Even Unemployed, Tim Tebow Finds Ways To Be Noticed

You gotta hand it to him, who else would be found on a beach in Hawai'i in the middle of football season? And in neon-yellow shorts, nonetheless. And before you ask, the chick lathering him down is his sister.
Read more at The Big Lead.

Jimmy Johnson Gives 1,647th Fake Coach's Speech

Please stop this meme. No one is impressed when the former coach pretends he's coaching the losing-est team.

Well, Now Nobody Gets To Play Ping Pong

Unhappy with the team's progress, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has extended a ban on "entertainment" for players with less than four years experience. The original ban on table tennis, pool, and shuffleboard (yes, shuffleboard) now includes everyone. No word on if any players had plans to book a flight to Hong Kong with a rather large ape.
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

CBS Sports Radio Host Plagiarizes 3-Month Old Tony Romo Article

Chris Arnold is the house "emcee" of Dallas Mavericks games and co-hosts "G-Bag Nation" on 105.3 The Fan. He also was the center of a failed 2011 Super Bowl concert that was supposed to feature three scholarship winners performing with Erykah Badu and Prince (there are conflicting reports about whether Prince ever flew into Dallas or not, or even signed the contract). Now he's written an article defending Tony Romo, which he promoted on Twitter.

Keep Calm... @dallascowboys fans. thx for making my blog go viral. "The Truth About Tony Romo" read & RT if u agree. http://t.co/4aJFI7cThk
— Chris Arnold (@MrChrisArnold) October 11, 2013

The problem? That article was written by Scott Kacsmar. In July. The first clue being some of the stats weren't even adjusted to include this season. More after the jump.

Man With History Of Violence Beats Adrian Peterson's 2-Year-Old Son

A 2-year-old child whom Adrian Peterson had with a woman has died from injuries suffered from abuse by the mother's boyfriend. Joseph Patterson, 27, has been charged with aggravated felony assault and battery of an infant, and will face a hearing later this month concerning terms of his suspended sentence. Patterson was given a one-year jail sentence last year for assaulting a 3-year-old and threatening the mother after she complained. In the same hearing, he was given another one-year sentence for violating a no-contact order given after the woman claimed he threatened to kill her "multiple times." Patterson received a suspended sentence on the condition he attend domestic violence classes.
Peterson, who just recently learned of the child, still plans on playing Sunday.
Read more in the New York Daily News.

Leon Sandcastle Gets Fired, Rehired By Own School

Remember the Prime Academy players in attendance at Deion Sanders' Hall-Of-Fame induction? That's his private charter school in the Dallas Metroplex. Well, after what Deion called a "confrontation" with one of the school's administrators, he got fired from his own prep school. The administrator claims he was thrown and grabbed by the throat by Sanders in an argument over the school's academic performance. By Friday evening, Sanders was reinstated, but said he would leave after the 2013-14 season.
The school is in its second year, following a season where eligibility issues within Texas' University Interscholastic League rules caused the football team to play a short, independent schedule last year. This year, the school's academic performance has fallen below state standards.
The incident also comes out after his recently-divorced wife Pilar testified he assaulted her in April 2012. His (and Pilar's) assault cases should be coming up soon, so everything's coming up roses for Leon right now.
Read more at the Dallas Morning News. Photo courtesy.

Philly Fan Being Philly Fan

Major fight in front of press box. 3 rows of fans ejected pic.twitter.com/vZdFoHm1w7
— John Clark NBC10 (@johnclarknbc10) September 20, 2013

Bills Fans Show Up Dressed To Kill Against Patriots

#Billsmafia AHHH YESS GAMEDAY!!!! pic.twitter.com/p7xtNr36oU
— Breyon Harris (@bre_88) September 8, 2013

Funny joke. Too bad it couldn't prevent that 23-21 loss to New England.
@bre_88 on twitter.

Are You Ready For Some Rugby?

Pro Football Talk was forwarded an e-mail by an NFL agent from a group called the National Rugby Football League. The NRFL is currently reaching out to players not on NFL rosters. No official schedule has been announced, but the e-mails indicate there will be a combine next March.
Read more at Pro Football Talk.

Pro-Pot Billboard Goes Up Outside New Mile High

The NFL will kick off their season Thursday Night in Denver, located in a state that just decriminalized marijuana. Which the Marijuana Policy advocacy group saw as a proper opportunity to offer alternatives to the NFL. So they purchased a $5k billboard outside the Broncos stadium calling out the NFL for not having a DUI policy while suspending players for marijuana. A message that might make sense for Broncs fans, who've had two executives arrested for DUI's while Von Miller sits out six games for violating the drug policy.
Read more at USA Today.

Why Can't Bay Area Fans Just Chill?

Sunday evening, a fan ran onto the field at Candlestick Park during a preseason tilt between the Vikings and 49ers. That wouldn't be so bad, except there were two more invaders, and nearby police in the parking lot were brought into the stadium to maintain crowd control. It hasn't been a good month for Bay Area fans: earlier this month, a Giants fan threw a banana at black Orioles OF Adam Jones, and a fan invaded the pitch of an Everton-Juventus preseason match at AT&T Park.



Of course, these were lighthearted incidents for Bay Area fans. More after the jump.

It's Preseason, You Idiots

Many starters played briefly or were nursing little injuries,but it was a crap performance,my apologies/My commanders got n earful from me!
— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) August 12, 2013

This is the world we live in: an NFL exec has to apologize for a preseason game.

Umm...OK?

@93XHAMS why yes I do!!!!! pic.twitter.com/B3DVQGbXNz
— Jesse Kern (@jdkern3) August 11, 2013

For the record, this was from a KARE-TV 11 report about tailgating at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

BREAKING NEWS: Tim Tebow Has No Comment On Riley Cooper

The recently-signed Patriots quarterback was asked about the whole Cooper situation:

“I haven’t seen everything that’s happened,” Tebow said, via Emily Kaplan of the Boston Globe. “I’ve been pretty busy. I’m going to wait to comment until I hear what happened.” 

Does Tebow actually have a comment he's keeping private? Is this "no comment" related to Aaron Hernandez? Could his inability to know what's happened be caused by concussions?
Stay tuned for the latest updates to this story at Pro Football Talk.

The Ravens Got To Have Ice Cream

It's not just because they won the Super Bowl: they've had Mr. Tastee roll through training camp before. That's right, Patriots: their coach is way cooler than yours. When did he ever let you have ice cream?

NFL Checking Tats?

CBS Sports' Bruce Feldman is reporting NFL teams may start using police experts to examine the tattoos of incoming prospects to see if they are gang-related. The NFL previously had experts review touchdown celebrations to find gang signs.
Of course, this probably has nothing to do with the fact Aaron Hernandez has been photographed often with an ink sleeve on each arm.
Read more at Pro Football Talk.

Journalists Accuse NFL Player of Extremism Before Checking Sources

Oday Aboushi, the 6th-round pick for the New York Jets, is a Brooklyn-born Palestinian Muslim. This week, Yahoo Sports' Adam Waksman wrote an article about how Aboushi's anti-Semitic activism "is a potential disaster that needs to be dealt with before it becomes anything real." And MLB's new media coordinator Jonathan Mael tweeted, "The Patriots have Aaron Hernandez, the Jets have Oday Aboushi."
The problem?
The two men's source was an article at Frontpage Magazine, a blog founded by far right-winger David Horowitz. The article made accusations of antisemitism and claimed links to Muslim extremism based on a tweet Aboushi shared of a Palestinian woman being evicted from her home. There is no evidence Aboushi is anti-Semitic or a Muslim extremist.
The Yahoo! article, which did not quote Aboushi, has been removed, and Mael has apologized. But when you're looking to throw stones, why check sources?
Read more at Deadspin.

More Bad News For Patriots?

According to the AP, one of Hernandez' associates, Carlos Ortiz, gave an interesting detail to investigators about that rented apartment searched last week. According to Ortiz, he and the other suspect, Ernest Wallace, “went to an apartment in the area that Hernandez and other football players used” the day after the shooting. Yes, he mentioned the apartment was used by "other football players," which means investigators (and the media, of course) might be interested in what other players might know about a flat that had five boxes of .45-cal ammo in it.
Bet Bob Kraft feels like a dummy right now, after spending all that time worrying about Gronk dancing shirtless and laying the wood to porn stars.
Read more at Comcast Sportsnet New England.

Are NFL Players Usually More Criminal?

The BBC looked to USA Today's Brent Schrotenboer, who's created quite the database on NFL arrests, to see if the NFL has a crime problem. By the numbers:

• Since 2000, there have been 664 arrests (individual arrests, not arrested individuals). 
• The arrest rate for active players is one in 47. For the general public, it's one in 25. 
• The arrest rate for all men 21-34 is one in 8. 
• The arrest rate for all 23-year-old men (like Hernandez) is one in 6. 
• The arrest rate for US women is one in 46. 
• "[Drunk] driving makes up 30% of all active player arrests during a year," but is half the rate of the general public aged 21-34. 
• "[I]n general terms there are about six times as many arrests among the general population of young American men, as there are among football players." 

However, the BBC does add this caveat: "Other critics would argue that the one in 47 figure is still too high because unlike a lot of the general population the players had an education in college, earn very good money and live in safe neighbourhoods." Read more at BBC News Magazine.

NFL Hall Of Famer: Football Will Be Gone In 20 Years

That's what former Lions cornerback Lem Barney told the Detroit Free Press:

“But in the next 10 to 20 years, society will alleviate football altogether because of how strong it’s becoming, how big it’s becoming and the tenacity that it already is. And it’s only going to get worse.”

Barney told his sons and grandson he didn't want them playing football, and also believes head injuries led to Deacon Jones death. If he had it to do all over again, he'd rather be a cabbie.

 Read more at Pro Football Talk.