It’s Monday, and we are headed to Birmingham and SEC media days as this hits the interweb.
Who won the weekend and who lost it?
From the roaming satellite version of the “Talks too much” studios, as far as bad questions this week, “excuse me coach, but are you going to eat the rest of that roll?” would certainly qualify.
Serena Williams of the United States holds up the trophy after winning the women’s singles final against Garbine Muguruza of Spain at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Saturday July 11, 2015. Weekend winners
– Serena Williams and for that matter tennis in general (mostly). Williams will head to New York looking for a Grand Slam. Novak Djokovic rolled through Roger Federer. It was a fun and entertaining Wimbledon, highlight by Williams, who is making a hard push to be considered for the all-time Rushmore of GOAT female athletes.
– Conor McGregor. The hard-charging, hard-talking Irish mixed-martial artist won his fight Saturday night in a record-setting evening for the sport, which had more than $7 million in ticket sales at the sold-out event in Vegas.
– Golf. Jordan Spieth heads to the British Open with back-to-back majors and after winning Sunday at the John Deere, where he crushed the dreams of Dobie Gillis’ first-cousin. Plus, Rickie Fowler won in Scotland. Now the sport heads to the birthplace of golf with a great mix of story lines, led of course by Spieth, who is just the second PGA player since World War II to have five or more victories before turning 22. (The other is some guy named Eldrick Woods. You may know him as Tiger.)
– Sports fans everywhere who got to watch Evelyn Jones at the tender age of 108 throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game
– Tom Brady. With the Friday announcement that the NFL reduced Greg Hardy’s suspension from 10 games to four for his domestic violence troubles, you’d have to believe that Brady’s chances at getting his four-game suspension from DeflateGate look much better this morning.
—
Weekend losers
– FSU. The news from last week about Dalvin Cook punching a woman and being suspended was the second incident involving an FSU player allegedly hitting a female. Jimbo Fisher has problems within his program that run much deeper than his decision to ban players from bars.
FILE – In this May 11, 2015, file photo, Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner Mark Cuban answers questions from the audience before President Barack Obama spoke in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. The NBA has fined Mark Cuban for commenting about the team’s agreements with DeAndre Jordan and Wes Matthews during the league’s free agent moratorium. NBA spokesman Tim Frank confirmed the penalty, which ESPN.com reported Tuesday, July 7, 2015, was for $25,000. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster), File – DeAndre Jordan. The fallout from his flip-flop has been overwhelming for a guy who is a physical freak with a B-minus skill set. But the way he handled this was brutal. First, never Tweet apologies like Jordan did here. Calling or showing up in person is a much better play. Then, his momma was duking it out on social media with the haters.
– Tennis for American men. We saw this stat and just shook our head: It has been 11 years, 10 months, and 5 days since Andy Roddick won the US Open men’s tennis title. He was the last American male to win a tennis major. Wow.
– The Braves. This team was fun and played hard, but losing closer Jason Grilli to a torn Achilles’ is the death knell to an already shoddy bullpen. So it goes, and in truth, they weren’t going to win anything this year anyway. Plus, they were entertaining enough to get us to SEC media days, so how much more could we have expected.
—
Media blitz
SEC media days are here and we’ll have full updates here, complete coverage in the TFP and will spend three hours talking about it on Press Row on ESPN 105.1 FM from 3-6 this week.
Good times.
Greg Sankey, who took over as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference this summer, will speak to kick off today’s SEC Media Days for football in Hoover, Ala.That said, here are a five predictions heading into the week:
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will make a dazzling impression today. Dude is smart and smooth and this will be a fine introduction.
We think Nick Saban will take the stage with something specific he wants to talk about and make that point emphatically. We are guessing this year it could be player discipline and then somehow blame the media for something.
Jomo will make at least one Butch Jones joke each day of the week. (Yes, that’s an even money bet on most weeks during the season, but we expect his best efforts this week at the unofficial start to the season.)
We think Alabama will be picked to win the West and Georgia will be picked to win the East.
Finally, here’s saying that Steve Spurrier drops a doozy on someone or some school this week. It’s been a while and it feels like time for the OBC to drop a hammer on somebody.
—
This and that
– Not sure if this is a winner or a loser but it certainl was something that is a long time coming. Dale Jr. finally told Danica to shut the flip up. No matter what happens to her on the track she storms around the pit like a petulant child in a protective bubble, because no one’s going to be the guy that gets in the woman’s face. So she stomps and screams and most of it is for show. Well, that show is tired (plus she needs to remember for a lot of girls out there, she’s an obvious role model and this potty mouth she has is an every week-type of occurrence). Junior finally called her out for her antics, and rightly so.
Driver Danica Patrick shares a laugh as she talks to Clint Bowyer and Ryan Newman prior to the start of qualifying Friday, April 24, 2015, for Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup auto race at Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) – The All-Star game is this week. We will hand out first-half awards Tuesday. Deal? Deal.
– Don’t know if you saw this, but Brain Dozier and the Twins rallied from a 6-1 hole in the ninth to win Friday night. (And the Lookouts blew a monster lead on Sunday, by the way.) As for Friday and the Twins, teams trailing by five or more runs in the ninth (or final inning) were previously 0-1,059 over the past two seasons.
– Yahoo did a blind taste test on six brands of vanilla ice cream. The results are here. Mayfield nor Blue Bell were among them. Nor was homemade ice cream, which is the bee’s knees.
– Not sure if this is winning or losing the weekend, but this Spurs fan had LaMarcus Aldridge cut into his hair. That’s some serious handy work and a serious lifestyle choice.
—
Today’s question(s)
First, who won/lost the weekend?
Secondly (and somewhat rhetorically), does the fact that Andy Dalton got booed in Cincy at a celebrity All-Star softball game speak more about the pressure on quarterbacks or the fickle/spoiled nature of sports fans in general and the Cincinatti Bengals fan in particular? Seriously, Dalton has 40 wins and four playoff trips in four seasons as a starter for a Bengals team that was a punchline for the previous two-plus decades, and he gets booed at a softball game. Tough crowd? Maybe? Dumb crowd? Most likely considering they would have given good-for-nothing Pete Rose a 20-minute standing O.
Finally, as we head to SEC media days, what’s your Rushmore of sporting “events” (and we use that term loosely here) that have grown the most in 20 years?
Go.