Only Lane Kiffin. Only Alabama. Only in the 21st century, and only when everyone in the United States can get Internet coverage.
It’s what makes this country great . . . when compared with, say, the Bizarro World.
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From the Denver Post, there is good news for the future of mankind, from Broncos running back C.J. Anderson: “I saw something on ESPN: ‘Is C.J. Anderson a fantasy bust?’ I wish I could call ESPN and say, ‘Tell them to drop me. Every owner can drop me.’”
If Pope Frankie The Kind Of Cool is worth his vestments and pointy hat, he will stay in America and make this be a real thing.
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For fighting the law and seeing to it that law didn’t win, Tom Brady has the best selling jersey in the NFL. Fourth place is the man who is making Brady’s twilight years so pleasurable, Rob Gronkowski. And fifth is Australia’s answer to people who think Foster’s is the continent, Jarryd Hayne.
For my role in making this happen (currently estimated at zero), I will accept a South Sydney Rabbitohs jersey, size extra blousy.
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Andy McCullough, who covers the Royals for the Kansas City Star, tells us that the team asked freshly sidelined closer Greg Holland multiple times this year to get his elbow checked out because his results were a little squidgy. Holland always said no, until last month.
Result: Significant tear in his UCL, done for the year. In other words, Holland would be fine and injury-free if he’d just gone to see a master carpenter and said, “I got it checked out with a specialist. He thinks I’m good to go.” Hey, he was swell until someone told him he wasn’t.
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Jason Concepcion of Grantland outlined the new catfight of the year, between Mark Cuban and Doc Rivers over the still-festering DeAndre Jordan deal, replete with dueling tweets:
CUBAN: “It shows you what someone will do when their entire future is vanishing in front of them. And I give him credit for it. His professional life was over if he didn’t get DJ.”
RIVERS: “We got our guy. Why should I be upset?”
CUBAN: “Sometimes the deals you don’t do are the best ones."
RIVERS: “I coached DJ. DJ didn’t call me when he left. Did you see me out in front of the cameras screaming and yelling and crying? I didn’t do that. I was disappointed internally, and I handled it that way. Mark tends to do things out in the open and that’s fine.”
CUBAN: “We saw DJ as a cornerstone. If you can’t handle the pressure of a week, it’s going to be difficult handling the pressure of being the cornerstone.”
RIVERS: “When you take shots at DJ — the guy you loved two days ago, now you don’t like so much anymore — all that did was tell DJ, even more, that he made the right choice.”
Bottom line: The Warriors are no longer the team the Clippers hate the most. Maybe they can start something with Sacramento fast.
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Along those lines, Chandler Parsons’ emoji Dresden that allegedly started the Jordan retreat, told KRLD radio in Dallas that he didn’t do what he was accused of having done.
Sort of.
“You know what’s funny?” Parsons said, showing the temerity to tell us what’s funny. “Actually, when I tweeted that plane emoji, I was leaving LA and going to Vegas for my girlfriend’s birthday. I wasn’t even going to Houston. I didn’t even think about it initially, then it started blowing up, and obviously the timing of it was perfect and then it just kind of took off with J.J. (Redick) tweeting the car and (Chris Paul) and everybody. I saw the Dodgers, the Warriors, Kobe, MJ, everybody started tweeting it so that was more funny than ever. At that point, it was already over and he was going back to the Clippers, so might as well make light of it.”
All reasonable assessments. That said, emojis are nothing but a lazy person’s cave paintings, and always will be.
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Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis did something odd for a college administrator. He used his noodle.
He decided to triple up on a road trip, with the men's and women's basketball teams and the hockey team all playing within a 24-hour span against Northeastern at Matthews Arena in Boston this coming December.
From Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com, Hollis explained the decision as part cost-cutting, part cultural. In other words, almost entirely cost-cutting.
“The teams will watch each other and have meals together,” Hollis said. “Then they will all fly back together.”
He said he got the idea when Northeastern athletic director Peter Roby, who also is on the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament committee, said his men's basketball team, which made the NCAA tournament last season, was having difficulty finding opponents.
“I told him we'd play them,” Hollis said. “Then we talked about it while we were watching games on TV. I didn't realize how much history Matthews Arena had. And Boston has so much history.”
East Lansing doesn’t have nearly so much history, but the two schools are doing it again in 2016. So there you go.
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The high school football-trucks-referee thing which is trending on Felony.com actually had a reverse incident back in January (video just released), in a Canadian high school hockey game between St. Mary’s College and Sault High of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The footage shows referees breaking up a fight. At the end, a referee is shown hitting/slapping a player. A teammate saw the incident and went after the ref, and a good time was had by none.
But it just shows that all new things are actually imitative, and the last original thing was the Big Bang.
Which, we are reliably informed by scientists and the QI elves, was quieter than a Motörhead concert.
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And finally, the Warriors are one of two teams (the Pacers are the other) who have already started putting advertising on their jerseys . . . well, their practice jerseys, anyway. Indiana has a hookup with St. Vincent Hospital of Indiana (which makes sense), while the Warriors did a deal with Yoats, some yogurt and granola concoction that people who don’t believe in the curative powers of dry salami will consider healthy food.
Bad idea, this. I mean, who thought of calling a product “Yoats?” Sounds like a company that makes grain-based yurts for the ultimate in vegan contractors.
