Chris Borland, who sent shockwaves through the NFL with his retirement last week after one season with the San Francisco 49ers due to fears of future brain injuries, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that he was giving back part of his signing bonus.
Borland, 24, made the comment after he was asked if he had any buyer’s remorse.
“Absolutely not. To play one year, it’s not a cash grab as I’ve been accused of. I’m paying back three-fourths of my signing bonus. I’m only taking the money I’ve earned,” he said.
“This to me is just about health and nothing else. I’ve never played the game for money or attention. I love football. I’ve had a blast and I don’t regret the last 10 years of my life at all. I’d do it over the exact same way. From here on I’m looking forward.”
Rules for talking about balls….footballs that is
You would think that the football issue was a matter of national security. I got so sick of hearing about balls yesterday that I thought I would put my foot through the TV. I don’t care!
I cared about basketballs, not footballs. How about those Wahoos!!! The Wahoos remain undefeated and are ranked #2 in the nation. This is our state. When have we ever been ranked #2 in the nation? UVA seems determined to get in the news, regardless. Come on folks, this is exciting! This is a good thing.
Go Wahoos.
Adrian Peterson suspended for a year
Saying Adrian Peterson has “shown no meaningful remorse” for injuring his young son, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended the Minnesota Vikings star without pay for at least the remainder of the 2014 season Tuesday morning for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.
The NFL Players Association quickly announced it will appeal the decision and demand a neutral arbitrator — not Goodell — to hear the appeal, accusing an unnamed league executive of telling Peterson his nine weeks on the exempt list would be considered time served.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Peterson’s time on paid leave was taken into account but cited the aggravating circumstances laid out in Goodell’s letter to Peterson as explanation for the extended discipline.
How does anyone judge someone’s remorse? I find that odd.
Gillespie airs “pro-Redskin” political ad during Cowboys-Redskins game
Hail to the Redskins! Hail Vic-tor-y! Congratulations to the Washington Redskins over their sudden death in overtime win last night. Moving on…
Pretty slick move, Ed Gillespie, pretty slick! That ad was effective and well-timed. All’s fair in love and politics.
The fact that this issue has gotten to be a national issue is fairly ridiculous, in my opinion. Should this bill ever pass, when will the PC issue creep over into all names, icons and monikers? Will local schools have to change their names? Will they have to chose new mascots to something namby pamby and lacking fight? I can see Stonewall Jackson high school and fire department having to rename themselves now if some sort of bill on PC steroids gets passed.
Congress has enough to do without getting into what a private franchise calls itself. Congress can’t do its own job right. Now it wants to tell someone else how to deal?
Mark Warner is correct to keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t need to voice an opinion. I hope he is abstains from voting on this issue. Warner is a businessman at heart. I think the consumers/fans and advertisers will ultimately decide the Redskins name issue. That is really where the decision should rest.
Redskins: Where the source of pride is real
I used to travel a lot more than I do now. I used to love to go to the west and whenever I did, I visited Indian reservations when possible. I looked at the schools and checked out the mascots. Up and down the west coast, from Washington State to New Mexico (I know New Mexico isn’t ON the coast line), I saw school after school with that dreaded name for a mascot–Redskins.
I thought it was sort of neat. That settled the local issue here in D. C. for me. Obviously the term “Redskin” as a mascot certainly didn’t offend Native American kids. As shown in the video, the Redskin mascot is a great source of pride.
Major cheating at UNC: NO Class
According to businessweek.com:
The University of North Carolina on Wednesday admitted its academic-fraud-for-athletes scandal was worse than the public has previously been told. That’s saying something. After all, the practice at Chapel Hill of steering football and basketball players into fake classes had already made North Carolina the epicenter of a national debate about the corrupting effects of the $16 billion college athletics industry.
Several considerations regarding this widespread
1. The deceit was widespread and aimed at keeping athletes eligible. For years, UNC officials have resisted the obvious indications that academics were compromised to promote sports. That resistance has finally collapsed. The latest in a series of university-sponsored investigations revealed that over 18 years—from 1993 through 2011—some 3,100 students took “paper classes” with no faculty oversight and no actual class attendance. Almost half the students enrolled in the phony courses were athletes. Many of the basketball and football players “were directed to the classes by academic counselors” assigned to advise athletes, UNC said in a written statement. “These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible.”
In other words, to keep members of UNC’s top-rated basketball team on the court, professional “counselors” encouraged flat-out academic fraud.
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MVP Kevin Durant: grateful athlete thanks those who helped him along the way
Many athletes have wind beneath their wings. It might be a parent, a coach, a teacher. Kevin Durant basketball star player of the Oklahoma City Thunder thanked those who helped him along the way during his acceptance speech when he was awarded The NBA Most Valuable Player award on Tuesday. He said his mother was the real MVP in his life.
Jon Wertheim, executive editor of Sports Illustrated wrote about the current struggling athletes for an upcoming issue. He wonders what is being done for those who haven’t reached the level that Kevin Durant has. At least 100,000 kids sleep under bleachers or shower in the locker room. Often coaches and teachers know and bring extra peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes the kids hide it. Some of the kids are literally homeless.
NJ teen-athletes arrested for hazing, sex assault, season cancelled
Seven New Jersey teenagers were charged on Friday in connection with a series of sexual assaults in a hazing scandal that prompted a high school to cancel the rest of its football season, the authorities said.
Six of the teenagers were taken into custody on Friday evening on charges stemming from attacks on four students in four separate encounters at Sayreville War Memorial High School, in Parlin, Andrew Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, said in a joint statement with Chief John Zebrowski of the Sayreville Police Department. The seventh teenager has surrendered to the police, the authorities said on Saturday.
Those charged range in age from 15 to 17. Officials withheld their identities because they are under the age of 18.
The county prosecutor said that on four separate occasions between Sept. 19 and Sept. 29, some of the suspects held the victims, who are also juveniles, against their will, while others “improperly” touched them “in a sexual manner.” One of the victims was kicked during an attack, officials said.
The school had been scheduled to play its homecoming football game on Friday night against Monroe High School. But school officials canceled the game and the rest of the season on Monday after they received complaints that older players had bullied and harassed younger ones.
After Ray Rice: What’s the new standard
There are all sorts of defining moments where the rules all change. The press will never turn the other way after the Senator Hart and the Monkey Business. Behavior between men and women in the work place will be forever changed after Anita Hill. Lots of things changed post Watergate. Sports figures will never get by with domestic violence after Ray Rice was banished from football after a video was released of him coldcocking his soon-to-be wife in a elevator, knocking her unconscious.
Many folks were already upset that the NFL had such lightweight sanctions on players who were involved in violent acts against others. Penalties were longer for those who were arrested for drug use than for beating one’s wife to a bloody pulp. All that is going to change now and it should.
Hopefully these kinds of sanctions will carry over to other sports and to other career fields. Domestic violence has to have sanctions. Now, here is the question. Would we feel differently if the roles were reversed? What if the perpetrator was not a well-know athlete? Would we have the same abhorrent reaction? Is this about size difference? Gender? Would we be as upset if a wife or girl friend flew into a rage and pummeled an athlete? No one seemed to care that Mrs. Woods broke up tiger’s golf clubs. Speak to the issue of domestic violence please and do we cut slack to women to beat on their husbands?
Suarez: Serial biter?
This is how a sports biting scandal works. It begins, as it did when Uruguayan soccer star Luis Suarez allegedly bit Italian Giorgio Chiellini, with disbelief. Then comes the introspection phase as analysts try to contextualize the errant chomp. Finally, the scandal reaches, as it did on Wednesday in the Suarez case, the blame-the-media phase.
Uruguayan soccer officials claim the picture of Giorgio Chiellini clutching his tooth-marked shoulder was, in fact, altered to make the bite marks look worse than they actually were. “The accusations against Suarez are unfounded, and we will prove it,” Alejandro Balbi, the secretary general of the Association of Uruguayan Football, told Sport Witness.
“If every player starts showing the injuries he suffers and they open inquiries for them everything will be way too complicated in the future,” Balbi added in an interview with Uruguayan radio. “We’re going to use all arguments possible.”
Conspirators prowl the periphery, he said. “You shouldn’t forget that we’re rivals of many … This does not go against what might have happened, but there’s no doubt that Suarez is a stone in the shoe for many.”
This is not the first time Luis Suarez has been accused of biting during a soccer match. There have been at least 3 other formal complaints where Suarez was fined or suspended. He is, in fact, a serial biter. He should be banned from ever competing again. Period. The Uruguayan soccer officials are simply full of it. Let them play all by themselves and see how it works out for them.
Meanwhile, GO Team USA! The game between team USA and Germany begins at noon today. The game can be seen on ESPN and live online at watchespn.com for those who are stuck at work.
Michael Sam: The new frontier?
ESPN’s cameras were in place Saturday when St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher called Sam at his agent’s house in San Diego to tell the former University of Missouri defensive lineman that they had selected him in the seventh and last round of the draft.
What the cameras caught next was something remarkable — and certainly rarely seen on Disney-owned ESPN: a tearful Sam receiving congratulations from his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano, complete with a kiss between the two men.
Congratulatory kisses are common in sports, although they usually occur between husbands and wives or boyfriends and girlfriends. This one drew alternating waves of shock, anger and gratitude from around the Twittersphere and elsewhere after ESPN aired it, on a tape-delayed basis, at 6:40 p.m. EST Saturday followed quickly by a replay on the NFL Network.
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Ovechkin heads home to the USA
Ovechkin is right. I am wrong.
Time for a slice of crow. Olympic rules state that an athlete must be a citizen of the country they play for.
The Russian men’s hockey team is now out of the competition. That means Alex Ovechkin, the leader of Team Russia heads back to the United States. Putin’s dream of a gold medal in men’s hockey has gone down in defeat. To a non-hockey fan, this news is a blip on my radar, sort of.
I say sort of because I have a granddaughter who is wild about everything Ovechkin. I follow him through default. Maybe I could go so far as to call it osmosis. Whatever the reason, I am just plain old pissed at the toothless wonder, the Great 8. I am pissed at him because he is a turn coat. He should have never played for Team Russia. He should have never worn the number 8 jersey while playing for Russia.
Mr. Howler defended #8. He said, “Well, he IS Russian!” Tough. He was drafted by the Washington Capitals in 2004 and began playing in 2005 at age 20. It’s now 2014. For ten years Alex Ovechkin has been playing for the Washington Capitals. He has been making good old American money and lots of it. He is their star.
Mike Rice Fired: Too little, too late?
Mike Rice should have been fired the moment his abusive behavior was discovered. Let’s not stop there. The athletic director and the president of the university need to go also. They were aware that Rice treated his players like this. For that matter, it is their business to know how he treated his players.
Mike Rice hurled racial slurs, homophobic slurs, hit players, pushed them and threw basketballs at their legs and groin. He was verbally and emotionally abusive. Who on earth thinks this behavior is acceptable? It is unacceptable behavior for any coach at any level of competition.
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Kentucky Derby: 138th Run for the Roses
This Saturday, May 5 will be the annual 138th Kentucky Derby. No charming horse stories jump out at us this year. That might happen post race. The slight favorite this year is a horse named Bodemeister. Why that almost sounds like Blogmeister!
Every year I go out with friends and play our dollar bets on the each race of the Triple Crown. It sounds silly but it is a rite of spring for us.
To view the horses for this race, go to the Washington Post section. CLICK HERE .
Coach Joe Paterno has died (1926-2012)
Update: 10:20 : Coach Joe Paterno has died. RIP Coach.
The above video is the last interview with Joe Paterno and was with Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post.
It has been reported that former head football coach Joe Paterno is gravely ill and family is considering removing him from a respirator. Paterno suffers from complications of lung cancer. He was abruptly removed from his position as head coach November 9, 2011.
Paterno fell at home December 19 and suffered from a shattered pelvis. His health has been in continued decline since then.
Students, faculty and friends have begun to gather at the campus bronze statue to keep vigil. Shown here, friends removing snow from the area of the larger than life likeness of their beloved Coach Paterno. Coach Paterno is the winningest coach in the history of college football. He went to Penn State in 1949.
