Richard Sherman’s tweet-fight with DeAngelo Hall (oh, look it up yourselves, you big candies) was greatly entertaining because . . . well, because it was, okay? But the best tweet of all came from Sherman’s Seattle teammate Doug Baldwin, who put in terms we can all understand:
“I don’t want them to understand, I want them to keep adding fuel to the fire!”
That’s what we all want, Twitter chaos is what Twitter is all about, and without it, Twitter has no value.
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Here’s why you were all wrong about Darren McFadden coming back to the Raiders: It turns out he’s playing for almost free.
McFadden’s guaranteed money is a mere $100,000 guaranteed. With a salary of $1.25 million and a roster bonus of $144,000, the deal has a base value of $1.494 million. The rest of the money comes from per-game roster bonuses of $16,000, which if he is on the active roster for all 16 games translates to a total payout of $1.75 million. He can earn another $2.25 million in so-called “not likely to be earned incentives,” like winning the Lady Byng Trophy, the BAFTA for best supporting actress, and the Nobel Prize in cheese. In fact, he can be cut before the regular season at a total cost (assuming adequate participation in the offseason program) of $244,000.
Now there’s a running back who’s already worth his salary,
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Steve Smith may have offered a bucket of blood to the Carolina Panthers for releasing him, but he couldn’t embarrass his employers (well, former employers) even remotely as much as Arsenal’s unused striker Nicklas Bendtner, who has been accused of drunkenly threatening a taxi driver at the same time that his team was being eliminated from the Champions League by Bayern Munich.
According to The Guardian, Bendtner unbuttoned his trousers and rubbed his gentleman’s equipment up against the side of the taxi (original story by the Danish newspaper BT). He also was accused of kicking the taxi radio, whipping the cab with his belt (Bad cab! Bad bad cab!), and calling the driver a "little whore.”
Next to that, Smith’s quote -- “Put your goggles on cause there’s going to be blood and guts everywhere” (told to former Panther Frank Garcia on WFNZ) – is a prom invitation.
That is, if you can move past “It’s a new chapter in this book of my life. But there are phrases in this chapter that will carry on…ICE UP SON!”
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke to the National Congress of American Indians and threw the football nickname card into the middle of the table. This will end well for sure.
“We all respect freedom of speech, but the trademark office has rejected names which are considered offensive and they should do it now. They can keep their name on the team, but when it comes to all the stuff — that’s serious money. So I think that is one path that we can go.”
Oh, yeah, this ends just great.
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From Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News, a cautionary word about Stanford basketball coach Johnny Dawkins and his future after Thursday’s Pac-12 Conference game.
“As was the case last season, I believe Muir is looking for reasons to bring Dawkins back. And if that happens, if there is a Year 7, then Dawkins could pass along a note of appreciation to the two men who have made it happen: Muir, and David Shaw.
“Football school.”
And remember, they’re student-athletes.
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And finally, the San Jose Sharks polished off the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-3, in a shootout Thursday, making them the shootout-ingest team in the NHL this year (15 of 67 games, 22 percent of their games). We mention this only in case you’re trying to TiVo their playoff games. Leave a few extra hours at the back end of each one, and bring extra snacks. Their games are going to last awhile.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com
McFadden is totally worth his 2014 salary
Thursday, March 13, 2014 - 10:00pm
