Larry Brown Sports

The Rock — a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson –  is set to make his WWE return this April in a highly anticipated match with John Cena at Wrestlemania XXVIII. Apparently wrestling fans are super excited. The event also happens to be set in Miami, where Johnson played college football. Knowing this, Sportscenter decided to have The Rock on for a promotion on Thursday afternoon. Either he has never watched a live edition of Sportscenter before, or Johnson just felt like ruffling some feathers. He swore a total of three teams in a segment that lasted a few minutes. Check out this video of The Rock swearing on Sportscenter. Obviously, the language is NSFW.

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Believe me, we do everything in our power here at LBS to not feed the beasts that are Stephen A. Smth and Skip Bayless.  Both guys are annoying, and we generally try not to talk about them unless one of them flips the other one off. Well, that happened on Thursday morning’s ESPN First Take. The above screenshot comes to us courtesy of @BDPFOLIFE. If you don’t believe it actually happened, we’ve got the NSFW shot waiting for you after the jump.

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Do we really need to say anything about this? I know two weeks off between conference championships and the Super Bowl is tough, but you have the Patriots and the Giants playing in the big game.  With the history behind those two franchises and all the star power we’re being treated to, that was the best question ESPN could come up with on media day?  When Tom Brady saying he hopes the Patriots win on Sunday becomes bulletin board material and SportsNation starts asking hypothetical questions about coaches and quarterbacks switching places, there’s nothing left to do but just kick the ball off.

Mike Francesa will be turning 58 in March. My old man is 55, and he doesn’t really understand computers. For some people it is a generational thing and they just can’t get it. Francesa, however, should have a pretty good idea of how the digital era operates by now. He works in radio and sometimes television. He must know that those computers he’s surrounded by all day store information and record what he says, right? Apparently not. According to the NY Post, Francesa blatantly lied about his Super Bowl 42 pick on his show last week to make himself sound better.

Last week, Mike Francesa claimed to listeners that before Super Bowl XLII, he picked the Patriots to beat the Giants, 20-17. With the Pats a 13-point favorite, that would have made Francesa a winner.

In fact, though, it was with great conviction and authority, that Francesa predicted, on the air, a 35-17 Pats win. The tape must be right there, at WFAN for all to again hear. What’s that? It seems to have disappeared? Not again!

Fortunately, nothing is ever lost for good in the age of the internet.  Our friends over at Bob’s Blitz did some fine investigative work after a reader sent them an email about Francesa lying days before the Post published their blurb.  Sure enough, Mike picked the Patriots to blow the Giants out back in 2008.  Have a listen:

Having heard that, you have to wonder if Francesa really did think he picked the Giants to cover the spread in Super Bowl 42 or he just assumed nobody would get a hold of the audio?  In any event, shame on him.

Anyone who follows football knows that the Patriots don’t provide bulletin board material.  Bill Belichick doesn’t allow it, and for the most part all of his players buy into the approach.  With two weeks between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, life can become extremely boring for reporters and analysts.  That is why you can understand how when the tiniest opportunity presented itself on Sunday morning, writers took it and ran with it.  These are the comments that Tom Brady made to the 25,000 fans at the Patriots Super Bowl send-off rally:

“I wish I could take all you guys to Indy with us,” Brady told his fans. “We’re going down there, and we’re going down there for one reason. We’re going to give it our best and hopefully we have a lot more people at our party next weekend.”

On Sunday night and Monday morning, every New York newspaper and news station was buzzing about how Brady had guaranteed a Patriots victory.  CBS New York called the comment “bulletin board material.”  Gary Myers of the NY Daily News says Brady “should know better.”  Steve Serby of the NY Post says the “Giants will make Brady pay for planning Patriots victory party.”  Seriously?

Brady was asked about the comment on Sunday night, to which he responded: “Well, it was a pep rally. People were pretty excited.”

The fact that Brady’s innocent comment is literally driving the news cycle in New York this morning goes to show you how rare it is that a Patriot player would do anything to hint at a victory.  When 25,000 people give up their day just to cheer for you as you board a bus, you have to give them something to be excited about.  Nobody wants to hear that you’re going to Indianapolis to try to win a Super Bowl, and if you don’t — well — oopsies.

When Mario Manningham said he hopes Julian Edelman covers him and Justin Tuck said Brady’s chuckle before Super Bowl 42 is what cost the Pats in 2008, it wasn’t national news.  That’s because it is expected from the Giants.  If New York wins Super Bowl 46, it will now be because Brady “guaranteed” the Patriots would come home victorious.  What’s that?  The Giants are a more balanced team and should probably be favored?  The New York tabloids didn’t hear you.

Adam James was painted as a victim, and Mike Leach as the bad guy when the coach was fired by Texas Tech in 2009. As time has gone on, and Leach has had a chance to share his side of the story, a new picture has been painted of how unfairly Leach was treated by the university.

We learned in July from Leach’s book that Adam James didn’t want Mike Leach to be fired for the whole closet incident. What we discovered was that former SMU player, and then-ESPN broadcaster Craig James had hired a PR firm to help get Leach fired for allegedly mistreating his son, Adam, who supposedly had a concussion. Now we’re learning the depths of how inappropriate Craig James was as a parent and broadcaster.

Leach’s lawyer told Paul Finebaum’s radio show that James was calling Texas Tech coaches during games telling them to play his son.

“He was calling (Texas Tech) coaches from the booth during games and telling them to put Adam in and let him play. Disrupting games,” Steve Heninger told Finebaum. “Then at night he was leaving voicemails that he was upset that Adam wasn’t …”

Here’s the audio from the interview (via Sports by Brooks):

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A knucklehead sports radio host for Mad Dog radio on Sirius/XM named Dino Costa shared a rumor on Twitter Tuesday night saying Mike Tyson had died in a car crash. Naturally the rumor began circulating pretty quickly before Tyson (or the ghost updating his Twitter account) countered the news saying “My friend called to see if I’m ok. There is a rumor I was in an accident. Thankfully I am doing well.”

Here’s what Costa tweeted to start the mess:

Well buddy, if you’re stressing this has not been confirmed, then don’t throw it out there. That’s pretty simple. You don’t mess around when it comes to proclaiming someone’s death.

Now here’s the worst part. Costa, who undeniably was trying to break some news, went on to blame the rumor on the person who called into his radio station.

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Shaq learned his lesson about microphones the hard way: never cuss when you’re around one. You can’t trust that they’re off and not picking up sound. When Shaq thought his mic was off and the TNT crew was headed to commercial, he dropped an s-bomb that was still picked up and aired on TV. Of course, any company that prominently features Charles Barkley and all his antics surely won’t mind one s-bomb slipping out.