and soccer blogger Linda Hui expands on New Zealand's Rugby World Cup victory (via MetaFilter).

posted by rcade to general at 01:22 PM - 1 comment

Bankrupt Power Balance Owes Kobe Bryant $400,000: The makers of the Power Balance Wrist Band, a $30 rubber band with a Mylar hologram to "optimize energy flow" touted to improve athletic performance, filed for bankruptcy in January after agreeing to a $57 million class-action settlement and admitting there's no scientific basis for its product claims. The company owes celebrity endorsers Kobe Bryant ($400,000), Blake Griffin ($20,000) and skateboarder Ryan Sheckler ($25,000). It also owes the Sacramento Kings $100,000 after the team reached a deal to rename its arena Power Balance Pavilion.

posted by rcade to general at 12:40 PM - 9 comments

Ex ESPN Exec Commits Premature Masturbation Allegation Litigation: Former ESPN senior vice president Keith Clinkscales -- once the highest ranking black executive at the network -- has sued another former ESPN executive in a pre-emptive move, believing that the person was talking to Deadspin about how Clinkscales allegedly masturbated on a New York-to-Los Angeles flight in front of sideline host Erin Andrews. Deadspin's A.J. Daulerio writes this afternoon, "Just to be clear: A former ESPN senior vice president is suing another former ESPN executive on the grounds that she defamed him in a story that we hadn't written yet. That we're now publishing." Deadspin passes along this claim about the flight: "At some point during the trip, Andrews saw Clinkscales masturbating in his seat, beneath his iPad. When he realized he had been caught, Andrews told Connie, Clinkscales panicked and muttered, 'You know, I'm one of your bosses.'"

posted by rcade to general at 06:31 PM - 16 comments

Viva Las Vegas: Grantland's Bill Barnwell is writing an ongoing series demystifying sports gambling for the newcomer. His first two subjects: how to bet the middle and teaser bets (via MetaFilter).

posted by rcade to general at 04:36 PM - 0 comments

Runner carries injured foe half mile to help in middle of race: "I didn't think about my race, I knew I needed to stop and help him," Ripley said in the school district release. "It was something I would expect my other teammates to do. I'm nothing special; I was just in the right place at the right time." In today's "Everyman For Himself" society, its nice to hear stories like this.

posted by bo_fan to general at 02:02 PM - 4 comments

Big 12 Picking Up The Pieces: Now that the PAC 12 has rejected Oklahoma and Texas, the Big 12 is scrambling to pick up the pieces and rebuild a conference that seemed doomed to history only a few days ago.

posted by Tinman to general at 12:14 PM - 8 comments

61-year-old Vietnam vet makes the cut as a small-college kicker: What a great story. Be nice to know his stats/skill level at that age.

posted by bo_fan to general at 09:44 AM - 6 comments

North Dakota Ready to Drop Fighting Sioux: Because of looming NCAA sanctions, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple will introduce legislation Nov. 7 that will give University of North Dakota officials the authority to change the school's Fighting Sioux nickname. Dalrymple said he expects that bill to pass and the school to change the name. A 2007 court settlement required the school to change its mascot unless both of the state's Sioux tribes could be persuaded to support it. The only holdouts keeping their names with a tribe's approval are the Florida State Seminoles, Utah Utes, Central Michigan Chippewas and the Catawba Indians.

posted by rcade to general at 11:35 AM - 7 comments

Sports Teams Ranked by Social Media Popularity: The most popular sports team is the Spanish soccer club Real Madrid, according to a metric of social media followers and views tabulated by Famecount. The team has 17.9 million Facebook fans, 2.1 million Twitter followers and 39.9 million YouTube views. The least is the Italian soccer club A.C. Siena, with just 1,516 Facebook fans.

posted by rcade to general at 07:24 PM - 2 comments

Ralph Nader Forms Sports Fan Advocacy Group: Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader has founded the League of Fans, a sports reform group pushing to end public money for building stadiums, break up college football's Bowl Championship Series and end collegiate sports scholarships. The group opposes the "win-at-all-costs and a profit-at-all-costs mentality" of American sports, said its sports policy director Ken Reed.

posted by rcade to general at 03:42 PM - 21 comments

The Hall of Fame isn't real: The process is a lose-lose: It's either good (and then bad) or bad (and then good).

posted by tselson to general at 11:50 PM - 0 comments

Plane Crash Killed Sports Collector, Million-Dollar Memorabilia Hoard: In February 2009, a commuter plane crashed on approach to Buffalo and killed 49 people on board and a man in a house struck by the plane. The man, 61-year-old Doug Wielinski, had a "world-class" collection of sports memorabilia that could've been worth $1 million, much of which was destroyed by the crash. His widow Karen is telling the story of the Vietnam veteran, father of four daughters and sports collector -- who was assembling a 1933 Buffalo Bisons puzzle the moment he died. "They're worth $500 or $600 apiece, if you can find them, but they're impossible to find," said his best friend, Jim Maciejewski. "I've been collecting, what, 55 years now, and I had one. Doug was exuberant on the phone: 'Macie, I found the Bisons puzzles.' That was the last time we talked."

posted by rcade to general at 11:58 AM - 2 comments

ESPN Suspends Writer for Leach Book: ESPN has indefinitely suspended college football writer Bruce Feldman for contributing to Mike Leach's autobiography Swing Your Sword, SportsByBrooks reports. After being fired by Texas Tech following a dispute with his player Adam James, the son of ESPN analyst Craig James, Leach has sued ESPN and a public relations firm hired by Craig James for libel and slander. Though Feldman got ESPN's permission beforehand to work on the project and has not used any of his ESPN platforms to promote it, he was punished in a conference call Thursday, prompting a furious response from other sportswriters.

posted by BornIcon to general at 02:47 PM - 11 comments

Swing for the Fences: a review of Scorecasting: "Even if you calculate that on average away teams only ever had a 10 per cent chance of beating one of Mourinho's sides, the odds against going unbeaten for 150 matches are more than seven million to one." David Runciman reviews Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won for the London Review of Books. The article mainly focuses on home advantage and what the reviewer thinks about the authors' hypothesis regarding its cause. via MetaFilter

posted by WalterMitty to general at 06:46 AM - 1 comment

Top Ten Evil Sports: Doesn't include cheerleading.

posted by owlhouse to general at 09:58 PM - 16 comments

Why Grantland Rice Sucked: Though Grantland was created to showcase great sportswriting, its namesake Grantland Rice was spectacularly awful, Deadspin's Tommy Craggs writes. "The name of mainstream sportswriting's last best hope is an homage to so many of the bad impulses that helped snuff out mainstream sportswriting in the first place."

posted by rcade to general at 09:40 AM - 4 comments

The Strongest Hands in the World: Nine years ago, "Big Rich" Williams was an offensive lineman projected to be a third round NFL pick with an earning potential of millions. He quit the draft and instead pursued the low-dollar, low-attention strongman sport of grip and may have the strongest hand strength of all time. "Using one hand, the men must hoist a 163-pound anvil by the horn and walk. The first few contestants can't even loosen the weight from the ground, their palms slipping uselessly as if they were tugging at a tree root," reports ESPN the Magazine. "Now it is Williams' turn. He approaches the anvil, bends, wraps his right hand around the tip and lifts. He waddles the length of the stage, turns and waddles back. He does not rush. He carries the anvil like a lunch pail. He lets it slip at 60 feet, eight inches. That nearly doubles the world record -- the one he set last year."

posted by rcade to general at 01:56 PM - 6 comments

CNN Sportscaster Nick Charles Facing Death: Sportscaster Nick Charles, the original sports anchor at CNN and a boxing commentator, has been fighting incurable bladder cancer since August 2009 and decided to call off chemotherapy in January. Charles, 64, has a five-year-old daughter from his third marriage and several grown children whose forgiveness he sought for the pain caused by divorce. After a chance reunion in early March with Mike Tyson, the longtime friends speak several times a week. "In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand," Charles said. "I'm going to be victorious. I finally got my life right."

posted by rcade to general at 03:39 PM - 2 comments

Bill James: Develop Writers Like Ballplayers: "Our society is very, very good at developing certain types of skills and certain types of genius. We are fantastically good at identifying and developing athletic skills -- better than we are, really, at almost anything else," baseball statistical guru Bill James writes in his new book Solid Fool's Gold. "We are quite good at developing and rewarding inventiveness. We are pretty good at developing the skills necessary to run a small business -- a fast food restaurant, for example. ... We are not so good at developing great writers."

posted by rcade to general at 09:36 AM - 9 comments

Ed Rendell Defends Philly Sports Fans: Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) has responded to a GQ article that called Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies fans the worst in America. "The Santa Claus incident was more than 40 years ago -- there are very few of us left who pelted that forlorn, scrawny Santa, and certainly current fans cannot be blamed for that," Rendell writes. "The vomiting incident was horrible, but it was one incident perpetrated by only one fan."

posted by rcade to general at 02:28 PM - 9 comments

New York Times to begin charging for online access: On March 28th, the NY Times will institute a pay wall and begin charging frequent readers of its content for online access via digital subscriptions. If they are successful and other content providers follow suit, the economic landscape of online content will change. How will this affect SpoFi and the linking to online content? When more online content sources have pay walls, SpoFi members may be able to continue following links to content without having to pay for the access, but will this coming transition end up imposing restrictions and/or an economic burden on SpoFi itself?

posted by beaverboard to general at 10:50 AM - 5 comments

Tsunami Disaster Disrupts Japanese Sports: Japanese sports leagues are debating what to do about their upcoming schedules as the country recovers from the devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. Next week's World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo have been cancelled. The baseball season is supposed to begin March 25 but could be affected by planned rolling blackouts. One of the missing in Sendai is Marty Kuehnert, an American who is the former GM of the Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team.

posted by rcade to general at 01:18 PM - 14 comments

Bill Simmons Launching New Sports Site: Bill Simmons is developing a new website for ESPN that will have no ESPN branding and be "70% sports, 30% pop culture," SportsGrid reports. "When people launch sites they make the mistake of spending big dollars on people who've already kind of peaked," said Simmons, who turns 42 in September. "They don't look at the young and hungry people. Especially the people 32 and under."

posted by rcade to general at 05:13 PM - 1 comment

Bleacher Report Exploits Japanese Earthquake: Bleacher Report responded to today's natural disaster with the pure search-engine bait story "Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: The Worst Natural Disasters in Sports History." The story was subsequently taken down from the front page. "We are dealing with this internally and will hold ourselves accountable," writes a site admin.

posted by rcade to general at 04:40 PM - 4 comments

Stanford Gave Athletes Easy Class List: Stanford is no longer giving athletes a list of easy classes after it attracted media attention. The list from the school's Athletic Academic Resource Center included a drama class in Beginning Improvising, another in Social Dances of North America and a sociology class on Interpersonal Relations. The classes were "always chock-full of athletes and very easy A's," said Kira Maker, a soccer player who used the list her freshman year.

posted by rcade to general at 04:58 PM - 17 comments

Library of Congress Acquires 6,000 Sports Broadcasts: When he was 17, John Miley asked his parents to buy him a wire recorder so he could capture broadcasts of sporting events. Sixty-three years later, his collection of more than 6,000 radio and television recordings of sporting events from 1920 to 1972 is being acquired by the Library of Congress. They will eventually all be digitized and shared online.

posted by rcade to general at 11:30 AM - 1 comment

Boston: The 'Silicon Valley of Sports Analytics': The city of Boston is getting a reputation as the "Silicon Valley of sports analytics," the Boston Globe reports. The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference takes place this week and is a "must-attend," said Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Moneyball author Michael Lewis, who helped spark the analytics craze, says of Boston, "The area was perennially sort of a loser's town. You're now triumphant in everything because of it. It's amazing how dominant the Boston area teams are right now -- the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Patriots. And it really has a lot to do with embracing a new way of thinking about sports."

posted by rcade to general at 03:11 PM - 2 comments

NCAA President: No Pay for Athletes: The NCAA's new president said that there will be no payments for athletes on his watch. "They are student-athletes. They are not our employees, they don't work for us," said Mark Emmert. "They get to have experiences that very few students get a chance to enjoy." College football generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2010. College basketball generated $4.55 billion in ad revenue from 2000 to 2009.

posted by rcade to general at 11:39 AM - 58 comments

Cal Kills Baseball to Save Women's Sports: The University of California-Berkeley has backed off its plan to kill women's lacrosse and gymnastics, deciding instead to cut men's baseball and gymnastics. The school received $12 to $13 million in pledges to save the women's programs. "It took us a long time to build up the program to be a playoff contender on a yearly basis," said baseball coach David Esquier. "To see that all come crashing down and all at once, is difficult to watch."

posted by rcade to general at 02:07 PM - 10 comments