FanHouse

I guarantee, this will be the best nine-minute long rap video dedicated to the 1989 NBA All-Star Game you'll see all week! (And, I'm guessing, the only time Mark Eaton and Mark Price were ever name-checked in a rap lyric, which makes it both historical and hysterical.) What makes this especially awesome is that this was apparently from the actual telecast and not just something hacked together by a YouTube wizard decades. Well done, 1980s television execs, well done.

Score that two former USC players running smack ahead of the Ohio State game. Everyone's favorite not-so-slightly doughy back made sure to let everyone know what he thinks of Ohio State before ESPN cameras. There's some context of course, as it was a friendly -- if random -- comment as the Jim Rome show followed Titans lineman Kevin Mawae for a feature.

Audio

Sayeth Rome: "White's comment was a complete non sequitur"

The segment will broadcast Friday on "Rome Is Burning" (4:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN), the game will be played Sept. 13th in Los Angeles. The Trojans would probably be heavy favorites with White, but the continued noise coming from former USC players can only have the effect of working against USC in Las Vegas.

(Via: Sports by Brooks)

Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya made it official today that they're going to fight on December 6 in what will be by far the biggest boxing match of the year.

And in a very good sign for the future of boxing, people are already talking about what the winner will do next, especially after De La Hoya's surprise comments today that he might not retire after this fight after all.

Here's my modest proposal: The winner needs to fight Floyd Mayweather.

Yes, Mayweather says he's retired, but I don't believe him. I believe that he'll be seduced by the $30 million or so that he'd likely make for fighting De La Hoya a second time, if De La Hoya wins. And if Pacquiao wins, Mayweather will be motivated by hearing everyone crown Pacquaio as the pound-for-pound king. (And although he wouldn't make as much money fighting Pacquiao than he would fighting De La Hoya, he'd still get an eight-figure payday out of that fight.)

De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao is a great fight on its own terms, but 2009 will have an even bigger one if Mayweather ends his retirement and fights the winner.

History is being made tonight, in many ways. Us college football fans are sometimes accused of wearing blinders and tonight is no different. It's opening night for college football 2008 and a certain Senator from Illinois is formally set to accept his party's nomination for President on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" address.

We can't compete.

However, we've got a job to do and its a job we love on a very big night for us as well. Barack Obama's getting the TIVO treatment in my house as we at FanHouse discuss tonight's two headline games: North Carolina State @ South Carolina (8 p.m. Eastern) and Oregon State @ Stanford (9 p.m. Eastern). There's also a smattering of other teams we'll be keeping an eye on -- Miami, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Connecticut, Iowa State, Wake Forest and Baylor among them.

Be sure to join us in the chat, starting at 7:45 p.m. Eastern (after the jump)

It shouldn't have been a surprise to see the Braves ship Mark Kotsay to the Red Sox for a low-level prospect -- Kotsay will be a free agent this winter, the Braves are 17 games under .500 and haven't been in the playoff race since, well, April.

But even if there's nothing left to play for this year, at least Braves fans will get to watch some of their top prospects get a cup of coffee in September, right? Perhaps a sneak peek of Jordan Schafer, who could be the starting center fielder in 2009? Umm, not quite. From David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

So will we see Schafer in September? No. In fact, Wren said we won't see any of the Braves' top young prospects in September, including the pitchers like Tommy Hanson and Kris Medlen.

He said the reasoning was two-fold: 1. The Braves want to monitor innings on those guys, including Medlen, who's starting on a regular basis for the first time since high school, and 2. "roster management."

In other words, to add any of them, including Schafer, to the 40-man roster now would require the Braves take someone off and possibly lose them in the Rule 5 Draft.

I get the reasoning, but c'mon, throw the fans a bone. The Braves have three of their last 16 games -- it's going to take a little more than $1 Hot Dog Night and pretty girls wielding a t-shirt gun to convince anyone it's worth buying a ticket the final month.

With the college football season getting underway this weekend, one of the best games for watching 2009 NFL draft prospects will take place Saturday when USC visits Virginia.

But while USC is obviously the more talented team, here's a surprise prediction for you: The player in that game whose name Roger Goodell will call first next April will be Virginia left tackle Eugene Monroe.

Monroe is a 6-foot-6, 315-pound senior who has nimble feet for a big guy. He started 11 games for the Cavaliers last season and didn't allow a sack in any of them, and his coach compares him to the two Virginia offensive linemen drafted in the first round the last two years, D'Brickashaw Ferguson and Branden Albert.

Until he resigned this week, Jay Mariotti had been the second most famous columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. The paper's most famous columnist, Roger Ebert, is the latest to tell Mariotti, "Good riddance."

An open letter from Ebert to Mariotti includes the following:

What an ugly way to leave the Sun-Times. It does not speak well for you. Your timing was exquisite. You signed a new contract, waited until days after the newspaper had paid for your trip to Beijing at great cost, and then resigned with a two-word e-mail: "I quit." You saved your explanation for a local television station.

As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that. You owed us decency. The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat....

On your way out, don't let the door bang you on the ass.

Ebert is a brilliant writer and is at his best when he's skewering his subject, whether it's a badly made film or, in this case, a former colleague.

ESPN scribe Bill Simmons has taken much of the summer off to work on his NBA-focused book. While a huge firebrand for all sports fans, his NBA stuff has been mostly well-received over the years. He clearly loves the game (he has Clippers season tickets, for self-mutilation's sake) and has some good insight.

That said: the title of his tome might be a little ... presumptuous.



Oh, I hope that's a working title. (He's got plenty of time to change it. May '09? In the middle of the second round of the playoffs?)

For volumes which don't purport to be the greatest ever (but might have a better shot than Simmons' effort), might I suggest Free Darko Presents ... The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars in Today's Game or Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete's Handbook?

[Via KOGOD's Reader shares. Seen also at Deadspin.]

If you read the comments here at FanHouse or at a lot of other sports blogs, you probably know a guy who posts under the name PeteJayhawk. Now hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans know him as well.

That's him, at the top of the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, being welcomed back to the paper after sending an e-mail saying he would start reading again now that Jay Mariotti no longer works there. His e-mail exchange with Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke is below:

[From Gaines to Cooke]
Sir:

I wish to inform you that due to recent developments on the Jay Mariotti front, I will now read your newspaper. In fact, I picked one up on the way to work this morning. Not a half-bad rag, I must say. Bully on you.

Regards,

Pete Gaines

[From Cooke to Gaines]
Every cloud has silver lining .. and this one is golden.

THANK YOU !

That note atop the front page is part of an informal PR campaign in which the Sun-Times is publicly saying "good riddance" to Mariotti. Some of it is funny, but I have to agree with A.J. Daulerio at Deadspin: It's rather gutless of the Sun-Times brass to rip Mariotti now that he's gone. If the bosses had a problem with Mariotti, why did they just sign him to a three-year contract?

Zen is the only way I can describe the architect of a passing attack that has averaged 5,094 yards per season over the last four years. So what's the secret behind his offensive genius and swashbuckling ways? Acupuncture.

In the last few years, the Texas Tech head coach also has cut out smokeless tobacco and, of more comfort perhaps, mostly freed himself from asthma's grip..."Went for asthma. I felt like it helped asthma," Leach said. "To stop dipping, I thought it worked great. I mean literally, right then, right there. You go (for treatments) three or four days straight and you're done." Leach, who will stop throwing the football before he stops talking with his hands, gestured high and low on his body to point out spots where he's been pricked with acupuncture needles.

Just about everywhere, an onlooker deduced.

"Yeah, pretty much," Leach said. "Well, I've seen that chart there, and I damn sure haven't had them where the chart suggests some of them go. They definitely put them places where I haven't had a necessity to dabble in."

I haven't seen that chart, and after reading that I'm not sure I want to. There's just some places a man shouldn't be poked. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, being open to new ideas has obviously helped him devise one of the nastiest passing attacks in the country and kick quite a few bad habits. If he could get the rest of the coaching staff over their fear of needles, he might be on to something.