#mambatweets
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Kobe Bryant is off to a strong start on Twitter. His account, @kobebryant, was verified on Friday, and he already has more than 564,000 followers. His tweets are about exactly what you would expect from Kobe Bryant.
Via: @kobebryant
Messi is the first player to win the award four consecutive years in a row. More importantly, polka dots!
Image by Michael Buholzer / Reuters
Image by Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters
Image by Michael Buholzer / Reuters
Image by Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters
The Lakers continue to spin out of control.
Via: @kobebryant
To recap the Lakers' past few days:
The Lakers have lost three games in a row and four of five.
Kobe Bryant has scored 34 points per game (and joined Twitter) in that stretch.
Dwight Howard tore a labrum in his shoulder which may require surgery. He's out indefinitely.
Pau Gasol suffered a concussion and is out indefinitely.
The Lakers are reportedly interested in signing Kenyon Martin as a stopgap, and have to play Houston, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City this week.
But yeah otherwise it's the right time to be poking fun at the media and staging fight photos. Carry on, Lakers.
Breaking down what each color means for the Notre Dame coach ahead of tonight's National Championship game.
Indicates: Calm.
Image by David J. Phillip / AP
Indicates: Slight irritation.
Image by Jared Wickerham / Getty Images
Indicates: Annoyance with a dumb shit interviewer.
Image by Streeter Lecka / Getty Images
Indicates: Precarious happiness.
Image by Wesley Hitt / Getty Images
It's going to be a long off-season.
Image by Harry E. Walker/MCT
Robert Griffin III suffered a terrible twist to his already-injured right knee in the Redskins' season-ending loss to the Seahawks this weekend, and early reports suggest that RGIII could be out for a very, very long time. Griffin, who has already torn his ACL once while at Baylor, will undergo tests Tuesday after initial MRI proved inconclusive, according to ESPN. Richmond television station WRIC reported that Griffin was expected to be out for a minimum of 14-18 months, though that report has since been retracted. If RGIII has suffered another torn ACL, it is expected he'll miss at least nine months, and at any rate, the Redskins will have to plan to be without their star quarterback for the near future.
Given Griffin's impact on the Redskins and the city of Washington (remember Griffining?), it's important to be prepared for how severely ravaged Redskins fans will be without RGIII.
Via: shelbiethecomicnerd
Via: www
Notre Dame has a shot tonight to end a 25-year title drought. What did the world look like the last time they took home the trophy?
Source: youtube.com
Source: whitehouse.gov
Source: youtube.com
If there hadn't been like fifty people milling around between him and the Celtics' bus, things might really have gone down.
Image by Ray Stubblebine / Reuters
The Celtics went on to win the game, but Anthony was hardly finished. He allegedly approached the Celtics locker room, though no confrontation there actually seems to have taken place, and then waited for Garnett by the visiting team's bus.
No lucky charms (or trophies) for him.
Image by Robert Duyos/Sun Sentinel/MCT
Soccer Night in Newtown.
Image by Mike Stobe / Getty Images
More than 40 active and former MLS players gathered at the Newtown Youth Academy last night to meet local children and play soccer. Houston Dynamo president Chris Canetti, a Connecticut native, wanted to find a way for the soccer community to get involved and support the residents of Newtown, and the result was an overwhelming success. Soccer Night in Newtown drew superstars like Landon Donovan and Mia Hamm, along with a capacity crowd of 1,500 Newtown residents.
Landon Donovan poses with a young fan.
Image by Mike Stobe / Getty Images
Former United States national team captain Cobi Jones speaks to a group of children.
Image by Mike Stobe / Getty Images
When you see it…
Image by Getty Images
Alex Picard showers alone tonight.
The end of the NHL Lockout signals the return of many pros who escaped North America to ply their trade in professional leagues across Europe. One such player, Yannick Weber of the Montreal Canadiens, had been playing for Genève-Servette HC in Switzerland, alongside former Columbus Blue Jacket Alex Picard, who plays full-time in Geneva.
With the prospective return of the NHL, Weber had to leave Geneva and return to the Canadiens, leaving the fond memories of time spent with Picard behind him. The split wasn't as easy as you might think.
Via: @alexpicard09
Via: @alexpicard09
Rob Parker will not return to “First Take.”
Rob Parker will not return to ESPN after calling Robert Griffin III a "cornball brother," and questioning his "blackness." ESPN did not fire Parker outright, but instead simply let his contract expire at the end of 2012 and decided not to renew it, according to a very short ESPN statement. Parker was formally suspended by ESPN on December 20th for 30 days after his controversial rant on the December 13th episode of ESPN's "First Take."
Evaluating our needs and his work, including his recent RG III comments, we decided not to renew his deal.
Via: espn.go.com
Via: twitlonger.com
He's just around the corner…
Source: Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune / January 7, 2013
Source: chicagosidesports.com
Source: chicagosidesports.com
The star of last night's BCS National Championship Game wasn't anyone on the field, it was Bama QB AJ McCarron's beautiful girlfriend Katherine Webb whose Twitter follower count surged past his own large number during the game This is the post-game interview where he learns all about her sudden fame.
Source: youtube.com
Source: global.fncstatic.com
H/T Tom Ley at Deadspin.
One semi-informed fan handicaps USC, Texas, Oregon, and the other contenders.
Image by Chris Keane / Reuters
It's been seven years since a non-SEC team won the college football national championship. Regional pride being what it is, an impotent sense of inferiority will haunt fans of teams from every other conference until someone finally knocks off the reigning Southern powers. Meanwhile, SEC partisans must be wondering when their particular dynasty will wane, and whose hands will cast the first blow that lands against it. With a nod to Deadspin's old Cultural Oddsmaker column, here are the guesses of one observer, who has spent a low-double figures amount of minutes considering the issues at hand, as to how likely various prominent teams are to end the run of Alabama/LSU/Florida national titledom.
USC: 100 to 1. They're a historically strong program, but my expectation is that USC will soon cease being a place that five-star prospects go to play on a disappointing football team, and start becoming a place that five-star prospects go to not play on a football team at all. "Committing to USC" will be cool teen slang for moving to LA and smoking doobs, and this will eventually leave the team with an empty roster, until everyone's parents figure it out and send them to teen boot camp. USC administrators will be too busy smoking doobs to rebuild the program, and will need to be sent to administrator boot camp.
Texas: 25 to 1. According to this credible-seeming estimate, they have more money than any other team in college football, and they're located in Texas, the overbearing-father/adolescent-concussion/high-school football capital of the United States. The team is in a bit of a rough patch right now, but with the help of those inherent advantages — and millions of concealed handguns — Texas should turn it around soon.
Notre Dame: 15 to 1. They came out of the gate in the national title game with lots of energy and a daring game plan. Even down big, they never seemed dispirited or clueless so much as they seemed like they were just playing against a much better team. It's clear this Notre Dame program is going places, which is nauseating. I thought we had finally finished with all that Touchdown Jesus crap. The only respite now will come when the old guys running football broadcasts — who are permanently infatuated with Notre Dame because it was one of only three programs that existed when they were young, along with Yale and the intramural team from the Department of War — die.
The upside, as always, is that Rudy has been charged with securities fraud.
Ohio State or Michigan: 8 to 1. Two strong Midwestern programs headed back to the top under heralded new coaches. More or less interchangeable for our purposes. Isn't it funny that their fans so staunchly insist on discussing their differences? Besides a mirror copy of himself, there is no one more similar in the entire universe to an Ohio State fan than a Michigan fan. "But I hate Ohio/Michigan," they say. "I could never even consider following a team representing a prestigious research university in a cold, largely forested, largely flat, politically moderate Midwestern state whose economy was based on manufacturing and engineering."
Oregon: 5 to 1. A killer team that hasn't been quite able to get over the top. It's hard to decide whether their triumph is inevitable or if the wide-open title window created by their killer offense — and I just realized that I used "killer" to describe both the team and their offense, a stylistic mistake that I'm too lazy to go back and change — might start shutting without the Ducks having killed everyone (won a title). That's not to accuse the spread of being a "gimmick," or to say Oregon won't remain a good program, just to suggest that their super-elite scoring pace might fall a little closer to the pack as killer new defensive weapons are deployed in football's neverending strategic killing race.
Yale University: 2 to 1. A surprise pick, perhaps, but in the end, the thing that is actually most likely to stop the SEC from winning the NCAA football championship is the inherently contradictory nature of running a bajillion-dollar "amateur" sports league, which will eventually cause a civil war within college football in which the big-conference schools become semi-pro European-style academies, leaving the Ivy League as the only remaining members of the NCAA. And with rising sophomore Thomas Undercuffler — an individual I just selected randomly from their roster page after arbitrarily deciding Yale would win the Ivy League — promising to develop into a force at whatever position it is that he plays, the Fightin' Herbert Walkers are primed to dominate. Indeed, you heard it here first: Yale will soon sit atop the college football world, and things will be just like they were in the old days, before Rudy's terrible financial crimes caused the Great Depression. Go Bulldogs! Undercuffler Fever sweeps the nation!
Find out which team is the best based on how well their namesake would do in a fight wth this in-depth, irrefutable analysis.
Methodology
• I will be adhering to the normal MLB setup. The whole shebang. Only instead of a long season, there are a series of fights to the death. This simulation is based off of the 2012 season, so the Astros are still in the National League.
• All teams will have one fighter (with one exception). For instance, one Chicago Cub vs. one Pittsburgh Pirate.
• Namesakes will be ranked on a scale of 1-5 on their offense, defense, athleticism, and intelligence, along with any miscellaneous skills or attributes.
• Mascots do not come into play; teams will be represented by their namesake and their namesake alone. This means that the Phillie Phanatic is not a combatant, which is probably for the best, as I’m quite sure he’s a Lovecraftian monster, against which there is no hope for victory.
Here we go!
The NFL's most outspoken punter…uh…speaks out.
(He also wore sandals. And a beanie. On national TV.)
A story in three acts.
At this past weekend's Hispanic Games track meet in New York, things got a little hairy in the 4x400m relay.
Oh that noise? That was just my brain exploding.
Image by Scott Halleran / Getty Images
Source: i.imgur.com
