Morning News Brief

Catching you up on all the sports news you missed by avoiding Stuart Scott and his SportsCenter cronies. And yes I understand your eating lunch right now in New York. I don't care. It's morning in California.

Warriors sign Monta Ellis to a six year, 67 million dollar contract. Warriors vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin told The Associated Press, "We look forward to him playing a big part in our future success." Um, your starting front court of Al Harrington and Ronny Turiaf avaraged 20 and 9 last year. Combined. What future success are you referring to Mr. Mullin?

The International Olympic Committee upholds the ban against Iraqi athletes. What a standard to set. If you don't like someone, ban them from playing with you. Little Leaguers everywhere are trying to outlaw the mean bully down the street.

Rod Smith retires. Does anything go on in the NFL anymore that does not have to do with retirement? Man.

The Packers may postpone retiring Favre's jersey. Hmm. Is this a sign of things to come?

BRETT FAVRE PLANS ON REPORTING TO TRAINING CAMP. Who called it? And my caps lock key is not broken. I just typed it exactly how it appears on NFL.com. Apparently the site thinks its main demographic is 90 year olds with reading glasses.

ROD SMITH PLANS ON REPORTING TO TRAINING CAMP. Ok this one was a joke.

Super Briefs:
Cubs stay on top of division with win over Marlins

Red Sox pull into tie with Rays after Tampa loses to Kansas City

Nationals and Padres continue their epic battle to see who can be worse by both losing again.

Most NFL teams open training camp today.

Marvin Harrison runs with a smile on his face during first training camp practice says Dungy.

Afternoon Internet Wanderings

Keeping you distracted with the most random assortment of crap that the world wide web has to offer.

Man from Rhode Island sets new alcohol consumption record. Give this guy a medal. That is impressive.
- FOXNews.com

Jason Giambi's National Moustache Association sponsored lip hair now has it's own shirt. I guess I understand, sort of. It's not like Yankee fans have anything else to be excited about. Just an observation though, Giambi's stache is getting more publicity than A-Rod. Is that right?
- The Sporting Blog

Top fencer (fencing player?) got into the sport because he wanted to be like Zorro. That's like becoming a boxer because you want to be like a Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robot.
- Yahoo Sports

Not as if it had enough wrinkles to it already, racism has been brought into the Josh Hamilton story.
- Bleacher Report

People dress up as SportsCenter personalities for Halloween. Hey. If there's a bunch of people walking around looking like Erin Andrews I have no problem.
- Tirico Suave

Mangino is fat t-shirts > Jason Giambi stache t-shirts.
- Sports by Brooks

ManginoIsFat.com > Any site I've ever previously posted on here.
- ManginoIsFat.com

The Only Thing Worse Than An NBA Fight: A WNBA Fight

If you thought Carmelo couldn't throw a punch, you haven't seen Candace Parker.



So how many hours until Don Imus makes an inappropriate, somewhat racist comment about this?

For the record, this wasn't even the worst catfight of the past week. Danica Patrick and Milka Duno's bilingual spat in which neither could understand what the other person was screaming was even more pathetic than this so called second coming of the Battle At The Palace.

It is kind of unusual that there's so many angry woman in the sporting world lately though. Something must be in their Gatorade.

Here's to hoping that the next "Brawl" is between Erin Andrew and Jenn Sterger.

Morning News Brief

Catching you up on all the sports news you missed by avoiding Stuart Scott and his SportsCenter cronies. And yes I understand your eating lunch right now in New York. I don't care. It's morning in California.

Josh Childress has decided to leave Atlanta to play in Greece. For his actual team. Seriously. The Greeks supposedly enormously outbid the Hawks. A European team outbid an NBA franchise. I'm not making this up folks.

Tony Dungy says that Peyton Manning may play in the preseason. He thanks God for Peyton's quick recovery from the bursa sac injury.

Beijing will have designated areas for protests. Man, that's a messed up country. They tell you where you have to protest. That government just controls those citizens.

Greg Norman yet to decide whether he'll accept the invitation to play in the PGA Championship. "I don’t want to hold up the PGA of America. I must tell them in the next 24 hours." Trivia question, who does that not sound like?

The Tour de France heads into its toughest stage today. Christiain Vande Velde is over 3 minutes behind the leader. Can someone tell me if that's good or bad at this point in a race?

No Kornheiser! No Kornheiser! No Kornheiser... No PTI. Dang It

I thought they had figured it out. I really did. I believed they had wisened up. Or maybe I just wanted to believe.

ESPN was doing PTI minus Tony Kornheiser. It went on for weeks with Dan LeBetard as Michael Wilbon's co-host. I was enjoying life, enjoying watching episodes upon episodes of Pardon the Interruption without being interrupted by American Idol references.

And then it stopped.

They say PTI is off for the week. How could they? Everything was going great! They actually had something good going. And now they just stop it? Put it on the back seat? To give us more SportsCenter???

Bristol. Go put yourself in a bodybag and push yourself off the top of whatever high building there is in Connecticut.

Take TK with you.

Dwight Howard > Justin Timberlake

I couldn't make it through the ESPY's on Sunday. Justin Timberlake was just not funny. I can count how many times I laughed on one hand. They way he ran all over the stage singing high pitch lame jokes and hugging Aaron Rodgers made him come off like a 9 year old homo. I'm afraid to watch it next year. I mean who's next, Zac Efron?

If only ESPN would have gone with their back up plan.



Greg Oden would have been fine too.

Morning News Brief

Catching you up on all the sports news you missed by avoiding Stuart Scott and his SportsCenter cronies. And yes I understand your eating lunch right now in New York. I don't care. It's morning in California.

America's biggest soccer sensation will play in France next year. Adu. Freddy Adu. No? Teenager who likes Hillary Duff? That name doesn't ring a bell? He's USA's best hope for soccer studliness. In other words he's an average European.

Brian Urlacher and Da Bears come to a contract agreement. This is a smart move. To give your best player and the face of your franchise what he wants. Genius.

Frank Schleck kept his overall lead yesterday. Christian Vande Velde fell into sixth place. He'll have to make a push this week if he wants to have a chance to win it on Sunday. Raise your hand if you have any idea what I'm talking about. Anyone, anyone? Tour de France, people.

Sebastian Telfair signs a multi year deal with the Timberwolves. His agent says Telfair, "is looking forward to contributing to bringing the Timberwolves back to the playoffs." Withhold your laughter.

Bobby Bowden maintains that he is not ready to retire. He also stressed that the Seminoles must win more. "My goal is to get back to the top, but if we get there, we're not going to stay there. There's too many good teams in this conference." I don't know what Florida State fans are talking about. How can you not have confidence in a guy who thinks like that?

Afternoon Internet Wanderings

I'm back from the weekend, I saw Batman, I slacked off with no posts this morning because I was still in awe, and now I'm here again, keeping you distracted with the most random assortment of crap that the world wide web has to offer.

Jerryd Bayless will be the next guy to have his summer league number retired. I've never seen anybody dominate July like this guy has. Well actually, I don't have NBA TV. But I've never seen any basketball player be all over youtube in July as much as this guy has been.
- Youtube

The front page headline is, "Shockey's A Saint." The dude's a whiny, long haired playboy who bad mouths his team and franchise. Who wrote that, Jemele Hill? ESPN really does need a Code of Conduct Manual.
- ESPN

Richie Sexson, Tony Clark, and now Ray Durham are the "big" bats moved at the deadline. Maybe there is a Barry Bonds conspiracy.
- Associated Press

Soccer player gets yellow card for helping out security guards. Ya I don't understand it either.
- Via The Sporting Blog

Football players have a deep, emotional connection in the shower. Cue Brady Quinn jokes... now.
- Fanhouse

The North Carolina bandwagon is off and running.
- Bleacher Report

NBC is too cheap to send announcers to the actual Olympics in order to announce said games. Archery, equestrian, shooting, handball, ok. But some of the sports they'll be commentating via guys watching a screen back in New York are soccer, tennis, and some basketball. Somebody obviously wants to compete with ESPN to give viewers the worst sports coverage possible...
- AwfulAnnouncing