I Am Sporticus

Last night marked the 2008 NBA draft, and unlike in the years past, there wasn’t a true “all star” or sought after number one pick in this draft. Yes Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose are outstanding athletes, but Rose wasn’t even in consideration at this point last year. As for Beasley, he played in a weak conference and was ousted early in the NCAA tournament. One of the toughest choices for any player is whether to take the shot at the pros or not.

Here’s the deal. If you are not chosen in the first round, you are not guaranteed a contract. That’s right, you had better hope that you’re in the top 30 if you’re a big time player. The second round isn’t too bad, except for the fact you are no guaranteed a contract and might end up in the D-league or over in Europe.

There were only two underclassmen not drafted on Thursday night, Mississippi State junior Jarmont Gordon and USC freshman Davon Jefferson. Here they learned a tough lesson: the NBA’s not easy. Well, getting into it that is. The catch is that they had both hired agents, which voids their ability to return to the NCAA to play basketball. Now they must take the hard road, because this time next year they will be no-names searching for a job.

How can they do it? Work outs, work outs, work outs. They will have to push themselves to the limit and hope that one team out there will want to take the risk on them. At best, they will be sitting the bench in the NBA making money. But far better, in my opinion, is the Euro league where players rack in $200K a year. Some of my favorite Tar Heels have went on to be great Euro players. For instance, Dante Calabria and Rayshaun Terry are ’stars’ in their leagues, and my personal favorite, David Noel is heading there next season. It’s a good life, and you get paid to play in beautiful European cities. Terry currently resides in Rome.

So even though they weren’t chose, keep your head up boys . . . better days will come.

Released this weekend via the Brazilian government was the news that soccer legend Pele was robbed at gunpoint by 10 armed men in traffic earlier this month. The incident occurred at night while Pele was attempting to reach his beach house on the freeway. In the tunnel during the traffic jam, the 10 men held them at gunpoint.

Pele responded to the men by saying “It’s me, Pele”. Half the men returned the driver’s belongings, and the other half ran away with Pele’s phone, watch, and necklace. Why is Pele so important? The Brazilian government declared the man a freaking national treasure! His play had one of the single greatest impacts ever on the game of soccer. It’s a shame 10 men from the favela (Brazilian shanty-towns) decided to rob a man of such great stature.

Here’s to Pele.

Finally, after leaving Dale Earnhardt industries, betraying his loyal fans and family, Dale Jr. has found himself on winner’s circle again at Michigan. It was a gamble, but Jr. went the last 55 laps on one tanks of gas, which meant he was virtually running on fumes for the final lap of the race. But when you have lost 76 in a row and your entire fan base is starting to question you, then you must go for it. But his critics say otherwise, that he won by a mere gamble and by getting lucky. He responded:

“I mean, my fans are happy and I’m happy for them. The other half are going to tear this apart on how we won this race. But I got the trophy and I got the points. I got to see my team and my owner and my family tonight as happy as they’ve been in a long time. … It’s a pretty big day for me.”

Eh, it was a good win, but you still have the likes of Jimmy Johnson and Kasey Kahne to compete against. And in my opinion, these 2 are, if not already, the future of NASCAR.

So I’ve never really been able to play pool. I lack the patience, steady hands, and vision required to tackle this game of physics with balls and sticks. However, I do respect the heck out of the people that can play the game with ease. There are so many spins and English’s you can put on the ball that some people can hit pretty much any ball on the freakin table.

We utilize animals in sporting events on many different levels. Whether it be the rodeo, horse racing, the running of the bulls, polo, or amateur Ethiopian camel wrestling, we rely on their skills and talents to help perpetuate our competitive spirits. But there comes a point when enough is enough and nature starts fighting back. But nature doesn’t fight in the traditional style of protests or nommin’ every athlete in site. Rather, they hit every man and woman sports junky where it hurts: by delaying the game. Hell hath no fury like a man’s game put on hold (manly equivalent to woman scorn) . . . and nature knows this.

Bambi’s mother was killed with a bullet . . . like nearly every other deer. Not sure if this deer died or not, but it had some pretty long airtime:

Sure this woman is old, but her love for the sport of golf will never die. It doesn’t require that much talent and her swing isn’t too bad. Nature just had a different definition of “birdie”:

The Big Unit is a very, very scary mulleted machine. With fastballs reaching triple digits from his 6’9’’ frame, not many players would stand in the way of one of his beamers. If baseballs could make humans die in a feathery explosion of awesomeness, this is how I would want to go:

The baseball thrown to the catcher is a premeditated straight line. If someone wanted to be hit by a ball, they know where to stand (or fly). It’s a little harder to determine where the ball is going in the sport of tennis. At least this player says a little prayer for the birdie:

Like the Randy Johnson pitch, this ball hits a bird. However, the batter still swings at the pitch while having 2 strikes. By far the weirdest strikeout ever produced by nature:

Rally Car: Cool. Jumping hills at 90 MPH: Cool. A cow coming out of nowhere: Not something you would see on a Chik-fil-A commercial.

Not many people like the Yankees, except for Yankee nation themselves. With that said, a great tactic used by Cleveland was to bombard the stadium with gnats while providing no bug spray for their visitors. Derek Jeter is eaten alive, and non-Yankees loved it:

As you can see, when nature fights back in sports it can have catastrophic consequences. While they lack the opposable thumbs necessary to challenge us in the sports, they have found great success in disrupting its game play.

Here is a kid who has recorded over 600 juggles. Notice he isnt “cheating” by relying on his thighs to juggle the soccer ball (marching is much easier to maintain over a longer period of time). Hopefully his talent will convey to real soccer skills.

Ambidextrous serving by 10-year-old tennis prodigy Emira Stafford

Landon Shuffet, an incredible billiards player

This is what it means to get truly KOd. You don’t really have to be down and out, it is just the sheer magnitude of being hit so hard that you cant even catch yourself as you fall face down.

Sure, these aren’t exactly knock-him-out-roundhouse-holy-crap-i-saw-that-on-mortal-kombat style kicks. They are more like taps. But 128 in 60 seconds? The last 128 movements I did in 60 seconds were, well, lets just say it is not appropriate to discuss such matters on a sports blog.

The Cowboys released earlier today that Terrell Owens and “Pacman” Jones practiced on the field at the same time for the first time ever. In all my years of supporting football and its players, this honestly has to be the most trouble making duo I have ever heard of on the field. Well, maybe Chad Johnson is worse than both of them combined.

Pacman Jones is charged with shooting someone in Las Vegas. Enough said.

TO’s most shocking moment: Holding a press conference . . . while working out in his drive way.

Here’s my fave TO dunk:

And my fave Pacman moment . . . when he switched to wrestling:

Glad to see him back in the NFL.

I woke up this morning, and for some reason this dunk was in my head. The game happened right after my birthday, and also after the death of my friend Eve Marie Carson. She was a beautiful girl and loved her Heels with a passion. Working with the Athletic Department, we were able to get EVE patches sewed onto the jerseys the day before the game. Eve loved Danny, and I wish I could have seen her face when this happened.