To his son, Luke, Armstrong said, "If some kid says something to you, do not defend me. Just say 'Hey, my dad said he was sorry.' He said, 'OK. I love you, you're my dad, this won't change that.'"
This was the point during his two and a half hours speaking with Oprah where Armstrong appeared genuinely remorseful — he teared up and had to stop speaking multiple times. At the very least, it's an exercise in imagining what it would be like to be the child of Lance Armstrong, or someone like him,, and having your father tell you that he was not who you, and the rest of the world, thought he was.
Early in the first quarter of the NFC Championship game, Falcons cornerback Thomas DeCoud made a very nice play to break up a Colin Kaepernick pass.
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But far more impressive than the pass defense was what came after: Thomas DeCoud broke out the Crotch Chop.
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The Crotch Chop, as I'm sure you know, was popularized by Triple H and Shawn Michaels' Degeneration-X group back in the late-1990s Attitude Era of the WWF.
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The group's slogan was, "Let's Get Ready to suck it," which is very subtle and nuanced.
During the first quarter of today's NFC Championship, Julio Jones was dominating. One of the things he dominated, though, happened accidentally: it was this poor security guard.
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Trying to catch an errant Matt Ryan pass, Jones stumbled out of bounds and completely blindsided a security guard, who fell hard on his back.
Not sure what's worse about a fall like this: the actual impact of the ground, or the shock and confusion of a 6'3", 220-pound human being hitting you without you seeing it.
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Here's the video. The guard stayed down for a bit, but eventually got up and appeared to be OK.
Today, the San Francisco 49ers beat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24 today to book a trip to Super Bowl XLVII. Atlanta went up 17-0 early, but San Francisco won the rest of the game 28-7, making the loss even more bitter for the home-town Falcons. (The 17-point comeback was also the biggest in the history of the NFC Championship.)
It was a close, emotional game, and the best way to demonstrate this is to present these two moments, in GIF form.
First: here's the moment when Atlanta lost the game. A Matt Ryan pass intended for Roddy White is knocked down inside the red zone, and the Falcons turn it over on downs.
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This is Falcons owner Arthur Blank's reaction to the play.
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Second: Harry Douglas made this catch late in the game, and 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh decided to challenge it. It looks like the ball moved a bit when it hit the ground; the question becomes whether Douglas maintained possession or not.
Ray Rice flexes after scoring a touchdown, and, in a scene straight out of a Ben Affleck movie, a Patriots fan flexes right back.
The first touchdown of today's AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens came on an easy run by Ray Rice.
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The Patriots were the home team, so the game — which ended with Baltimore winning 28-13 and earning a trip to the Super Bowl — took place at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Fitting, because at the game we saw a uniquely Massachusetts milestone: The Most Boston Thing That's Ever Happened.
After Rice scored, he flexed his left bicep at the Patriots crowd — pretty typical football celebration. In response, a Pats fan flexed right back.
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There you have it, folks: a Patriots fan flexing at an NFL running back. This is The Most Boston Thing Ever.
As the Ravens beat the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, Twitter filled with reports of gunshots in the Baltimore area.
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Image by Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters
Sunday night, the Baltimore Ravens booked their first trip to the Super Bowl since the 2000 season, when they beat the New York Giants. Cities tend to celebrate sports successes like this, but if Twitter is to be believed, Baltimore residents did it in a bizarre way: they fired off guns.
The San Francisco 49ers will represent the NFC and the Baltimore Ravens will represent the AFC in what should be a tremendous NFL championship game.
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Image by Jeff Haynes / Reuters
Ladies and gentlemen: we have ourselves a Super Bowl.
The 47th installment of the NFL's championship game, which will take place February 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, will feature the San Francisco 49ers representing the NFC and the Baltimore Ravens representing the AFC. The favored 49ers beat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24 in the NFC Championship, and the underdog Ravens beat the New England Patriots 28-13 in the AFC Championship — both were the away teams.
A few quick facts to get you excited for the game:
— This is the sixth Super Bowl appearance for the San Francisco 49ers, who won their five previous Super Bowls. Winning this year would tie the Pittsburgh Steelers for the most wins by one franchise.
— This is the Baltimore Ravens' second time in the Super Bowl. They won their first, beating the New York Giants at the end of the 2000 season.
— 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh is Ravens head coach John Harbaugh's younger brother; Super Bowl XLVII will mark the first time two brothers have ever coached against each other in a Super Bowl. (It's the first trip to the big game for both men.)
— The Super Bowl will be 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's 10th start as a professional QB. In his second year out of the University of Nevada, Kaepernick replaced former #1 overall pick Alex Smith after Smith was injured in Week 9 and played well enough that he held on to the job after Smith was able to return. Kaepernick set the record for most rushing yards in a single game by a quarterback in his first playoff start, when the 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers January 12, and he had another great game against the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship.
— Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who at 37 years old is in his 17th season in the NFL, says he will retire after this season. Super Bowl XLVII will be his final game as a professional football player.
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Image by Gene Sweeney Jr./Baltimore Sun/MCT
— The Ravens lost in the AFC Championship in 2008 and 2011 and in the divisional playoffs in 2009 and 2010, making this year the correction of four years of near-misses. They also avenged their loss to the Patriots in 2011.
— John Harbaugh took over as Ravens head coach before the 2008 season; this is Jim Harbaugh's second year as head coach of the 49ers. Neither Harbaugh has ever missed the playoffs as a head coach and are a combined 88-38-1 as head coaches.
— Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco became the team's starter in 2008, the same year that Harbaugh took over as head coach. Flacco is the only quarterback in NFL history to make the playoffs in each of the first five seasons of his career.
— This will be 49ers receiver and likely future Hall of Famer Randy Moss' second Super Bowl appearance. He lost his first, with the Patriots, in 2007.
— Football Outsiders' DVOA rating, which takes into account a team's performance versus the league average, has the 49ers as the league's fourth-best team this year and the second-best in the NFC. It has the Ravens as the eighth-best and the third-best in the AFC. The 49ers went 11-4-1 in the regular season, and the Ravens went 10-6.
— The NFC has won the last four Super Bowls and leads the overall matchup, 25-21.
— As of right now, San Francisco is a 4.5-point favorite over the Ravens in Vegas.
As a general rule, you should probably avoid getting sports tattoos. You can never know if a specific team or athlete will have a massive fall from grace, or if the Sacramento Kings will remain in Sacramento, for example. (Sorry, Sacramento Kings tattoo victim.) This tattoo, however, is the pinnacle of bad sports tattoos. Behold.
As the Lakers' season rapidly unravels, Kobe Bryant has turned his young Twitter into a completely bizarre exercise in trying to seem like an actual human.
This man, the whose mask looks like something Shredder from the Ninja Turtles would wear, is Ravens linebacker and NFL legend Ray Lewis.
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Image by Doug Kapustin/MCT
Lewis is retiring after this season, so this final playoff run is pretty emotional for him. After the Ravens beat the Pats yesterday this was particularly apparent.
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Image by Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters
So many emotions.
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Image by Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun/MCT
Nothing Lewis did was quite as intense (or strange) as tenderly cuddling and being caressed by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti during the awards ceremony.
It's a long off-season, and Tom Brady is making the most of it.
Tom Brady's season ended earlier than he would've hoped when the favored New England Patriots lost to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. But now that he's got all this extra time, he's apparently making the most of it. Here are just some of the locations that Sad Tom Brady has been seen in the two days since the Patriots lost.
Xianxiang can lift about four and a half pounds with each eyelid. Obviously, don't click on this post if you're squeamish about how eyes are supposed to work.
This is Wang Xianxiang, he's a 42-year-old fireworks maker from the Hunan province of China. He also happens to be able to lift buckets of water that weigh about 5 pounds with each of his eyelids and keep them lifted for about a minute.
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Image by China Daily / Reuters
On Saturday he performed at a festival near his hometown. He practices about 30 minutes each morning, then another two hours at night. He told NBC News, "I can currently hold 4.5 pounds on each eyelid, I’d like to push that to 11 pounds per eyelid."
Breaking Super Bowl news arrives today via New York magazine's Eric Benson, who has alerted the world to the striking similarities between San Francisco 49ers quarterback/Big Cheese heir Colin Kaepernick and the younger version of jazz legend Sonny Rollins.
