Larry Brown Sports

Max Hall famously ripped into Utah following the Holy War during football season, calling them classless and saying he hated everything about them. That sort of venom seemed to pour over into the basketball matchup on Saturday in Provo, a game that was won by BYU 82-69. The Cougars had the win in the bag in the final minute but that’s when some drama broke out. Utah freshman Marshall Henderson was trying to save a ball from going out of bounds and he threw it into Jonathan Tavernari’s face. Tavernari was upset with how hard the ball was thrown so he began to have words with Henderson. Henderson then flailed his arm in a get away from me type of motion and his hand landed on the face of Jackson Emery who did a nice flop. Check out this video from the crowd around the 1:00 mark:

The refs got things under control pretty quickly as you saw, and Henderson wound up being ejected. It’s unclear whether his motive was to strike Emery but it doesn’t matter — raising his arm like that endangered another player and he has to suffer the consequence. With another meeting between the teams coming up on March 3rd, you know there will be plenty of bad blood to go around.

Jets coach Rex Ryan is in South Florida to serve as the coach of the AFC Pro Bowl team and he was one of several NFL people in attendance at Strikeforce Miami. Ryan was interviewed in advance of Herschel Walker’s successful MMA debut and he couldn’t help but stir something up with the fans in attendance. Wade through the beginning of this minute-long interview to hear WWE promoter Rex Ryan set Dolphins fans straight:

Gotta love sexy Rexy who’s never to shy to get in a jab at his opponents. The best part wasn’t captured on this video and that was when the interviewer introduced Rex Ryan as the “quarterback” of the Jets before correcting herself. It was pretty clear she was clueless. I’m guessing you already picked up on that by the question asking if Rex would step into the ring — he saves that for Channing Crowder.

Although Herschel Walker is 12 years past the ending of his football career, Saturday evening marked the beginning of his new career: fighting in MMA. Walker made his mixed martial arts debut on the Strikeforce Miami card, taking on Greg Nagy. Walker was in incredible shape — as always — and he dominated almost every step of the way, scoring a third round TKO. With all the publicity leading up to the fight, no doubt football fans were curious to see how Herschel would fair in his debut. Check out the Herschel Walker/Greg Nagy fight video to see for yourself:

The next video has the second and third round action for your enjoyment. Walker certainly seemed robotic at first but he definitely dominated the entire round. The best part was his salsa music rump shake.

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There was quite a bizarre play that took place on Friday night in Oklahoma City. Thunder forward Kevin Durant lost a shoe on a defensive possession and was slow getting up the court. Luckily the Nuggets got a steal so Durant was in perfect defensive position to stop the fast break. That’s when the following play unfolded, leading to a new and improved nickname for KD — Shoeless Kevin Durant:

Durant previously had been without a nickname until Slam ran a contest that was ended with J.E. Skeets’ selection of “Durantula.” I get the whole long limbs thing, but I just don’t like the sound of durantula, though I have to give Skeets props for the movie poster adaptation. Maybe shoeless wouldn’t be great because Joe Jackson already has rights to the name, but I’m already sick of hearing KD called “Durantula” every night on ESPN highlights, especially for a guy very early on in his NBA reign of dominance. What about good old fashioned “Stretch?”

video via The Sporting Blog and The Big Lead

Susan Finklestein is the Philadelphia woman who famously (infamously?) offered sex for Phillies World Series tickets. Here’s how her ad read: “DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia) Diehard Phillies fan–gorgeous tall buxom blonde– in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable— I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!” That sounds pretty clearly like a prostitution solicitation, but I’m no judge. Nor am I a lawyer, much less one who came up with one of the more bizarre defenses I’ve ever encountered. Check out what William J. Brennan is using as a defense of his client, as shared by the Philadelphia Inquirer via FanHouse:

“You can be a slut; that’s not illegal,” Brennan argued at a hearing this afternoon. “Here you have to be in the business of prostitution” to have broken the law.

But [Judge] Cepparulo ruled that the allegations against Finkel fit one legal description of prostitution: engaging or attempting to engage “in sexual activities as a business.”

Honestly, do lawyers have no self respect? Did he really just try to invoke the “she’s a slut” defense? How is this anything other than prostitution? It’s no different from a porn star asking someone to escort her to a Phoenix Coyotes game. There’s no defense for prostitution and this only gives sluts a bad name.

The biggest debates in the week leading up to the Super Bowl had little to do with football and everything to do with politics. First, Tim Tebow became the center of attention because he’s the spokesman for a commercial espousing a Pro Life stance on abortion. That caused a stir amongst the Pro Choice supporters of America. While it looks like that ad will air, CBS has exercised its veto right on a few other submissions. They’ve rejected one of five submissions by Go Daddy for reasons unbeknownst to me. More controversially, CBS has rejected an ad proposed by the gay dating site Mancrunch. The ad isn’t as graphic as I initially expected based on what I read:

The genius behind this whole proposition is that Mancrunch is getting about as much publicity as they could have dreamed to receive, all without paying the million dollar tab to CBS (there’s probably a submission/review fee, but it’s not as high as the price of the ad). They’re even getting it from this very post and that’s all without doing anything other than producing a rejected ad! Here’s something I don’t understand: how is it that CBS approves a Pro Life commercial but rejects one for a gay dating website? I didn’t see anything inappropriate nor graphic in the ad — what’s the problem? If you’re deciding that political messages have no place on a sports platform I understand that. But if you’re approving a commercial regarding abortion, then why not let a gay dating site ad run? I don’t have a problem with either one.

I used to dislike Jared Allen for his reckless behavior off the field (three DUIs) and his dirty plays on it. All along he has been extremely friendly to the media and ridiculously funny in interviews, making it hard to hate the guy. That’s kind of where I am with him, especially after this gem he unloaded at Pro Bowl practice on NFL Network, according to Pro Football Talk.

“Silver fox,” Allen pleaded on NFL Network Friday. “Everything but my backside loves you, but if you come back, I will let you slap my rear end every single day. In no way gay at all, but I will take that stinging pain and I will eat it every day.”

In case you’re wondering what that’s all about, Brett Favre famously slapped Allen’s butt after Minnesota’s win against Dallas in the playoffs. Yes, that was right after Favre led the Vikings in the now infamous “Pants on the Ground” chant. Here’s the Brett Favre/Jared Allen butt slapping video:

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Thursday night on TNT was a pretty special night for several reasons. First up, the Magic came back from down 16 to beat the Celtics with Dwight Howard serving as an asset in the final quarter. After that game, the Suns came back to beat the Mavericks in Phoenix. Despite being down most of the game, the bench stepped up in the fourth to catapult the Suns into the lead, scoring 19 of their 28 points that quarter while disgruntled star Amare Stoudemire rode the pine. The result was that the Suns snapped their infamous TNT losing streak which had reached 18 games. The post game show was interesting as always but it was the dance moves of the Miller siblings that stole the show. Here’s the video:

The second portion of the video was a shortened clip from Miller dancing in the NBA TV studio earlier in the week. I definitely recognized the robot in there but can’t quite identify what the other moves were. Ditto for Reggie although his shoulder shake was pretty funny. What’s the lesson to be learned: always assume the cameras are rolling because anything you do could wind up on YouTube and then on some dumbasses’ blog.