Morning Link Dump - 01/20/11
Obligatory Sports Babe
This morning, because we've been given a fantastic excuse to do so by Ball Don't Lie, who point out that she was mentioned in a recent tweet from Kevin Durant (who says he'd drink her bath water, which... uh... actually, sure), we'll go with Scarlett Johansson.
Quote of the Day
"It's a good performance, but it's not a Grand Slam. It has to have a start and an end. I think that's everybody's Grand Slam. Not just me." - Tennis legend, and the last man to complete the true Grand Slam, Rod Laver, via USA Today, commenting on the possibility of Rafael Nadal winning all four of tennis's Grand Slam tournaments consecutively, as he'd do if he can win the Australian Open, which is currently underway in Melbourne.
NFL Telegraphing Drug Tests? Shock!
"After the Green Bay Packers' Jan. 9 playoff win against the Philadelphia Eagles, Pepper Burruss, the team's head trainer, wove through the locker room carrying a piece of paper with a list of names. When he reached Scott Wells, the team's starting center, he stopped. 'I'll see you tomorrow,' Mr. Burruss said," begins a report from the Wall Street Journal.
"Mr. Wells instantly knew what the trainer meant and was mildly annoyed. 'I just had one,' he said. Before moving on, Mr. Burruss told Mr. Wells he should be ready 'between 10 and two.'
"When the trainer left, Mr. Wells turned to a reporter and shrugged. 'Drug test,' he said.
"The NFL has long maintained that its drug testing program, which administers some 15,000 tests a year, is one of the toughest in North American sports. But anti-doping experts say exchanges like the one between Mr. Burruss and Mr. Wells earlier this month raise serious questions about the general effectiveness of the program."
The Man Who Made Deadspin The Most Penis-y Place On The Internet*
"A.J. Daulerio was surprised that $12,000 could fit into a single envelope," begins a fascinating GQ profile of the man who cocked up Will Leitch's respectable-by-comparison sports portal. "'I thought I'd need a hockey bag,' he recalls, sort of kidding. It was early October, and Daulerio, the editor of the sports Web site Deadspin, had requisitioned the brick of 120 crisp hundreds to pay an anonymous source. In return, the source would hand over the voice mails from Brett Favre and photos he'd allegedly snapped of his penis and sent to Jenn Sterger, a Jets sideline reporter, during his one season with the team.
"Now it's the first week of November, and Daulerio is telling me how he landed his most controversial scoop as we fly over a quilt of farmland on the way from New York to Indiana. In a few hours, he's expected in Indianapolis to participate in a panel discussion titled 'Where's the Line? Sports Media in the Digital Age.' More than any other sports journalist in years, Daulerio has been redefining where that line is, and then crashing over it. His tactics—reporting rumors, paying for news, and making Deadspin's money on stories that are really about sex, not sports—are questionable. His success is not. When he became editor of the site in July 2008, it had 700,000 readers per month. Today it has 2.3 million.
"Going public with the Favre photos was originally Sterger's idea, Daulerio tells me. He was chatting with the former Maxim model one day early last year about contributing to Deadspin, 'and she said something like, "Do you want dong shots? Because I get them all the time." I was like, "Yeah, sure." And she was like, "Well, I'll get you dong shots. It's unbelievable, the stuff I get. You won't believe who is the worst at it." And then she went into the Brett Favre story.' (Through a spokesperson, Sterger declined to comment.)"
* probably not accurate
Speaking Of Deadspin, Their Nate Jackson Stuff Rules...
"Athletes talking shit to each other is hardly a new story. Every kid who ever played sports in high school knows that shit-talking is a time-honored tradition in competitive athletics. The winners shit-talk the losers; the losers shit-talk the winners; the fans shit-talk the players, shit-talk the other team's fans, shit-talk each other. Screwing with people's minds is an American pastime," writes former Broncos tight end Nate Jackson in Deadspin.
"It is also, among athletes, a very Darwinian process. Those who take it personally and let it negatively affect their game are weeded out, until you have, in professional sports, a group of men who are not so easily rattled.
"Whenever a 'war of words' breaks out between two teams, as it did last week in the run-up to the Jets-Patriots game, we learn a lot more about the quirks and insecurities not of the players who speak out, but of the reporters who beg them to. Next time a player sounds off about his next opponent, watch the clip closely. He'll seem exasperated, and the key quotes will come in some final, dismissive flurry of words muttered in the hopes of ending the line of questioning. The reporter wants this soundbite, he needs this soundbite, and he will do anything to get this soundbite. Antonio Cromartie's "Fuck him" line about Tom Brady was, I suspect, less about Brady as a person and more about the ceaseless monsoon of Brady-scorched-you-the-last-time-you-played-and-appeared-to-be-rubbing-it-in-while-he-was-doing-it questions."
Quote of the Day II
"Gary Glitter is in line to replace Houllier after he heard Villa’s strikers are Young, Bent and possibly Keane." - A reader of The Spoiler, hilariously ragging on everybody's favourite pedophile punchline (non-Michael Jackson division).
Quickly
The Big Lead wonders if they've spotted a picture of Greg Oden or Old Man Winter.
News.com.au reports on the demotion of Kelli Underwood, who two years ago became the first woman to call Aussie Rules Football games.
For you lazies, Business Insider has the two minute version of the Sports Illustrated case against Lance Armstrong.
Sportress of Blogitude tells us of an octegenarian who has rolled 2850 perfect games in Wii bowling.
OttawaGh0st has a hilarious parody video of Brett Favre's retirement announcement.
Aron Winter gets a new job in Toronto. His fellow Dutch legend Ruud Gullit? Grozny. As in... Chechnya. For real. According to Unprofessional Foul.
A Modest Proposal For Baseball
By way of Big League Stew, here we have a great, passionate video from Sully Baseball on why MLB has to be out of its mind to not be marketing the San Francisco Giants more.
