USA Luge athletes were training at the Blue Mountain Ski Area & Resort in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and at the end of the session they loaded up their sleds into a U-Haul trailer and took off back to a local hotel. The sleds didn't make it.
On the journey back to the hotel, the rear door of the U-Haul opened and the training sleds — worth up to $800 dollars apiece — came tumbling out, according to the Express-Times. Before the team realized what had happened and returned to the area, a mysterious person in a black truck stumbled upon the sleds in the road. The man asked someone who lived nearby who the sleds belonged to, and then loaded them in his truck and took off. By the time the USA Luge contingent returned, they were gone.
Local police are on the case and ask anyone with information to come to the authorities, and USA Luge is hopeful the man in the black truck will eventually emerge and give back the sleds.
Nike. And more specifically, Nike's legend-making machine.
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Image by Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
The prosecution of Oscar Pistorius for Reeva Steenkamp's murder is playing out on the front pages of newspapers and websites across the world. This is not the way most trials, even murder trials, proceed — unknown to anyone not related to the parties involved — and it's much more prominent even than most coverage of similar crimes committed by athletes. People are shocked by this case for reasons beyond its graphic, terrible details. And at the nexus of the reasons why this is true, there is Nike.
Oscar Pistorius was a Nike athlete. Nike suspended their endorsement of him today, meaning that they haven't dropped him altogether — they're just keeping him at a distance until this whole murder-trial thing works out. Potentially, one day, if Pistorius and his lawyers successfully argue that he shot Steenkamp in the mistaken belief that she was a burglar and, escaping with minimal to no jail time, he returns to the track, Nike could reunite with him, restoring the relationship that made this story so internationally significant in the first place.
In fact, the last three sports meltdowns of this magnitude have involved larger-than-life characters whose mythic personas were created, cultivated, and relentlessly amplified by the shoe company. Before the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal disgraced Joe Paterno, Nike had gone so far as to name a child development center at their headquarters after him, playing into his image as a principled role model for youth. They've since dropped his name from the building, though cofounder and chairman Phil Knight has also walked back his disavowal of Paterno.
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong owed a huge portion of both his own personal brand as well as that of his charity, Livestrong, to the promotional efforts of Nike, who used his triumph over cancer and dominance of cycling to turn him into not just the face of his relatively minor sport but one of the most well-known athletes in the world, an international symbol for hard work. After years of supporting Armstrong through increasingly credible allegations that his hard work was supplemented by cheating, extreme levels of dishonesty, and legal intimidation of innocent third parties, Nike finally severed its relationship with him in the wake of his admission that he had in fact taken PEDs for many years.
You've heard steroid junkie Jose Canseco explain the Russian meteor ("North Korea, do the math"), but Philadelphia Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov is a man of science. During a recent radio interview in Philadelphia, Bryzgalov hypothesized on the Russian meteor, the end of dinosaurs, and the importance of human survival. Gather 'round, children of the world, and learn something important.
Hopefully, you weren't planning on doing anything productive this weekend.
MLB, which normally lords over its video content like they were classified CIA documents — just try finding something on YouTube! — has just added hundreds of incredible archived clips to its main database. Here are some gems, but there are plenty more where these came from.
Michael Sergio parachuting onto the Shea Stadium field during the 1986 World Series.
I know we're all supposed to hate this right now, but I just can't with this one. I wish it would never end. It's beautiful. They're beautiful. Whatever. Bye!
Kyle Larson, the driver whose car hit the fence in the middle of the massive crash, walked away. Twenty-eight fans were injured.
NASCAR has already uploaded a video of the crash.
A multi-car crash during the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Drive4COPD race injured 28 bystanders, officials said Saturday.
A track worker told Yahoo! Sports that one woman had a tourniquet on her leg, while other fans suffered burns, and one person was hit by a flying tire.
The driver who won the race, Tony Stewart, managed to miss the pileup.
"Certainly when you look at this incident, there are some things we can learn and evaluate," said Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's senior vice president of racing operations. "The safety of our fans is first and foremost."
Let basketball player Michael Beasley show you how!
For example: well-known miscreant Michael Beasley threw up this miserable, contested airball against the Celtics.
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(This is, uh, not thefirst time Michael Beasley has been less than a model employee.)
Beasley's boss is coach Lindsey Hunter. And Coach Hunter was not happy with Beasley's shot-selection.
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In fact, he shot Beasley the sort of skin-withering death-glare that anyone who has ever had a job knows to fear and avoid.
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Check the end, where Hunter clearly looks to someone else on the Suns' bench as though he needs reassurance that what he just witnessed actually happened, particularly considering how closely it resembled the nightmare he had the night before that woke him in an icy sweat.
New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton is just coming off a year-long suspension. He's a little rusty.
This is New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.
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Image by Dave Martin / AP
Sean Payton is just coming off a year-long suspension for his involvement in "Bountygate," a scandal wherein the Saints defense was paying players extra who hurt other players on the field.
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Image by Dave Martin / AP
People of New Orleans have been eagerly awaiting his return and have been pissed at NFL commissioner Roger Goodell every day since he suspended Payton.
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Image by Gerald Herbert / AP
So fans of the New Orleans Saints will be happy to know that their genius coach was back in action this week, scouting players at the NFL combine, and he was ready to hit the ground running—
Three students from Grand Forks Red River High School in North Dakota caused an uproar after they donned Ku Klux Klan uniforms while in the stands of a school hockey game over the weekend.
During the semi-final hockey game against Fargo Davies on Friday, three Grand Forks Red River High School students decided to put on Ku Klux Klan hoods while standing in the crowd. A photo was taken and quickly circulated around Twitter. The hoods appear to have been a joke about the fans holding "a white out," where people in the stands wear white face paint and white clothing, a trend popularized by the NHL's Winnipeg Jets.
This is the Coronado High School Thunderbirds basketball team from El Paso, Texas.
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This is Mitchell Marcus, the Thunderbirds' beloved team manager. Mitchell has a developmental disorder.
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But Mitchell loves basketball just about as much as anyone has ever loved anything. His coach appreciated Mitchell's love and devotion to the sport and team, so for the last game of the regular season, Mitchell got to dress in uniform.
They also think a black prospect is white. This sounds like a bad Eddie Murphy movie where he plays all the parts.
Barrett Jones is a defensive end at the University of Alabama and a major NFL prospect. Earlier today, he tweeted this:
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Not positive about the whole black-people-are-just-tan-white-people joke — I mean, I know he didn't mean it that way, really, but still — BUT hahahaha wow the NFL switched the pictures of two players named Jones and they look NOTHING alike.
NFL.com did eventually correct Barrett Jones' page
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but they have not fixed Abry Jones' profile yet — he still has Barrett's picture.
After losing his starting job to Colin Kaepernick, Alex Smith has been very sad. Will the trade that the 49ers have in place make him even sadder?
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Image by Jeff Haynes / Reuters
Alex Smith — the #1 pick and 75-game starter for the San Francisco 49ers who was having the best season of his career before sustaining a concussion and being supplanted by post-humanoid Colin Kaepernick — has been traded.
Where has Alex Smith been traded?
We don't know where Alex Smith has been traded. Presumably Alex Smith knows where he has been traded, but I couldn't even guarantee you that. All we know is that apparently the 49ers are telling teams that a deal for Smith is more or less done, but it can't be finalized until March 12, meaning that for the next two weeks we must sit in amazement at this mysterious exchange of humans.
Anyway, barring a failed physical or a change of heart or the arrival of a sudden and unexpected nuclear winter (or a gamma ray burst or a universal quantum jump but maybe this isn't the best place to get into different kinds of possible Extinction Level Events), it looks like Alex Smith will be headed elsewhere. Of course, any professional sports deal must have a dealer and a dealee, and speculation now rests on which team will be obtaining Alex Smith from the 49ers. There are a few candidates. Let's go through them one by one, from least-to-most likely, and because Alex Smith has established himself as a Very Sad Man, I'll rate the trades based on how sad they would make him.
The New York Jets
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Image by New York Daily News, Andrew Theodorakis / AP
I don't know if you've heard, but the New York Jets are quarterbacked by an actual lobster. Seriously: there's just a lobster, taking the snap and waddling back on its awkward lobster legs and then trying to throw the ball with its claw, but the claw doesn't really work that well for either holding or throwing a football, and the pass usually ends up either limply falling to the field somewhere adrift of the receiver or landing in the hands of a player on the opposite football team. However, the Jets, in a remarkable display of foresight by previous general manager Mike Tannenbaum, gave this lobster a long-term contract that makes getting rid of the lobster cost-prohibitive. The Jets are likely stuck with this lobster eating up a huge portion of their salary cap, and if they were to put the lobster on the bench and let another player, ideally human, start at quarterback instead, they wouldn't have money to pay it/him, making Alex Smith a little outside of their price range. Plus, the Jets would ideally like to obtain a passer with some potential and room for development, i.e. a rookie; Smith is probably about as good as he'll ever be.
In case there's any confusion: that lobster's name is Mark Sanchez. He is a lobster.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman plans to run a basketball camp for children and will compete against North Korean athletes in the hopes it will be attended by Kim Jong Un.
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Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, center, pushes his luggage pass through a group of Chinese security officers as he makes his way to the check in counter at the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing.
Image by Andy Wong / AP
PYONGYANG, North Korea – Flamboyant former-NBA star Dennis Rodman is heading to North Korea with VICE media company — tattoos, piercings, bad-boy reputation, and all.
The American known as "The Worm" is set to arrive Tuesday in Pyongyang, becoming an unlikely ambassador for sports diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.
TV crews surround Dennis Rodman, a former NBA star at the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013.
Image by Andy Wong / AP
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Members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team gesture as they prepare to check in with former NBA star Dennis Rodman at the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing.
