Filed under: Horse Racing

Sports Blog - The FanHouse: Millions of Americans watch the Kentucky Derby because it’s the biggest horse racing event of the year. Then millions of Americans watch the Preakness to see if the Derby winner can win again. If the Derby winner wins the Preakness, millions of… Read more

• David Beckham’s passport photo. [The Big Lead]
• Ozzie Guillen, ready for his own firing again. [Foul Balls]
• Are Cubs fans giving up? [Wrigleyville23]
• Doesn’t it seem like there should be more “Ian”s in baseball? Yeah, us neither. [The Feed]

Filed under: Golf

Sports Blog - The FanHouse: I think it says something when Johnny Miller, perhaps the world’s biggest Tiger Woods fan, thinks Phil Mickelson is the favorite heading into the U.S. Open two weeks from now. (Admittedly, these comments were made before Lefty pulled out of the… Read more

If you didn’t watch the Stanley Cup Finals Game 2 last night — and of course you did — you might have missed this odd shot of Snoop Dogg, who, for reasons unbeknown to anyone but him (and probably not him either), was wearing a fake mustache.

We know hockey gets a bad rap, around here and everywhere else, but we would really like to point that we enjoy watching hockey, particularly that of the playoff variety. But man, seriously, No one is watching these games. The rating for Game 1 was 0.72, which is “Quite Frankly” bad. Allotting for the inherent weirdness of Nielsen ratings, that translates to about 523,000 people watching Game 1 of the sport’s championship. That’s five Tennessee home football games.

NHL Ratings Comically Bad [Lion In Oil]
I Like The Way Snrub Thinks [Chris’ Sports Blog]

Filed under: Lions, NFC North, NFL Coaching, Detroit

Sports Blog - The FanHouse: It’s become pretty common knowledge that “voluntary” in NFL terms really means “if you don’t show up, you’re volunteering your job to someone else.” The workouts that bridge the gap between the draft and training camp are, by rule, not mandatory, but… Read more

Quite a good bit of business for Sir Alex Ferguson. You know it’s been a good day when getting Owen Hargreaves for your squad is an afterthought. The real coup for Ferguson was signing two young players out of Portugal, Anderson and Nani, who could be linking up together with Cristiano Ronaldo for years to come. Anderson is 19. Nani is 20.

“‘They’re both top players and among the top five in Portugal with Simao Sabrosa, Joao Moutinho and Ricardo Quaresma,’ Portuguese football journalist Miguel Padayda told BBC Sport.”

Just what the league champions need. Two more cogs for the future. This Anderson kid, who is bound for the Brazilian starting 11 in the near future, already has quite the highlight reel. A sample from youtube (start paying close attention at 43 seconds in):

And here’s Nani, who clearly has the touch of a finisher, and whose backflips will make Obafemi Martins blush. Start paying close attention around 1:00 into the video:

Swamp discussion here.

Of all the pleasures of this whole A-Rod business — and there are many — the best has been watching media outlets like ESPN and the New York Daily News dance their way around the story while still embracing it and licking its ear. “SportsCenter,” in a move that would have been unfathomable five years ago, devoted two segments to the story, though you just know there’s going to be an “Outside The Lines” on this within the next six days. (Bob Ley, we love you, man: Don’t blame it on the blogs!)

Meanwhile, the Daily News, scooped on the “story” yesterday, more than makes up for it today, with an extended piece just full of drippy goodness. (”A petite stripper at the Hustler Club said A-Rod ‘likes the she-male, muscular type. They brought me up to the champagne room one time. I spun around once and that was it. I’m not his type.’” We have to tell you, folks: “A-Rod likes the she-male, muscular type” might be the best sentence an American newspaper has printed since “Holy Shit! Man Walks On Fucking Moon!”) But don’t dare turn to the sports section: There, Bill Madden gets all “tsk tsk” about the changing media world, and Indignant Boy Mike Lupica is so above mentioning it.

As everybody already knew, there’s nothing to be surprised about here: It’s an athlete cheating on his wife while he’s on the road. Really. The ultimate takeaway from this, however, is probably a good thing: No longer do we have to pretend that because an athlete entertains us by running and jumping, that makes him any different than an actor who entertains us by pretending to be someone else. As we’ve said before, no one ever says “Let’s let Tom Cruise’s movies speak for themselves.” After this, no one can conceivably use that justification about athletes again. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s a fact, regardless of how you want to respond to it. Athletes are paid entertainers, and they’re finally being treated that way. And say what you will, but Alex Rodriguez is certainly being entertaining right now. Who said he wasn’t worth the money?

Filed under: Washington, DC, High School

Sports Blog - The FanHouse: I really don’t mean to pick on Stuart Scott, but he’s on ESPN’s morning broadcast of the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, and in his first 10 seconds on camera, he told the viewers at home how to spell his catchphrase, “booya.” Really. He was… Read more

The legend of Hogzilla II … was it all a hoax? Did 11-year-old Jamison Stone really down a 1,000-pound feral pig in the Alabama woods, or was he home watching The Andy Griffith Show that day? As a couple of commenters pointed out yesterday, the size of said pig may have been via Photoshop. And in the finest tradition of blogs digging for the real story where the corporate media fears to tread, stinkyjournalism.org is making the same claim: That the giant pig photo we’ve all been marveling at over the past couple of days could end up being a fake.

At Art Science Research Lab, we are responsible for the publication of several media ethics blogs, checkyourfacts.org and stinkyjournalism.org. Earlier today, we published our analysis of this story and photograph, which ran on the AP, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and CNN. These photos are obvious fakes, as our in-house photo experts and an NYU physicist attest. The boy and his father were scheduled to appear on NBC’s Today Show today, until we exposed the hoax and presented our evidence to NBC. For the full story, check out www.stinkyjournalism.org

We haven’t been able to get onto the stinkyjournalism site so far this morning, by the way; the above came from a message board. Hmm, maybe the stinkyjournalism site is the fake, and the hog is real. As with all giant pig stories, the real answers remain shrouded in mystery. The folks at Monster Pig have posted their response to the Stinky Journalism “expose.” At this point, what matters what is real? The kid still can bag himself some pork.

Photo Of Monster Hog Called Into Question; Web Site Claims It Was Doctored [Fox News]
The Monster Hog: Too Glorious To Be True, Says Hoax-Seekers [Media Bistro]
Of Hogs And Men [Deadspin]

Filed under: Falcons, NFL Gossip, NFL Rumors, Atlanta, NFL Police Blotter, College Sports

Sports Blog - The FanHouse: Gerald Poindexter, the Virginia prosecutor who could file dog fighting charges against Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, said he’s moving slowly in the Vick case because he’s chastened by the three innocent Duke lacrosse players who were accused of… Read more