We now have proof and a name of one closeted gay NFL player...

In what has to be a nightmare for the Religious Right faction of the National Religion, SB Nation's Outsports blog had an interview posted on the 20th with an ex-NFL player who was closeted gay.

Worse yet for the Religious Right and the No F_____s League, he was once a New England Patriot.

Many people who slammed the league for blackballing Michael Sam said, as one of their defenses, that there had been closeted-gay players in the National Football League.

With this interview, many people met one.

Ryan O' Callaghan, serviceable four-year NFL career for the Patriots and Chiefs, a largely-reserve offensive tackle.
2006 and 2007 with the Patriots, 2009 and 2010 with the Chiefs.  He was on the 18-1 Patriots, played 15 games, started only one that year.

Realized when he was in junior high he was gay, and, being in Republican Redding in Democratic California, also realized immediately he had to closet himself for his own protection!

He actually made the NFL a final goal.  Once he finished his NFL career, he planned to end his life.

Much like Sam, he was a celebrated collegian:  Morris Trophy winner for the then-Pac-10, for the best offensive lineman in the conference that year (2005).  O'Callaghan, the interview points out, takes special pride in that award:  It's not a media award.  It's voted on by the opposing defensive linemen of the conference!

Fifth-round pick of the Patriots in 2006, O'Callaghan was there to win, and, as long as he could show Bill Belichick he could continue the Patriots run, he could keep his secret that was a ticking time bomb on his life just that.

IR for a shoulder in 2008 made him expendable to the Patriots, but his secret was still kept.  He ended up landing in Kansas City.  Started one year, a groin injury IR'd the second year, and the shoulder finished his career.

Addicted to painkillers, he even had the building ready to go to end his life...

To their credit (and probably much to the chagrin of their employers), the people working with him with the Chiefs actually stopped all that.  The head trainer got him in touch with drug counseling, and the counselor had worked with gay NFL players before.

Read the whole article.  It's a story the NFL does not want you to believe, and that's why I"m mentioning it here.

The NBA has been rewritten, prepare to go back...

Bitch-ass Ball #2 to the Lakers.

Stupid dad got what he wanted, and I fear we may be headed back to Foolish and Wretched One-Dimensional Ballhog Land.

Because now we're going back to people being able to make demands and threaten so much money for their little precious meal ticket that the next Super-Team might be the Lonzo Angeles Balls.

The first thought one might have, especially with the history of the Showtime/Magic Lakers, is:  What the fuck are they thinking?

Valid question.

Unfortunately, I fear the reality of a league in which you need a team with at least three ultra-stars to even be RELEVANT anymore is going to mean that Magic himself is going to put his pride on the shelf and, to deliver a proper Hollywood product to the masses.

My friend, a long-time and probably-now-dormant and disgruntled Lakers fan, said two very good points.

One, what Pandora's Box has been opened to the league?

And now you have the situation where any little shithead can go ahead and draft his team. with a big enough mouth and enough money behind him (or proposed-as-such)...

Another one out of his mind due to football. How much longer before we admit they ALL are???

One of the big hitters of his day too.

Warren Sapp now admits he has memory loss and will donate his brain to science once he dies.

It's another person out of his mind due to football (and not how I normally speak that Warren Sapp is out of his mind from time to time!), and how much longer before we have to admit that all of them are?

jSPN tries to hype up the Foolish and Wretched One and... OOPS!!!!!

Anyone who's seen ESPN knows that the Corporate Sports Programming Network has been the jordon Sports Programming Network for most of it's history.

So, no shock when they put together a fluff piece on the NBA Draft that they decided to try to pimp the tin rigged god as the Best Ever.

The piece was a piece on the best draft picks at each position, and jordon was featured in a large picture on the top of the piece.

Except for ONE PROBLEM...

They decided to use a sabremetric method called career win shares.  Not 100% sure how it works, but the point will be made clear...

jordon was made the best #3 at 214.

The best #1 was Kareem...  at 273.4!!!!

OOPS!!!!

NOT THE BEST EVER!!!

(And one more on the bottom of the page.  Since Wilt was a "territorial pick" when he was drafted, he was not included.  His win shares?  247.3!)

The Pig, The Dupe, and a Billion Dollars: Why Sane People Need To Avoid Las Vegas on August 26th...

Conor McGregor, by all reasonable appearances, has agreed to lay down for Floyd Mayweather on August 26th.

There's no other way, regardless of the number of zeroes involved, this event would happen.

Has no one paid attention for the last, what, ten years?  Fifteen??

Floyd Mayweather and The Money Team OWN Las Vegas.

Don't believe me?  They remind you every time you leave the city Westbound on the Interstate 15 -- large billboard advertising said Money Team.

Pacquiao laid down to pay some of his taxes off.

Every fighter this piece of shit "fought" laid down, because there's only one thing in the fight game which makes a goddamn cent anymore, and it's a loud-mouth piece of shit who represents the Vegas fight game perfectly.

And now he's not only going to hurt boxing, but the entire Vegas fight game.

Many people I talk to would say "Good!" to all of that, and I have no issue with any of that.

Early bets have had the general public "squares" heavy to McGregor, even though any intelligent sport discussion (even if you took this fight as a "shoot" and not the fixed Money Team Production any sane person has to understand it will be) sees this as a joke...

Look, I get it:  I want Mayweather the domestic abuser put into a coma.  I'll make no secret of that.

But the most frustrating thing about it is that he basically does enough to make a show out of it, goes into the defensive shell, and you know by about Round 4, the entire situation is a rigged farce.

And the thing is:  We don't even know if this is going to be a boxing match (McGregor has applied for a boxing license in Nevada!), an MMA situation, or some sort of Pride FC hybrid rules whateverthey'regoingtotrytoputtogether...

I get that Conor McGregor is a proud Irishman and all of that, and it's one of the things that makes me utterly shocked he'd get in any ring or octagon or whatever with Floyd Mayweather.

I would think Conor McGregor would know better than to get in any fixed fight.

That said, no fight that Floyd Mayweather has fought in many years or will ever fight again that will ever be legitimate.

Every person who pays for the tickets, the pay-per-views, the hotel rooms, etc., and ESPECIALLY anyone who bets on McGregor to win, is an idiot!

All I know is that this ends one way:  The Pig gets his hand raised over The Dupe, and we all get Duped again by The Money Team.  The fight is fixed the moment ink is put to paper.

And then, with no mega-draw, the Vegas fight game dies.  Both boxing and MMA.  It will try to continue (look at the fight this weekend and the Golden Boy Productions fight with GGG right near the Mayweather/McGregor farce). but it has no mega-draw.

I'm about to be this close to wondering if the NCAA...

... has more skeletons in their closet on the administrative level regarding pedophilia and the like...

So...  Let's see here...

Penn State still exists and hasn't been burned to the ground...

Baylor University still exists...

The pitcher for Oregon State has requested indefinite leave after his skeletons hopefully not only end his career, but any employable life of freedom in any respect...

And yet the NCAA decides to go after...

WAIT FOR IT!

Donald De La Haye, the kicker for the University of Central Florida!

His "crime"?

He's a marketing major, according to an article in USA Today this morning.  He thought it would be a good idea to use that expertise in the creation of a YouTube channel.

He's chronicling his experience as a student-athlete.  He has over 50,000 subscribers, and is apparently making no money off of this.

His "crime"?

Either the NCAA believes he is making money off the YouTube stuff, or that it's illegal to say "I'm a student-athlete." without the NCAA getting a cut at all!

He is a junior -- not sure if this year or next...  Hmmmmmmmm...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah....

I knew something was odd last night, when I watched the FS1 coverage of the Mexico-USA CONCACAF World Cup Qualifier match.

This match, in the sixth round of the hexagonal final group (six teams, home and home), was at the infamous mile-high Estadio Azteca in Mexico City -- a venue the NFL also uses and will use for one of it's highest-profile games of the season:  New England-Oakland.

But there's been a nasty little secret about our neighbors to the south with respect to their feelings toward their opponents, and the first thing I saw on the mid-stadium crawl indicated it...

I actually saw the word "puto" in an "advertisement there.

(My apologies to any Spanish-speaking blog readers for the use of the word -- it is only being used as explaining what is going on.)

The word is one of the biggest insults and slurs you can speak in the Spanish language, roughly translating as a gay whore.

The Mexican soccer federation has been fined a number of times over the years for their fans using the slur against players from the other team.

So much so, the federation tried to warn the fans about this, in a comment roughly translated to:

"Chanting 'puto' does not make you more Mexican.  Help us to avoid sanctions.  Join us."  (MSN)

Nope.

Every time USA goalkeeper Brad Guzan lined up for a goal kick...

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah....  Puto!!!"

More fines are expected.

And before you think American fans are any better, the new MLS team in Atlanta had it's fans chanting the same slur in it's first match.

The United States took a large step toward qualifying for the World Cup in Russia with a 1-1 draw Sunday night.

Well, there it is, and by God if it makes any sense whatsoever...

Golden State is champions again, and the mantra is now that Kevin Durant chose correct.

But this is a team which has denied itself history on four separate occasions (three chances to win the title after 73-9, and the one shot they had here at 16-0), and this finality, though more the normal sense of adding a game to the series and giving Golden State a celebration at home (which it would not have had in any of it's four series if 16-0 had completed!), appears to make little sense, especially given the events of Game 4.

And, even now, the super-team mantra is in full effect, probably leaving the broadcast partners scratching their heads.

Stay tuned...

Some Game 4 numbers: DA FUQ???

Sorry for the apparent language, but that's the only way I can describe a couple of these numbers:

• The Cleveland Cavaliers shot 22 free throws in tonight's first quarter.
• They scored 49 points in the first quarter of tonight's game, a Finals record for a quarter and the new PLAYOFFS record for any first quarter -- old record 45.  (Playoffs record for any quarter is 51, a 4th quarter by Los Angeles in 1962.) 
• They scored 86 in the first half, a PLAYOFFS record for a half.  The old record for the entire Playoffs was 83.  Old record for a Finals first half was 79, for any Finals half, 81.
• The teams combined for 154 points in the first half, a new PLAYOFFS record (old record was 150, old Finals record was 140).
• Warriors:  27-36 for the game from the line, and Durant had 16 of the attempts (made 15).
• Cavs:  21-31, meaning they only shot NINE freethrows in the last three quarters?????
• Yep.  Four in the second quarter, three in the third, two in the fourth -- that includes all the technicals.

DA...

FUQ????

The NBA record for most points in the first quarter of any game is 50.  Set five times, last in 1990.

I am really getting an ugly feeling this is more than just one game here.

Were they showing us a basketball game or scripted reality television on ABC tonight?

Because, when you understand that the three biggest shows on ABC are reality scripted rig-jobs (Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor(ette), and, starting next season, the return of American Idol), the fact that the broadcast partners finally got what they wanted and broke up Golden State's 16-0 Playoffs run with a large Cleveland win tonight should be obvious to anyone.

137-116 Cleveland, in a game in which Cleveland broke Finals records for both points in a quarter and points in a half.

Too bad no one was hiding that there were serious problems with the officiating, including a late (as in 2nd quarter in a call in the 1st) recission of a technical foul, etc.

The officials called seven technical fouls in a game which appears to show Cleveland with the first signs of life in this series.

(Not unlike a similarly-chippy Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, including Sid the Kid, about to be coronated with another consecutive Cup, jamming a guy's face into the ice!)

It got so bad that Jason McIntyre of FOX Sports Radio posted on Twitter the following attempt by the ABC/ESPN announcers (ABC Sports has been ESPN for a number of years now, regardless of whether the game is on ABC) to rationalize all of this:

Cavs win will be tainted. NBA trying to block Warriors from "Greatest team of all-time" label. Embarrassingpic.twitter.com/ULQIQNIZvE

— Jason McIntyre (@jasonrmcintyre) June 10, 2017

(The fact is that the announcers, probably with their hands on the wheel of the game, steered that thing for Cleveland for all it is worth.)

And there's another thing too, on edit:  Had the Warriors gone 16-0 and gotten the regular-season record and the post-season record in two years and two titles in three years, would this have besmirched ESPN's tin god, The Foolish and Wretched One-Dimensional Ballhog?

Yeah, I'll say it:  I don't think ESPN wants jordon to have competition.

Starting with Darren Rovell and how much money the Warriors owners would lose in a 4-0 sweep, ESPN spent three solid days in the rhetoric of literally begging the Warriors to throw at least one game in Cleveland to extend the series -- when history beckoned them otherwise.

Bill Simmons said it in his own Tweet:

This ref crew is an absolute abomination. It's a humiliating night for the NBA.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) June 10, 2017

If I'm going to come out, and (infamously in college football USENET circles) say that there were Five Billion Reasons (the former BCS contract to ESPN) for ESPN to determine who wins the college football national championship, there is nothing keeping me from the same mechanic here.

TNT and ESPN know the NBA is in trouble.

And it is.  There is no doubt that some serious action is going to have to be taken to address a massive competitive integrity problem.  Adam Silver is addressing in a soon-to-be-released directive the concept of player rest, and an additional week is being thrown into the season for this regard.

Still doesn't talk about the fact that half the games being played (or at least the better number of games by 3/4 of the teams in the league) are being rigged, thrown, tanked, and point-shaved, partially due to the incompetence of 3/4 of the teams and their GMs, and partially because they don't have to care!

The fact is that, sans maybe 20 games in the regular season (Cleveland, Boston, Golden State, can't even say San Antonio!!), any game can be rigged by the team just tanking it and not giving a fuck.

And that's a problem when you are two television partners (ESPN/Disney/ABC and TNT/Turner) who just dropped $2.66 billion a year (believed, the total was never announced) for nine years, starting this year.

And that money, in a one-time salary-cap spike, is what got the Warriors Durant.

Well, that deal just got them something else, as I said on my Twitter:

The new NBA TV deal gave the #Warriors #KevinDurant . It also took away 16-0. Tonight's game was #Rigged by #ESPN/#ABC. #NBAFinals

— Michael Falkner (@darkstar7646) June 10, 2017

And here's the worst part of it:

If I'm in Vegas right now (not for large money at all), I'm at least giving a look to Cleveland winning the series.

At least before Game 4, sportsbook.ag, according to Vegas Insider, had 35-1 on Cleveland winning the series in the reverse sweep.  According to one Tweet I saw an hour or so after originally posting this, before that Game 4, Cleveland was 40-1 to win the series.

And now, where are we?

3-1, two home games in Golden State, and a country full of basketball fans cheering Cleveland again.

We've been down this road before, and not with the disappointment of having history befouled by the media partners.

My anonymous friend and I have been talking about this, and my friend said that a reverse sweep and another Cavs title will break up the Warriors.

And all I could think is:  That's what the media wants!

To make this league interesting again, they need the one superteam broken up -- and what's easier to do when 3/4 of the teams are throwing games and there's one superteam dominating everything?

It's too hard (but it's damn well needed) to call the 3/4 of teams to task.

It's easier to break up the one superteam, in the same vein that it's easier to fire the coach than can a bad bunch of players.

Danger Will Robinson.

DO NOT PLAN THAT PARADE FOR OAKLAND UNTIL THE BUZZER.

Is there a top-flight athlete left in this country who deserves to be playing their sport?

It seems like, when we can't find out about one, here comes the next one, and it's worse than anything previous.

Yahoo! Sports reports tonight that Oregon State has a serious problem.  Their star pitcher, Luke Heimlich, who is (or at least WAS) supposed to go first-round in the Major League Baseball Entry Draft, is a registered sex offender for sexually molesting a 6 year-old female family member (and again, two years before, when she was FOUR!!!) when he was 15 -- and he was cited for letting his registration lapse!

Oregon State is 52-4, and the #1 team in the country entering Super Regional play, and they play Vanderbilt Friday night.

Three MLB teams have removed him from their boards completely as a result as of the writing of the Yahoo! piece.

The article reports that the NCAA has no national policy regarding eligibility of juveniles who commit felonies, but I wanted to research the possibility that Heimlich's status as a sex offender in the state of Washington would disqualify him at the NCAA level.  It is clear that the relevant parties allowed him to leave the state (as a low-risk "Level 1" offender) to enroll at Oregon State - this is not uncommon in many criminal cases.

Oregon State MUST now withdraw from the NCAA baseball tournament.  Even if the NCAA has no rule prohibiting sex offenders from being actual players (and Heimlich is not the first -- there is a former Air Force football star I'm finding on Internet searches that gained notoriety in this regard), the fact that he failed his obligation to re-register should have rendered him ineligible from that point, disqualifying any games he played in afterward, and disqualifying Oregon State University from the tournament.

I have already contacted the Twitter accounts of both the NCAA (@NCAA) and the official NCAA baseball account (@NCAACWS) effectively demanding immediate investigation.  I am also hoping that some sane person will put some integrity ahead of a national-championship favorite at Oregon State and pull the plug on their season for an ineligible player.

I do not anticipate success.  The problem is, this is not a person who's going to have a campus full of football-rabid animals like Penn State or Baylor to protect him.

I could see ESPN having to report something very ugly if this is not dealt with.

(NBA) No tell tonight, and the jordon-jockers are pissed!!!

Well, one good thing about tonight:  Cleveland did make it a game deep into the fourth, but Golden State is one win from 16-0 and an Playoff-undefeated title.

And the jordon-jockers at ESPN are pissed...

They're all over LeBron for not taking the CLASSIC jordon SHOT when the GAME WAS ON THE LINE...

LeBron James is a lot of things.  A foolish and wretched one-dimensional ballhog he is NOT.  He may be a bit on the greedy and conceited side SOMETIMES ("I'm taking my talents to South Beach..." -- sorry, LeBron and jSPN, you aren't living that one down ever!!!), but the whole rhetoric has been that he needs to be the one to take the shots and all that stuff, just like the tin god...

Who would definitely have modern company (forgetting, of course, the massive run of the Celtics in the 1960's!!!) if (and probably once) Golden State consummates Saturday night and you get a three-year span with two titles and the record for both best regular-season and post-season record.

But ESPN and Disney don't want that -- and are trying to do anything to swerve the series to at least extend it more games millions of dollars....

It is clear little doubt remains: Rob Manfred WANTS BaseBrawl!

If I didn't see it, I would not have believed it!

Friend pointed it out again, and I think it's worthy of a post.

Hunter Strickland was suspended for six games (several too few in my opinion!) for nailing Bryce Harper in the hip and then fighting him -- a clear retaliation for getting lit up during the 2014 National League playoffs between Harper's Nationals and Strickland's Giants.

Strickland has appealed, and the date for that is June 13th.

MLB, in it's INFINITE WISDOM, tried THIS for the unsuspecting public...  (Deadspin)

The game was on Memorial Day, and MLB trotted out GOD AWFUL UGLY uniforms of almost every team with camo on them and everything military.

So they tried to auction off Strickland's jersey -- with full denotation of the incident!! -- on it's official auction site!

Well, there's another thing that's official about Major League Baseball...

As we've suspected a while now, MLB wants this game to become more violent, football-intense, anything to get people to care about it a little more and The National Religion a little less...

No wonder plunkings and angry discussions are on the uptick....

A couple of baseball people need to shut the fuck up - NOW!!

(A little surprised that earlier post posted.  Glad it did, as I was done with it at the tipoff of Game 3.  That said, Blogger was giving me all sorts of grief about that point in time.)

Thanks to my anonymous friend baseball historian again.

We've got a couple of idiots who are on the full "SPEAK ENGLISH!" Trump-wagon here with respect to the foreign influx of players in Major League Baseball.

And if Rob Manfred didn't have such a hard-on for confrontation, he'd do his fucking job as Commissioner to put a stop to all this!

It's even more distressing that the first one is Phillies legend Mike Schmidt.  (Deadspin)

This is what he said on WIP in Philadelphia as to whether he could build the Phillies around Odubel Herrera -- who, ironically, is the only player on the Phillies roster who has a contract of any feasible length:

My honest answer to that would be no because of a couple of things. First of all, it’s a language barrier. Because of that, I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game. Or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game. Or come over to a guy and say, “Man, you gotta run that ball out.” Just can’t be — because of the language barrier — that kind of a player.

And then the article probably gives the key point:  Herrera is another one of the players who loves to bat-flip and the like.  It should be noted, as the article does, that Herrera DOES speak English, but it's clear that Mike Schmidt is another "Unwritten Rule of the Game" traditionalist...

Oh.

Fucking.

Joy.

He has apologized, but I do have to wonder if a firing or suspension from anything Phillie might be in order here, not unlike the whole KNBR "brain-dead Caribbean hitters" fiasco from a number of years back!

And that's not the only such recent story!

Another announcer who needs to be suspended is Red Sox Jerry Remy, who believes it should be illegal for a translator to accompany the pitching coach or manager to the mound for a visit -- and that the pitcher should learn "baseball language" -- meaning ENGLISH!  (Deadspin)

And then a correction by Deadspin shows it's even WORSE than Remy represented.  The Japanese person who went out to the mound was not a translator for a pitching consultation, but a member of the Yankees training staff:  Koji Uehara was being examined for an INJURY!!!

FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!

Is ESPN throwing a tell to NBA fans?

ESPN is almost begging the Warriors to lose at some point in Cleveland either in the game I start to type now, or the Game 4 on Saturday to prevent 4-4-4-4.

Don't get me wrong:  I think the NBA is in gigantic trouble anyway, and I think a massive "Duty of Loyalty" investigation against at least 2/3-3/4 of the teams is badly needed this summer, and I think something to address the absolute bad business of professional basketball in this country (which, ironically, is probably in response to the two decades of rigging by David Stern) is needed, or the NBA is not long for this Earth if they don't.

That said:  Darren Rovell, the ESPN Business Analyst, has tweeted (and the webpage has the analytics as it's front-page story at the tipoff of Game 3) that a 4-4-4-4 for the Warriors would cost their owners $12.5 million per home game avoided by such a sweep.

Never mind the money they've already lost by not extending previous series.

Gee, are we getting desperate, ESPN?

Are we getting to the point where it is such bad business to have a pro basketball team that you are even telling the eventual champions to tank for your corporate ends?  (Remembering, of course, the home of the Finals is ABC, same parent company (Disney) to ESPN...)

Could the NFL and it's media partners be any more obvious about the 2017-18 narrative at this rate?

We're going hardcore right-wing redneck, it sounds like, in the NFL this year.

Worst part of it is that they aren't even close to wanting to hide it anymore.

....

They're bringing back "All My Rowdy Friends" from that right-wing homophobic cracker Hank Williams Jr. for Monday Night Football.

Announced today, friend found it through Deadspin.

Look, the NFL knows where it's bread got waxed (not buttered) the first half of last season -- many of the right-wingers who love them some football were getting off on the Donald Trump Express.

They might as well tell us it's Dallas with Jerry Jones vs. New England with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and get it done with -- because if you think they weren't hiding it in previous years, they REALLY AREN'T HIDING IT NOW.

(Oh, and my friend brought up a great point:  They're doing this to bring back the anti-Kaepernick pro-Murica "fan".  Hell, why not just execute him in Foxboro on Opening Night?)

This league is going to compete with NASCAR to see how right-wing and redneck you can go in an awful damn hurry.