I have a new theory about Lane Kiffin. You know how a pressing team in basketball plays so physically that they wind up getting away with fouls because the refs can't call everything? Maybe that's what Lane's trying for - commit enough small violations that eventually people will expect it and no one will care when you do. Or maybe I'm overthinking it and he's just inept. Penn State assistant Jay Paterno appears to believe the latter is correct. Kiffin was busy putting out this fire on ESPN yesterday after finally paying the bill for his Pahokee insults Tuesday. Give Lane credit, though, he is the first coach to pick up a recruiting violation via twitter. The man's an innovator. Tons of people are looking forward to seeing UF kick his teeth in this September, including Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean. Ironically enough, he twittered that out last night.
In yesterday's post I mentioned that I'm highly skeptical of ESPN's Chad Ford's mock draft "insights". He had Nick Calathes as the 23rd pick in the draft. Now Sports Illustrated's Ian Thomsen has put out his own version of the first round. Calathes is nowhere to be found. For that matter, no one in the entire SEC is projected as a first rounder. Not too hard to figure out why the league was so down this year when you see that.
I hated Tampa Bay's decision to draft Aqib Talib from Kansas in the first round last year. Sure he's talented, but he also tested positive for marijuana three times in college and had other problems as well. Everything about him screamed trouble at a very loud volume, but the Bucs went ahead and selected him anyway. At the NFL rookie symposium, Talib got in a fight with a fellow Bucs draftee. Yesterday it happened again, with Talib injuring a teammate by swinging his helmet as part of a fight. I've said it a number of times - you pan for gold in a river, not a sewer. Too often under Jon Gruden, the Bucs ignored that warning and now they're paying the price.
The NFL has responded to Delaware's recent approval of sports betting on NFL games (through lottery parlay cards) as they always do. They've acted SHOCKED at the notion such a thing could happen. After all, this is a league so committed to opposing gambling that it refused to let NBC promote its own TV show Las Vegas (a drama not set in a real casino) during NFL games. Meanwhile, what did the NFL do Tuesday? It voted to accept lottery sponsorships for the first time and allow their trademarks to be used on scratch off tickets. It's okay to encourage Steeler fans to gamble and even sell them tickets to do so with the team's logo, but to gamble on the outcome of a Steelers game would be wrong. What a bunch of money grubbing hypocrites.
The folks at TIME magazine have compiled a list of the ten worst college team names. Some you have likely heard of, but I assume the Evergreen State College Geoducks and Grays Harbor College Chokers are new to you as well. If the suggestion gets made to name a school's athletic teams for a clam, you'd think someone in power would have enough sense to say no. Since that didn't happen, you get to see the result at the top of this page.
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