A Song For Boston's Cheating

I'm not a Boston-hater, and frankly I don't really care about steroids (kids, please don't do drugs). But I am always a fan of Ryan Parker songs, so check out his latest about Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz joining the Patriots in Boston's hall of shame. It's worth a listen just for the photoshop that appears at 0:33.

Is Georges St-Pierre God? Twitter thinks so.

Are you there GSP? It's me, Alana G.

By the way, I did eventually find the real Georges St-Pierre on Twitter.

Jerry Rice blasts Peter King for his comments about Michael Jackson

I ran into Jerry Rice at Marshawn Lynch's youth football camp over the weekend, and he had MJ on his mind. He wanted to talk about Congressman Peter King's comments that Michael Jackson is a "low-life" (among other things).



I'm with Jerry on this one -- Michael Jackson is a legend (though not quite a "living legend" anymore... sorry, Jerry). Let's celebrate the great things he did in life.

By the way, this segment was shot for FANARCHY, the television show on VERSUS that Yardbarker is involved with (check out the Fanarchy Doghouse blog for more). The clip didn't make the show, so make sure you tune in tonight at 10:30pm to find out which athlete did make the cut.

It's somewhat blasphemous to leave Jerry Rice on any kind of cutting room floor, so big thank you to him for shooting with us. As with any TV segment, I had to ask him to film an intro -- he broke up laughing before delivering "This is JERRY RICE." I know, I know, you need no introduction!

Darren McFadden with his adorable pitbulls

I visited Darren McFadden's house in Oakland recently and met his adorable pitbulls. Why do pitbulls get such a bad rap? These two dogs were just big ole gentle giants. They did knock me down a few times by accident, but then they licked my face when I hit the ground.



P.S. That part when McFadden uses the wet electrical plug? Please do not try that at home. This video could have taken a whole other direction...

Do most male athletes cheat on their wives?

Our resident Yardbarker sexpert Chantelle Anderson implies that most male athletes do cheat, in her latest post that explores the dynamic of male athletes and their wives, mistresses, and groupies. Yardbarker blogger Brendan Haywood is one male athlete who's taking offense to this, in his latest Yardbarker post.

Sex wars in the Yard, holler!! (Chantelle and Brendan would make a cute couple, no?)

On the Nike dunk cover-up: would Kobe have pulled a LeBron?

Much has been written about the video footage that was confiscated by Nike after Xavier's Jordan Crawford dunked on LeBron. This is a ridiculously stupid move in today's interwebs age, where the cover-up becomes a bigger story than the video ever would have been. It leaves our imaginations to wonder what really happened. From my friend Adil:

The real question is if after this happened LeBron took out a whiteboard and diagrammed for Anderson Varejao how he should have been blocking the camera angle, while yelling at Daniel Gibson for being less talented than he, while thinking about the newest diamond encrusted Mercedes he would have to buy his lady because of all the shame he caused her, while crying deep down in his soul because fundamentally he is alone in this world and no one will ever truly love him for him.

This of course sparked a debate about whether Kobe would have pulled a similarly arrogant move. As my friend Tyler pointed out, Google turns up about 85,000 results for "Kobe arrogant" as compared to the 47,000 results for "LeBron arrogant." Of course my friend Babak then pointed out that LeBron actually has more arrogant hits when adjusted for number of years in the league. (I am actually getting different numbers when I Google these things... but you can't argue with the reasoning behind this method of study.)

I should mention that Adil, Tyler, and Babak are all starting a video blog project soon called "Handsome Lawyers Talking About Sports." Also, one of them is a terrorist. Stay tuned.

My new favorite television gem: 'The T.O. Show'

What do you get when you combine four of my favorite reality shows ("From G's to Gents," "Candy Girls," "4th and Long," and "Tough Love")? You get my new favorite: "The T.O. Show." Here's the trailer (via SBB):



I love me some Terrell Owens! This looks fantastic. I'm not kidding at all. I can't wait for the premiere on July 20th.

Creative writing with Jay Mariotti: 'Bad Journalism'

I was warned by my "blogging buddies" that Jay Mariotti's latest piece on FanHouse might make my eyes bleed. 1) It's an attempted assassination of blogs (on a blog... can't we stop this blog-on-blog violence please?) 2) It's completely misguided and about three weeks too late, and 3) It's 1,800 words long. Well, I'll let the other buddies tackle points one and two, but below is your solution to the length problem. I've taken the liberty of editing Mariotti's piece down to less than 300 words. All of the words are from Mariotti's original piece, and they all appear in order. I've just cut out a lot of the fat in the middle. You'll still get the gist: blogs, basements, steroids, desperate media... you know the story.

"Bad Journalism"
By Jay Mariotti (edited by Alana G)

I am one of the fortunate ones. Twelve months a year, I'm paid to STRRRRRETTTTCCH THE TRUTH or make something up.

But this pet tarantula has a blog to randomly drop names of so-called legitimate journalists. The sports writing business is rife with reckless idiots.

We all wonder to ourselves if every major leaguer has a functioning computer. Go to hell. If you know an athlete who uses a Web site, here's the problem. One inaccurate swoop out of the womb may as well be MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. A Web company would have profited from blogging buddies on steroids.

In a post headlined, "The Curious Eyebrows,'' Ibanez left nothing for conjecture. Harold Reynolds, if you can believe it, instantly became the hottest potato whose only sin might have been a strained groin.

That guy is a thief. He has used my urine in his mother's basement.

It demeans everything with one stroke. Nobody is above desire. That should be the message: desire, idiot. A fool who hasn't been properly trained to grasp the Internet will make assumptions like that. It's a shame anyone can be Tony Kornheiser.

Because the Internet is a gateway to a keyboard, an ancient columnist named Rick Telander suggested devious things. Death warmed over.

And Alex Rodriguez, loaded, delivered many names to me through the years.

As writers, broke, we'd probably have no solid colleagues. These are desperate times in the media.

The first thing a professor ever told me was, "Get angry.” A few years back I was framed by the Chicago Bulls, which should tell you how corrupt the place was.

So it bothers me when a writer doesn't game 80 percent now.

Not.

UPDATE: Here are some other blogger takes on Mariotti's piece:
Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fans (the one who "started" this particular battle)
Hugging Harold Reynolds (absolutely destroys Mariotti line-by-line)
Can't Stop the Bleeding (tells Mariotti, "check your libel laws, son!")
Awful Announcing (points out Mariotti is a hypocrite... shocker!)
Sportress of Blogitude (concedes that Maritotti is indeed the expert on "bad journalism")