UNM junior defender Elizabeth Lambert was suspended indefinitely from soccer following the most some mean gamesladyship.  Anyway, safe to say that if I were to meet her in an ally I would run like hell in the other direction. [via]

San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginóbili shut down a pesky bat with his bare hands during the Kings-Spurs match on Halloween night, which means that, Manu Ginóbili should be hired to take down Edward Cullen.  From the video evidence there is no indication that Manu took a flop to lure the bat in.  [via]

Crazy, just crazy.  I mean the wig, not Agassi on meth.  Which, I suppose is just as crazy.  But man I loved that dude’s hair.  It was so zeitgeisty.  So indicative of his “rebel” image.

“I asked myself: you want to wear a toupee? On the tennis court? I answered myself; what else could I do?” But the wig began to disintegrate as he took a shower the night before the Paris final — “probably I used the wrong hair rinse,” Agassi writes. He panicked and called his brother Philly into the room. Together, they managed to clamp the wig together using clips and pins.

Agassi, 39, writes: “Of course I could have played without my hairpiece, but what would all the journalists have written if they knew that all the time I was really wearing a wig? During the warming-up training before play I prayed. Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off. With each leap, I imagine it falling into the sand. I imagine millions of spectators move closer to their TV sets, their eyes widening and, in dozens of dialects and languages, ask how Andre Agassi’s hair has fallen from his head.”

“There were tears because you have visualized your dream and your dreams have become reality,” Keflezighi told the NY Times. “The other part as I’m running is Ryan. I know how proud he would have been of me.”

Ryan would be his close friend Ryan Shay, who collapsed during the 2007 Olympic time trial marathon on the New York course and subsequently passed away from a heart ailment at the ripe age of 27.

What do you get when you take six very talented footballers (Paul Wood, Paul Klein, Darryl Stewart, Tom Pett, Lewis Foster & Harry Adcroft) and create a giant game of Guitar Hero controlled with footballs?  The track is Kasabian’s “Underdogs,” which, um, could have been something better.

“The Vancouver Olympics made a smart choice in deciding to use precious metals from old electronics. By salvaging medal materials from old products, the Olympic committee is saving perfectly good gold, silver, and bronze from ending up in landfills,” writes Ariel Schwartz. “ Because it makes no sense to mine for new gold when a single junked PC has more of the stuff in it than 17 tons of ore. And if the medals are promoted well, they could bring awareness to the cause of recycled scrap. With the entire world watching what happens at the Olympic games, there is no better venue to promote such an important–and easy-to-implement–solution to electronics recycling.” 

Word.  It makes for a good story, except that, according to the Ottawa Citizen, less than 1% of the metal used to make the medals came from recycled materials.

It all seems like innocuous fun, at first, and in the end the cameraman seems pretty stoked about the whole thing.  Me?  If that were me?  I probably would have Winnie the Pooh’d myself and never gone kite boarding again.  He gets some major air.  [via]

Produced by Bill Simmons, the lineup is fairly tight.  Well-done sports documentaries are hard to come by because often times the subject matter is just not interesting enough.  Here, Simmons has given his filmmakers the opportunity to explore less-familiar stories, or familiar stories with a new wrinkle.

“We were especially attracted to stories that resonated at the time but were eventually forgotten for whatever reason. Like the unique connection between Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble,” Simmons writes.  “Like Tim Richmond taking NASCAR by storm, disappearing just as quickly because of an “illness” (later revealed to be AIDS), then having his story covered up and dismissed. Like O.J.’s car chase, Escobar’s own goal and Jimmy the Greek’s career imploding in just a few sentences. Like the 2004 Red Sox winning four incredible games in four nights against the Yankees; even if the big picture theme had been beaten to death, the small picture theme (every remarkable twist from Game 4 through Game 7) had never really been told. We wanted people to say, “Wow, I forgot how (fill in a word: great, amazing, poignant, crazy, depressing, unbelievable) that was” or “I can’t believe I never knew that whole story.” We didn’t want to check off a laundry list of the 30 biggest stories from 1979 to 2009.” 

Barry Levinson, Albert Maysles, John Singleton, Barbara Kopple, Spike Jonze and Ice Cube are just a few of the directors who contribute. Tonight the series kicks off with Kings Ransom, Peter Berg’s piece about Wayne Gretzky being traded to the L.A. Kings.

The docs air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.  You can preview several of the movies and scope out the lineup here.

The two Russian grandmasters will play 12 rapid and semi-rapid games over four days in Valencia beginning tomorrow.  The matches will air online.

Possibly continuing a trend from just about every major news organization, ESPN rolled out ESPN Boston today.  There are no other cities to date, but it would seem like Boston or New York would be the logical places to roll this out. 

Of course, they have Bill Simmons participating, but also Peter Gammons makes an appearance and they’ve managed to poach Mike Reiss from The Boston Globe to be their new Patriots writer/blogger. 

It’s an interesting experience from ESPN and if any sports media company has the cache and wherewithall to put local sports sections out of business, they would be it.

From his 7-6 (3), 7-5, 7-5 semi-final match win in today’s U.S. Open against Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer called the shot seen above, “the greatest of his life.”  And let’s be honest, Federer has had a lifetime of great shots.

Not sure how it’s going to end, but if “the flue game” against Utah in the 1997 finals is #6, then I can’t begin to imagine what the top 5 holds for us.  I’m guessing the layup against L.A. in the 1991 finals, the 68 he dropped against the Celtics in the 1988 playoffs, etc.

YouTube is also paying reverence to his airness. [via]

Here’s the mascot’s, Berlino, insidious plan to destroy 400m hurdle champ Melanie Walker at the 2009 World Championships. [via]

But after watching the race over and over and slowing it down to watch his stride and just marvel at his conservation of energy, we noticed that it looked like he was fully across the finish line in 9.3 flat. According to the competition rules, the sprinter’s torso must be breach the finish line and again it looks like Bolt has accomplished that.

9.30 seconds is an absurdly low time and yet seemingly contradicts the study by two scientists which puts the human limit at 9.51 seconds.

Think about that for a moment.  It’s been calculated (erroneously or not) that the absolute fastest time a human can run 100 meters is in 9.51 seconds and Usain Bolt is already clocked in at 9.58 and from the look above it might be possible for him to run closer to 9.30.  That alone makes him, in my book, the fastest human being to ever exist.

Holy moly.  While most of the sports watching world was engaged in Tiger Woods utterly choking away his first major, track speedster Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a new world record in the 100 meters.  Anybody see this race? Bolt’s stride and gallop is a thing of artistry. Amazing what happens when an athlete pushes himself to greatness by his own desire and from the competition of others.

If you’re counting, Bolt has now set the world record at 9.72, 9.69 and now 9.58.

Huh.  So they made a movie out of Michael Lewis’s book, The Blind Side. Looks like it could be decent, if not schmaltzy.  Hopefully, this is more like Friday Night Lights and less like a Lifetime Original. 

Nice to see Sandra Bullock looking good and doing something other than a terrible rom-com.  It even looks like she may be using Michael Oher to open a lane to Oscar-baiting daylight. 

For those scratching their heads, Michael Oher was the Baltimore Ravens’s #1 pick in this year’s NFL draft.  But back in high school, before the football glory, he was struggling to live in a Memphis ghetto; then he was adopted by a white family in rural Mississippi and given a second chance.  Because he was built like a Mac Truck, with the grace of a ballerina, the high school football team turned him into a left tackle, one of the NFL’s most highly sought-after positions.

What’s the easiest and most profitable way to do so?  Open a 14-room gentleman’s club.  Prostitution is, after all, legal there. 

However, the decision to become a “pimp” for Logan Campbell may cost him a spot to compete on the team. 

“Selection takes into account not just performance but also the athlete’s ability to serve as an example to the youth of the country,” Team NZ funding manager John Schofield told the country’s Sunday Star Times newspaper.

Still, the financial rewards of running a legal business are enough for him to risk that.  

To take the financial strain from his parents Campbell has gone into partnership with Hugo Philiips, a 20-year-old accountancy graduate, to set up what the pair insist is a “high-class” escort agency.

He hopes to take a couple of years off to work full-time on the new venture, before returning to training in 2011 with a NZ$300,000 Olympic kitty.

When people think of a pimp they think of a guy standing around on a street corner with gold chains,” he told the Sunday Star Times.”Pimps are more tough-type guys. I’m an owner of an escort agency.”

He accepts that his chosen profession carries with it a certain reputation.

“Mum was hesitant but she met the girls, a couple came over to her house and she was sweet as. She realised they were just normal people supporting their kids and stuff.”

If you’ve ever seen a picture of the goofy looking QB, you would know why htis was inherently funny and quite puzzling.  But now, a full decade later, the story behind Grbac’s selection makes the story that much better and manages to generate a little simpathy from us. 

From Jeff Pearlman, a writer at SI:

One of my favorite all-time stories is about Elvis Grbac (left), Rich Gannon (right) and People Magazine’s Sexiest Men issue from 1998. It is both outlandish and 100-percent true.

Back in the day I knew many People staffers, and they were all cool, fun, intelligent-and woefully ignorant about sports. Every year, in planning the Sexiest Men issue, People’s editors would ask a bunch of us at Sports Illustrated for suggestions and insight. In 1998, for a reason I’ll never understand, they decided not to seek out help.

The magazine chose Rich Gannon as its Sexiest Athlete. At the time, Gannon was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. Still a couple of seasons removed from his golden tenure with the Raiders, Gannon was 33, handsome and likable. In other words, a solid choice. Yet People, being People, simply informed the photographer assigned to the piece that the Sexiest Athlete was the Chiefs’ quarterback. Hence, he took pictures of the Chiefs’ quarterback. Well, one of the Chiefs’ quarterbacks: Elvis Grbac.

Yup.

The pictures made their way back to the New York offices, and editors were dumbfounded. This was their Sexiest Athlete? Yet upon learning the truth, no one with the magazine had the heart (guts?) to tell Grbac that an unfathomable mistake had been made. As a result, Elvis Grbac reigns as People’s 1998 Sexiest Athlete.

The article’s final line says it all: “His personality makes him sexy.”

Amen.

Oof.  [via Deadspin]

Wow. Leave it to Shaq Daddy to find a guy more impressive than then kid doing the forward flip and hitting a full court shot.

Obviously, there’s a lot of editing going on here. Not necessarily in the shots shown, but I imagine for every shot like this hit he had to take dozens or maybe a hundred attempts. That doesn’t make these shots any less impressive.

Also? Shaq is offering the kid a $1,000 to play him in HORSE.

Brady’s kayak tipped over on the Charles River and Robin was there to save him.  The best part of this story is not the actual story, but the comment thread over email between all the guys from Buffalo, NY.  They weren’t congratulatory at all, but rather peeved that a Buffalonian would sabotage the Bills season before it began. And that’s why I love the Buff.

To wit:

Wil Shephard: “Dude that’s crazy.  I can’t believe she didn’t let him drown.  Obviously not a real Bills fan.”

And Seamus Gallivan:  “My first reaction was texting Robin to congratulate her on becoming a real American hero. But I’ve since come to regret it and consider her a traitor to her hometown – if she would’ve let him drown, the Pats would have to sign JP Losman, and the Bills would have a much better shot at winning the AFC East, both of which would greatly improve the quality of life for all Buffalonians.”

I can’t wait for football to start back up.

And apparantly the Olympic committee took the city’s warm-fuzzies for gettin’ high as a reason to design the Olympic torch to look like a joint. 

Shit is hot. 

Composed of stainless steel, aluminum and sheet moulding, the torch was designed to evoke snow, ice, skiing and skating, but to many, the metre-long white torch looks suspiciously like a marijuana joint, especially when lit.

The observation has become so common in this city that it’s hard to know who was the first to say, “Hey, doesn’t that look like …”

But the torch’s resemblance to British Columbia’s biggest cash crop was evident right away to Jodie Emery, editor of Cannabis Culture magazine.

“A lot of people come to Vancouver because it’s marijuana-friendly, so I think people who already enjoy a joint themselves will feel a little more kinship to the Olympics,” said Emery, who ran as a Green party candidate in the provincial election this month.

The alternative, of course, is that the sleek torch is supposed to resemble futuristic skiis.  All I see is a squiggly bullet train, a shiny pen and dental equipment.  Don’t ask, but I love having my teeth cleaned.

Olympic Champion Usain Bolt set a world-record in the 150-meters Sunday  running it in a blistering 14.35 seconds on a temporary surface set up in Manchester’s city center. Right away, you’ll notice that the other schlubs running with him are no match for the Jamaican lightening bolt.

The Sports Scientists offers a bit of background on Bolt’s performance, which seems even more impressive with a little context.

Despite cool temperatures, and a reported lack of fitness thanks to a few minor injuries sustained in a car-crash about a month ago, Bolt’s first big showing on the world stage in 2009 lived up to the hype (Bolt’s love of speed extends beyond the track, apparently. The Jamaican taxi drivers are reported to have a nickname for him – “lead-foot”).

The 150m dissected – splits and projections

Bolt’s running is anything but lead-footed. He ran the first 100m in 9.90 seconds, which is an extra-ordinary time and a sign of things to come. But even more amazing, the final 100m (from 50m to the finish line) were clocked in an astonishing 8.72 seconds! That is being reported, though it’s so fast I’m almost skeptical.

Both exchanges are worth reading, if for nothing else than they’re sports food for thought.  The most memorable aspect is Gladwell’s thoughts on sports drafts and his suggestion that there shouldn’t be a draft, but rather college players should go on job interviews with their respective teams.

That suggestion alone, is worth wading through 20,000 words or so.

“Ball two stands alone, above any of the other dull business on the diamond. The intentional walk at least adds a base runner to the game. The halfhearted throw to first to check the runner is a sign that the pitcher is feeling tension. But ball two signifies almost nothing,” he writes for the Boston Globe. 

It is disapointing then, that for a self-professed baseball lover, Scocca misses the mark of the significance of ball two.  Baseball is a game of long con, of team chess, where winning depends largely on strategic decisions and subtle variances. 

Contrary to signifying nothing, ball two is one of those subtle variances.  Ball two can indirectly change the entire complexion of a game of baseball. 

Using a statistical measurement from Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski, Scocca argues that not much changes when a batter takes ball two. 

But the numbers also show the points where nothing happens. Batters who fell behind 1-2 batted .190. If they got ball two, their average crept up to only .205. “[T]here is nothing really even about a 2-2 count,” Posnanski wrote. “The pitcher is still firmly in control.”

But those numbers are completely misleading.  The statistics you need to examine are the players batting averages when ball two affects the count.  Based on statistics from the 2007 MLB season, ball two had a significant, if subtle, effect on games.  Here are the batting averages based upon count.

You’ll notice that there isn’t much difference between 1-2 and 2-2 counts, as Posnanski notes and Scocca reiterates. 

0-0 = .344
1-0 = .341

2-0 = .351
3-0 = .394

0-1 = .324
1-1 = .327

2-1 = .338
3-1 = .368

0-2 = .166
1-2 = .178

2-2 = .195
3-2 = .233

But there is a markedly huge difference between counts 2-1 (.338) and 1-2 (.178) and a slight difference between 2-0 (.351) and 1-1 (.327).  Those are the counts when ball two matters.  Ball two matters in relation to it not being a strike. 

So yes, while ball two, may on the surface, have little significance to the overall complexion to a baseball game — at least in comparison to say, more impactful offensive strikes like: the triple, the walk-off homerun, the stolen base or suicide squeeze, — it is the essence of baseball.  It is a minor event that can have drastic impacts.  For ball two is the minor rumble which makes all major quakes possible.

So howabout a few Old School Baseball Nites or Afternoons, you know? No BAMARAM-ARAMARAMARAMARAMA every time somebody adjusts their cup, eh? It won’t be, like, quiet, because there would be somebody playing Old-School Baseball Pipe Organ, OK? It’s like, the Classic Baseball musical instrument, the pipe organ! And somebody maybe has a bugle and they can do the real dah-nah-dah-nah-dah-nah-dah-nah-dah-nah-dah-nah: CHARGE thing, and it will be totally cool and mellow, like, Actual Crowd Noise and the HEYCOLDBEER guy and HEYHOTDOG guy will be relatively louder, and you’ll be able to hear the CRACK! of the bat, the WHAP! when the pitcher burns one in over the plate–all that shit, you know, the fucking Game, man. Heckling will be audible, as God intended. It’s like, people gotta wait for a lull in the BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA to yell at whatever opposing player is out there, and the players can’t hear most of the time because there’s all the BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA. Heckling is a huge part of the Classic Baseball Experience.

Street rider Danny MacAskill starts off by riding his bike across a narrow fence about four feet in the air… the video starts off a bit slowly but I think that’s due mostly to syncing it up with Band of Horses’s “Funeral.”  Like the  song, the video kicks in around the 1:30 mark and by the time the song’s guitar solo kicks in around 4:30, well, good god.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that British Columbia’’s Ryan Leech as some pretty sweet moves as well.  Plus?  That’s my city he’s riding in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Cynical-C and Kottke]

1. David Paresh of the Chronicle Review argues that spectator sports are ruining society.  He makes the distinction between watching and playing.  It’s a view I slightly agree with, even if, I’m a sports junkie.  My passion or desire to watch sports hasn’t quite been the same since The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.  It’s a short, complicated story as to why, but suffice it to say, since then I’ve watched with casual interest from afar.  I haven’t allowed myself to go nuts over professional (college inlcuded) athletes.

Marx was wrong: The opiate of the masses isn’t religion, but spectator sports. What else explains the astounding fact that millions of seemingly intelligent human beings feel that the athletic exertions of total strangers are somehow consequential for themselves? The real question we should be asking during the madness surrounding this month’s collegiate basketball championship season is not who will win, but why anyone cares.

2. Ever wonder how and why athletes go broke with their multi-million dollar salaries?  Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated investigated how this is possible.  It is more common than you think. It’s a strange combination of not caring about their finances, living waaay above their means, bad investments, etc.

Many players, consequently, are financial prey. “Disreputable people see athletes’ money as very easy to get to,” says Steven Baker, an agent who represents 20 NFL players. In May 2007 former quarterbacks Drew Bledsoe and Rick Mirer and five other NFL retirees invested at least $100,000 apiece in a now-defunct start-up called Pay By Touch—which touted “biometric authentication” technology that would help replace credit cards with fingerprints—even as the company was wracked by lawsuits and internal dissent. (The players later sued the financial-services firm UBS, which had encouraged its clients to invest in Pay By Touch, for allegedly withholding information about the company founder’s criminal history and drug use.)

About five years ago, [Angels outfielder Torre] Hunter says, he invested almost $70,000 in an invention: an inflatable raft that would sit under furniture. The pitch was that when high-rainfall areas were flooded, consumers could pump up the device, allowing a sofa to float and remain dry. “The guy I invested with came back and wanted me to put in more, about $500,000,” Hunter says. “Then I met [Butowsky], who just said, Hell no! I wound up never seeing that guy—or any of my money—again.”

3. Stories about young athletes that are the future of their sport make me sad.  For every LeBron James, there’s hundreds of kids that just don’t make it.  And yet, we’ll keep reading and rating sixth graders because hey, we need to know which prep school they’ll be attending.  I keep remembering reading about OJ Mayo and Greg Oden since the time they were in seventh grade.  Now it’s time to meet Allonzo Trier.

Trier has his own line of clothing emblazoned with his signature and personal motto: “When the lights come on, it’s time to perform.” His basketball socks, which also come gratis, are marked with either his nickname, Zo, or his area code, 206. He’s expecting a shipment of Under Armour gear soon, thanks to Brandon Jennings, last year’s top high-school point guard and now a highly paid pro in Italy. He is flown around the country by A.A.U. teams that want him to play for them in tournaments — and by basketball promoters who use him to add luster to their events. A lawyer in Seattle arranged for Trier’s private-school tuition and academic tutoring to be paid for by the charitable foundation of an N.B.A. player, and the lawyer also procured free dental care for Trier.

Many of the top competitors in this month’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, and most of the young N.B.A. players, have emerged from the culture that Trier inhabits. They made their reputations at all-star camps, where team play is hardly encouraged. To have any hope of establishing winning squads, college coaches must try to deprogram their young stars — but only after first flattering them and granting them scholarships.

4. Okay, one more just because I thought it was a good story and not so sad and depressing. If there was ever a reason to support a company, that company would be Under Armour.  The sports clothing company didn’t pay executive bonuses because they didn’t meet revenue requirements in 2008.  Company CEO Kevin Plank also reduced his salary from $500,000 to $26,000 – the same salary he made when he founded the company in 1996 to manage costs.  The company did not lay off any employees because of those measures.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s that old adage that white dudes, beer and Bon Jovi do not mix.

Man, I miss Boston.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It looks slightly staged, or choreographed, but still you’ve got to love the dude’s enthusiasm. (Thx, Ben)

Randy Moller is the Florida Panther’s radio play-by-play man. He as a habit of blurting non-sequitur pop culture quotes whenever his team scores.

Forget the description — just watch the damn thing. Trust me when I tell you it’s one of the funniest things you’ll see today. [via The Daily What]

In a lifetime of extreme endurance tests, among them a 160-mile run through a Mexican desert with a cast on one leg, this has been the defining goal of her’s. 

She first got the idea to swim across the ocean in the 1960’s after a trans-Atlantic flight.   And now on dry land, it’s a different sort of yearning that consumes her. 

“My dog doesn’t know where I am,” she told The Associated Press on Saturday by phone. “It’s time for me to get back home to Hank.”

The dog swirled in her thoughts, as did family and friends, as Figge stroked through the chilly Atlantic waters escorted by a sailboat. She saw a pod of pilot whales, several turtles, dozens of dolphins, plenty of Portuguese man-of-war – but no sharks.

“I was never scared,” Figge said. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool.”

Her journey began on January 12 in the Cape Verde Islands.  She covered nearly 2,000 miles of ocean in only 24 days.  And that has some people questioning whether or not she completed the endurance feet.  Doing the simple math would mean she swam an average of 80 miles a day. 

But her business manager, David Higden has admitted that there were about five days where Figge did not even get into the water since the sea was so stormy and remained aboard the catamaran which accompanied her journey.

The AP story goes on to say that Figge woke up most days around 7am and assessed whether the weather was fit for swimming. Her longest stint in the water was about eight hours while her shortest was 21 minutes.

We also know that she had planned to swim to the Bahamas but was blown off course to Trinidad. Such setbacks do bring into question exactly how many miles Figge did swim during her crossing.

So far she has not commented bar her initial quotes to AP. Figge has said however she plans to swim a further 900 or so miles to the British Virgin Islands from Trinidad, arriving in late February, when her crew will work out the total distance she swam.

So is it too early to declare world records?

Probably, but whether or not she accomplished this for real, or she rode in a boat part of the way, or whatever, it’s still a pretty impressive athletic accomplishment. 

Benoît Lecomte from France made the first known solo transatlantic swim in 1998, covering 4,000 miles in 73 days. He was accompanied by boat but swam six to eight hours a day, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of Records. 

Also?  They swam across a fucking ocean.  How crazy is that?

New York Magazine’s Will Leitch, formerly of Deadspin, has a sorta funny story about the time he went on Bob Costas’s HBO show and got verbally abused by author Buzz Bissinger.  Leitch was basically called out for writing on the internet.  And the above clip doesn’t really do the exchange justice.

There may have been spittle involved.

We milled around the green room. If you’re the type of person who cares about such matters, the following people were extremely friendly: John McEnroe, Michael Wilbon, Selena Roberts, and Mike Tirico. The following people were less so: Jason Whitlock, Cris Carter, Joe Buck. I talked to Braylon Edwards, who seemed as confused as anyone else as to why he was on my panel but jokingly pointed out how much better he looked in his suit than I did in mine. And, pacing around the room, clutching a folder of Deadspin printouts (though I didn’t know this at the time) like it was a talisman, was Buzz Bissinger. David went over to talk to him first, and left about fifteen words in with a grimace and a heads-up: “He’s locked and loaded.” Then, with the show about to start, Buzz walked over to me.

“Hey, it’s good to meet you, sir,” I said. “This should be fun.”

He didn’t even look at me. “So, you’re a Cardinals fan?” he said, with a smirk. “Yes,” I said. “They’re pretty much our family religion.”

He walked away, not even acknowledging my response. This was not going to end well.

And end well it didn’t, but it was Bissinger who ended up looking like an old man fool for not understanding the internet, well not getting it, really.  And the picture painted of a try-too-hardy Costas, obsessed with his lack of height, is well, unflattering might be a word I would use except that word is too kind for this portrait.

It’s only natural that you’d want to live it up and let yourself go after accomplishing your life’s goal of winning 8 Gold Medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  So kudos to 23-year-old swimmer Michael Phelps for doing just that.

“Phelps was in town to a see a sorority girl he was dating, but spent the entire weekend getting stoned every night, throwing down beers and smoking pot,” the British tabloid magazines said, of his trip last November to South Carolina.

“At one point someone asked him if he wanted to smoke some weed,” a source told Star. “Michael didn’t hesitate and headed to a small back room, where he was immediately handed a big red bong.”

Here’s the thing.  I don’t think any less of Michael Phelps, but that $30 Wal Mart he’s smoking out of is definitely unbeffitting his stature as one of the world’s best athletes.  Dude, you gots to start carrying around your own signature Michael Phelps Bong.  It should be completely gold with eight chambers to hit from.  In fact, what you need is a Michael Phelps hookah, available only in gold.  You could roll up to any party in style and no one would judge you.

Instead, you’re grovelling and apologizing for being young and on top of your game.  Phelps said: “I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”

Translation: I engaged in behavior which was regrettable (not really since that night was awesome) and demonstrated bad judgement (by letting some asshat take a photo of Michael Phelps ripping bong hits).  I’m 23 years old and despite the successes in the pool (c’mon it’s me we’re talking about here!  I just won 8 freakin’ Gold Medals at the Olympics.  I’m an athletic hero to millions),  I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way (only if you count the groping that went on later that night!) not in a manner people have come to expect from me (especially grandma who was totes disasppointed in those photos.  Grandma, I’m sorry).  For this I am sorry (not so much but you’re buying this right?  Right?)  I promise my fans and public that it will not happen again (it will, but that I’ll be confiscating camera phones beforehand so this type of awkward photo doesn’t make the papers again).

So with Venice flooded, what’s a citizen to do?  Uh, go wakeboarding obviously.  At least that’s what Duncan Zuur did at St. Mark’s Square.

Duncan Zuur says he has always wanted to cross the famous Italian piazza on a wakeboard … the problem being it is not normally covered in water.

But as Venice suffers its worst flooding in a generation and St Mark’s is submerged under a meter of water the delighted Dutchman finally got his chance.

Yesterday Duncan attached a cable to a winch at one end of the square and his wake-board at the other, he then retracted the cable and sped across St Mark’s, much to the confusion of onlookers.

It didn’t.

Imagine if heartbreak and tragedy were bestowed upon the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins football team.  Imagine if fate had a different plan for you – as if you were to pay penance for an eternity because of a single glorious night.

Now imagine you are the basketball players for the North Jackson Cheifs, from the tiny rural town of Stevensen, AL.

Stevenson lies between two ridges in north Alabama, by the Tennessee River, a dark blue vein on the earth. There, on Valentine’s Day 1992, the North Jackson Chiefs hosted the Fort Payne Wildcats in high school basketball. It was not a playoff game, not even a conference game, and neither team was especially good. But in the 117-year history of organized basketball, it was one of the few times a team with only two remaining players beat a team that still had five.

If this were a movie, the story would end at the final buzzer. The winners would always be winners, fists in the air and black jerseys glistening, and the losers would always hang their heads. This is not a movie. Morning came and they all woke up.

This is the bifurcated story of exhileration and heartbreak; the story of a team who beat the odds, who won a basketball game in overtime when all but two of their players fouled out; the story of a poor community that had nothing except each other and then this basketball win that is still talked about in the bars and restaurants.  The real story, though, is the heartbreak that would occur in the ensuing decade with players being shot, going to jail, ending up fighting with each other. Tearing the community asunder.

It is at once profoundly sad and breathtakingly exciting.  This is the single best piece of sports writing I’ve read this year.  Kudos to Sports Illustrated and Thomas Lake.  [2 on 5]

Rolle is in his final football season at Florida State and now faces a difficult decision. He will have to choose between perhaps playing in the N.F.L. next year and studying at Oxford. His planned course of study would be a one-year master’s degree in medical anthropology; he plans to become a doctor and open a clinic to help needy people in the Bahamas. Rolle has said that if he wins the award, he will make a decision with his family when things settle down.

“I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if he heads off to Oxford in October,” Karioth said of Rolle. “He’s really an academic. There aren’t a lot of Renaissance kids out there. He really is.”

Rolle has long stood out at Florida State. He was the country’s top recruit, started as a freshman and has had an all-American-caliber junior year in 2008.

Along with graduating in two and a half years with a 3.75 grade point average in pre-med, Rolle was awarded a $4,000 grant to conduct cancer research and set up a program in Okeechobee, Fla., to teach Seminole Indian children about health and physical fitness.

Whether Myron Rolle decides to play in the NFL or take his academic scholarship, it has been awhile since any major college athlete has been known more for his smarts than his play on the field. This is something that should be celebrated.

22-year-old Illinois golfer, Curt Hocker, has knocked dead five holes-in-one in the same week.

“I don’t know what to think,” said Hocker, who works in the club’s pro shop. “After each one I say it’s over, and it keeps happening.”

Friends and family, 15 of whom have witnessed Hocker’s strokes of luck while playing with him, are equally mystified.

“It’s incomprehensible this kind of luck could happen, but it does happen,” said El Paso pro Steve Fulton. “There are other things in life that have been just as weird and eerie that have happened. What are the odds?”

Hocker said he’s just glad that his club membership comes with “hole-in-one insurance.”

That “insurance” means the club — and not Hocker — has to honor the golf tradition of buying everyone in the clubhouse a drink after an ace is made.

This year alone, Hocker has hit seven holes-in-one at El Paso Golf Club and has even recorded two double eagles.  Not too shabby.  Scoring all those free drinks, I mean.  That’s a pretty good scam.