Attention Fantasy Football Players: Revised Week 9 Outlook for Matt Schaub

Earlier this week in my start em, sit em post, I recommended that you should start David Garrard over Matt Shaub in Week 9. I’ll let you read the post to get the full detail of the reasoning, but it boiled down to the following two points:

#1 – the Colts have the 7th best pass defense in the league in terms of yards given up (180.1 yards per game) and have given up the fewest touchdown passes (three). Thus, I looked at Matt Schaub as a shaky start.

#2 – David Garrard and his Jaguars are at home this week taking on the Kansas City Chiefs and their crappy pass defense. Garrard is only playable when he’s at home and this seems like about as plum a matchup as you’ll get if you’re a Garrard owner.

There is a problem though. A couple of them. And I’m changing my vote to Schaub over Garrard for Week 9.

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Could Sammy Sosa’s Pale Appearance Be the Result of Vitiligo Brought on By Steroid Use?

A post that we made here on Friday afternoon regarding Sammy Sosa’s shockingly white appearance (hat tip again to Jimmy Traina) kicked off a flurry of activity around the web (for example: here, here, and here) and rightfully so.

The pictures are jarring.

It’s been a while since Sammy Sosa has been in the public eye, and we all remember a much darker version of him than what we are seeing in this current pictures. (Not to mention, as Big League Stew pointed out earlier this evening, when did Sammy start wearing green contacts?)

The obvious question in the immediate aftermath of these pictures making their way around the web is, what might be the root cause of Sammy’s paleness?

I decided to do a little digging — admittedly with a hypothesis that steroid use might have something to do with it — and found some interesting information.

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What Is Going On With Sammy Sosa?

After reading this tweet and following the link supplied by Jimmy Traina, I had to quickly post this.

Does anyone know what is going on with Sammy Sosa?

As Traina’s tweet wonders, did Sosa get a facelift? Botox? Is he possibly dealing with vitiligo (the disease Michael Jackson suffered from that causes splotches of pigment-less skin)?

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ESPN’s Pro Football Talk Reads A Lot Like Pro Football Talk’s Pro Football Talk

I just caught a really interesting post by Florio over at Pro Football Talk about how their content had been plagiarized by “someone in the journalism business” other than a “small, no-name blog site.”

I was going to copy/paste it here for you to read, but then I thought to myself, “who in the hell do I think I am? ESPN?”

Thus, I shall do what the rest of us small, no-name blog sites are required to do: provide a short excerpt to the story and a link for attribution:

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The Circle City Holds its Collective Breath (Update: Indy Now Hyperventilating)

If an entire city holds its breath, does everything in that city turn purple?

Will the city ultimately “pass out?” (Which I guess would be manifested in power outages, stalled cares, and the like…)

Will bloggers strain to adequately develop forced metaphors instead of getting right to the point?

Well, we’re going to find out, because the entire city of Indianapolis is about to hold its collective breath while it awaits the results of yet another Bob Sanders visit to see Dr. James Andrews.

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Pete Rose Will Sit on You, But Refuses to Eat Your Hair

Pete Rose has been train wreck for a long time. And part of the reason why people cannot refuse to look away is the sad fact that Pete rarely realizes that the joke is on him.

As he is wont to do, Sacha Baron Cohen took that to the extreme.

Via SportsbyBrooks (via Chris Littmann at The Sporting Blog), we get never-before-aired footage of a scene from the movie Bruno that featured baseball’s all-time gambling hit king using laborers as a chair and taking issue with eating sushi off of a naked man.

(Whatever happens from here on out in my life, I will be forever thankful that I had the opportunity to write that sentence.)

Video after the jump. And yes, it is as hilariously horrific as it sounds.

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Week 9 Injury Updates: Devin Hester, Calvin Johnson, Roddy White, Donald Driver, More

As we do every Friday, let’s roll through the NFL injury report and assess the carnage from a fantasy perspective.

Cardinals-Bears Injuries

Devin Hester injury update: Hester has missed two straight days of practice because of an ankle malady. As with Boldin, Hester’s participation on Friday will help determine whether he plays on Sunday or not.

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The Debate by the Lake: Browns Fans Disagree on Planned MNF Protest

Before we get into the heart of this post and this week’s podcast, let me just type something that all of our Browns readers can agree on:

Pittsburgh sucks.

Everyone nod in agreement, put down the Stadium Mustard, and now prepare to be separated into two distinct camps (both of which still hate Pittsburgh, no worries there).

In one corner: supporters of Dawg Pound Mike Randall and the walk-in-late protest that he and Mobile Dawg Tony Schaefer are planning for next Monday’s Browns-Ravens game in Cleveland Browns Stadium. If you side here, you most likely think Eric Mangini should have been shown the door with George Kokinis.

In the other corner: supporters of the opinion held by fellow die-hards like Peter Pattakos of ClevelandFrowns.com, who do not understand what will be accomplished by purposefully settling into their seats after kickoff. If you are on this side, you most likely believe that the correct next step for the Browns is something other than a knee-jerk firing of the head coach.

And now we bring you what I am officially dubbing The Debate by the Lake in which Dawg Pound Mike and Cleveland Frown Peter go head to head discussing their beloved Browns.

Two men with the same ultimate goal, but vastly different opinions on what the franchise and its fans should do next in an effort to get there.

Enjoy.

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Feel Good College Football Story of the Week: WAC Hires PR Firm to Help Boise State Get BCS Bid

In Major League Baseball, teams in the race looking to make a late-season push will make a deadline deal to improve their roster. Case in point: the Phillies acquiring Cliff Lee.

In the NFL, teams looking to overcome longshot playoff odds get inventive with their playbook, like the Miami Dolphins did last year in using the Wildcat to power them to a playoff berth.

In college basketball, coaches will often loosen the reins on talented freshman during the second half of the season in an effort to unleash the potential of their teams, hoping it sparks a March run.

In college football, our national paragon of amateurism and integrity, schools and conferences hoping to achieve their postseason goals actually seek areas outside of their actual performance on the field to get a leg up on their competition.

Today’s example is Boise State, via the WAC, which has reportedly hired a PR firm to help the Broncos in their quest to make the BCS.

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Nine Year Old Yankees Fans Finally Get Their Championship

After what must have felt like an eternity, it finally happened.

After years and years of disappointment and despair, happiness and joy finally reigned down on a forlorn franchise and its fans.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, after nearly a full decade without a World Series championship, New York Yankees fans finally awoke from their unbearable nightmare to fulfill their dreams of World Series euphoria.

I mean, look at the picture of this little boy. He is perhaps seven or eight or nine years old. Do you realize that until last night, this deprived young soul had never experienced a World Series championship?

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IU Kicks Off 2009-10 Season with Graceful Home W

(Come on…you knew the headline had to have some kind of lame pun involving “grace”.)

Yes, it was only an exhibition game against Grace, but last night proved to be an encouraging and auspicious beginning to the 2009-10 basketball season for a program seeking redemption.

Tom Crean and the Indiana Hoosiers did exactly what an IU team should do: impose their will on a far inferior opponent and cruise to an easy victory. Though reports of the game indicate that Grace played the Hoosiers tough for the first 24-25 minutes, IU won the game 96-73.

Coming off of a season that saw the Hoosiers lose home games to Northeastern and Lipscomb, any win — even an exhibition win that doesn’t count — is a welcome event.

And for anyone who took IU’s opponent last night for granted, just ask Syracuse fans how that worked out for them.

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Chiefs Fans Join Activism Trend: Demand Season-Long Deactivation of Larry Johnson

Who knows what will come it, but Browns and Chiefs fans are fed up, pissed off, not taking it anymore, and letting the management of their beloved teams know about it.

Two Browns fans recently announced their plans to lead a protest during the 1st quarter of next week’s Monday nighter between the Browns and Ravens in Cleveland. The plan has received plenty of national pub and even merited a meeting with Browns owner Randy Lerner yesterday.

In Kansas City, fans are petitioning Chiefs GM Scott Pioli to not allow Larry Johnson back on the field.

Their reasoning?

He is close to becoming the franchise’s all-time rushing leader, needing 80 yards to pass Priest Holmes, and they do not believe that Johnson is worthy of sitting atop that esteemed list.

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Greatness: Norman Chad on NFL Relocation to LA

Norman Chad is one of the most unique sportswriters in the business today. Without question, he is one of the funniest and most entertaining, filling his columns with an insightful whimsy that can be a breath of fresh air from the life-or-death nature of so many sports perspectives.

Our very own AJ Kaufman emailed me a link last night to Chad’s most recent column on the possibility of the NFL relocating back to LA. As Midwesterners, it’s difficult for us to have a truly informed perspective on this topic.

But luckily, that’s why we have Norman Chad. Excerpt and link after the jump:

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Review of ESPN 30 for 30 Film Without Bias: Len Bias Saved Lives by Losing His

“From my perspective, he saved a lot of our lives. Plain and simple.”

These were the final words of Without Bias, ESPN’s latest documentary in its superb 30 for 30 series. It is impossible to know for how many people specifically that lines applies, but to put it in the hundreds of thousands probably would not be an overstatement.

The hour long film, which premiered tonight and was directed by Kirk Fraser, chronicles the life and death of Len Bias, who passed away 23 years ago when I was only four years old, but whose legacy lives on in perpetuity…today and beyond.

There were some aspects of the story that I did not know before watching it tonight, most notably that Bias had done cocaine before the night he died and that his brother Jay died four years later. Despite these surprises, the familiar feeling and lessons of the Bias story remained true and as strong as ever:

1. You never know which seconds will be your last.
2. Never underestimate the cruel power of drugs.

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Two Minnesota Basketball Players (Royce White, Devron Bostick) Suspended Indefinitely

Thanks to @TheBigLead for the tip to this story from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune regarding the indefinite suspension of freshman Royce White and senior Devron Bostick from the Minnesota Golden Golphers mens basketball team.

Freshman Royce White and senior Devron Bostick have been suspended indefinitely from the Gophers men’s basketball team for a violation of team rules, coach Tubby Smith said Tuesday morning. Smith provided no additional details about the disciplinary action.

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