New Dawg Blog

This is from AOL.com sports:

ESPN’s Bonnie Bernstein was a guest on Mike and Mike in the Morning Wednesday, and when the subject turned to a high school basketball player who is considering playing professionally in Europe instead of going to college, Bernstein made an extremely odd comparison between American high school basketball players and Palestinian suicide bombers.

Sounds like Bonnie B went someplace she shouldn’t have…..read the rest here.

Put this under the big yawn category.  SMU football is ditching their blue helmets and going back to the white ones.

It really doesn’t matter.  Wins some games, then somebody may care.  

New coach June Jones and the AD are making the changes.

SMU will officially “unveil” the uniforms at the annual Football Kickoff Luncheon on August 20th at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

“The fans have spoken and we have listened. Since I arrived at SMU, I have stated that I wanted to return the Mustang football program to national prominence,” said SMU Director of Athletics Steve Orsini. “When people think of SMU, they think of white helmets with a red Mustang logo. When you have a rich tradition like we do here at SMU, it only makes sense to draw from that.”

Thomas O. Hicks is a fantastic hockey owner.  He has a Stanley Cup title and he is looking another.   After losing in the Western Conference Finals to the Red Wings, Hicks is putting up the cash to bring in Sean Avery.

This is from dallasstars.com:

Sean Avery is a Dallas Star. The Stars has signed the free agent left wing to a four-year contract that will pay him a total of $15.5 million ($3.5 million next season, and $4 million in 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12).

“We are excited about the opportunity to add a player like Sean Avery to our group,” said Stars Co-General Manager Brett Hull. “His ability to play the game with skill and tenacity makes us a better team and is a great complement to the players we have here.”

In 86 games with New York over the last two seasons, the Rangers went 50-20-16 with Avery in the lineup for a winning percentage of .674 (and 9-13-3 record when he was not on the ice).

“His skill keeps improving every year,” said Hull. “He is feisty and tenacious. Sean has the ability to score and make plays and he is fearless. I think he’s a very good compliment to Brenden Morrow. We like our team, but the thing I think we were lacking was a little bit of sandpaper and some grit, and we also improved our skill level with Sean.

“He made the Rangers a much better team. In talking to some of the guys on that team, they are very sorry to see him go. He’s a great teammate – he’ll do anything for the team, he’ll do anything to win.”
 
Avery, who turned 28 in April, collected 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists) in 57 games with the New York Rangers last season, and placed second on the club with 154 penalty minutes and tied for third with four game-winning goals. In eight Stanley Cup Playoff games with the Rangers this past spring, Avery recorded four goals and three assists for seven points with six penalty minutes.
 
A native of Pickering, Ontario, Avery has skated in 379 career NHL games with the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, collecting 65 goals and 102 assists for 167 points with 1,067 penalty minutes. He has appeared in 18 career Stanley Cup Playoff games, all with the Rangers, earning 12 points (5 goals, 7 assists) and 33 PIM.
 
Avery’s most productive NHL season came in 2006-07, split between Los Angeles and the Rangers, when he posted career-highs in goals (18), assists (30), points (48), shots on goal (249), average time on ice (17:11) and games played (84). He also led the Rangers and placed fifth in the league with 174 minutes during that campaign.
 
The 5-10, 195-pound left wing was undrafted, but made his NHL debut with Detroit on Dec. 19, 2001 vs. Vancouver, and scored his first NHL goal (a game-winner) on Mar. 2, 2002 vs. Pittsburgh. During the 2003-04 season with Los Angeles, he led the NHL and set a career-high with 261 penalty minutes. He appeared in 221 Ontario Hockey League games with Owen Sound and Kingston, registering 87 goals and 166 assists for 253 points, along with 564 penalty minutes.

I am no fan of ESPN.com Page 2 writer Jamele Hill.  She was recently suspended for writing this:“Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”

Yep…she wrote THAT.

Read her apology and the rest of this tale of her brain fart here.

I always liked La Roi Glover when he played defensive tackle for the Cowboys.  Too bad he got run off by Bill Parcells for the Tuna’s pet Jason Ferguson, who was absolutely a bust in Big D.

Glover is now in St. Louis.  He recently went back to school to earn his college degree in Public Adminstration.  As a six time Pro Bowler, he’s got a boatload of cash in the bank.

He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,  “Now that I have three children, it was important for me to show them … the importance of going back and getting it.”

Jason Witten of the Cowboys recently got his college degree from Tennessee.  It’s good to see players understand the importance of a degree and the message it sends to kids and fellow players.

Former Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti is out of a job. 

The husband of actress Ashley Judd had his #40 Dodge NASCAR team shut down by team owner Chip Ganassi.

Lack of sponsorship was the reason given.

“If I keep going I run the risk of dragging the other two teams down. I don’t want to do that,” Ganassi told the Associated Press. “There’s no money. It makes no sense to be running this out of my pocket. I had to put a stop to it.”

Dario won the Indy 500 last year and was the IRL points champion before he decided to jump to NASCAR.

His first year has been rocky. The team was 41st out of 63 teams in the points standings.

Well, as at least his wife can pay the bills for him.

I remember when Ed “Too Tall” Jones quit the Cowboys in 1979 to become a pro boxer.  Man, I was mad at him.  The Cowboys needed him.  Well, Too Tall is telling why it all all when down to philly.com.

The 6-9 Jones, better known to Philadelphians as a dominating pass rusher for the Dallas Cowboys, took a season off from his 15-year NFL career to try his hand as a heavyweight boxer, going 6-0 with five knockouts in 1979 and early 1980. So much of a curiosity item was Jones that CBS nationally televised every one of his bouts. “Too Tall” was paid more than any first-time boxer to that time for his Nov. 3, 1979, debut in Las Cruces, N.M., against a ham-and-egger named Abraham Meneses, whom Jones defeated on a six-round majority decision.

Had he stuck with boxing, his first love, from the beginning instead of being steered away from it by his high school basketball coach, Jones believes it’s possible he might be making his first trip here as an inductee instead of as a figurehead.

“Barring injuries, I’m sure I would have been a very good fighter,” said Jones, 57. “I mean, why not? I had the hand speed, the power, the dedication, the toughness. I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t have been successful.

“Now, does that mean I could have been a Hall of Fame fighter? That, we’ll never know. But I would have won a lot of fights.”

How Jones left boxing, got back into it, and exited again makes for a fascinating tale.

“I started out in Golden Gloves when I was in high school,” Jones said. “At the time, my school didn’t have a football team. My basketball coach saw on the front page of our local newspaper [in Jackson, Tenn.] that I had knocked a guy out in, like, 9 seconds.

“He called me into his office, showed me the front page and said, ‘What is this all about?’ Basically, he gave me an ultimatum: basketball or boxing. I went with basketball, which might have been the right decision at the time, but I didn’t like being put in a position of having to choose.”

Jones went on to football stardom at Tennessee State and was the first selection in the 1974 draft. He appeared in three Super Bowls, one a victory over the Denver Broncos in Supe XII, and three Pro Bowls. But forever in the back of Jones’ mind was the notion that he could have become heavyweight champion of the world.

He contemplated boxing’s might-have-beens so often that in 1977, four seasons into his highly productive NFL journey, he decided to do something that shocked the world.

“I gave the Cowboys a year’s notice that I would be leaving,” Jones said. “I had signed a 4-year contract with an option year, and they knew my intentions going into the option year.

“So many people have asked me why I would ever consider quitting football when I was successful and the team was, too. It’s simple, really. I didn’t want to wake up one morning, 40 years old, knowing I had been in a position to fulfill a dream and did nothing to make it come true.”

When the news finally broke that Jones was leaving the Cowboys for boxing, the reaction was ugly.

“That’s the first time I ever received hate mail - and not just from Dallas,” he said. “It got to a point where I couldn’t even do talk shows where people would call in when I was on the road promoting my fights. I had to do it with just the host because there were some pretty threatening calls coming in. I finally said, ‘I don’t need this.’ “

One of my favorites, Mike Florio of profootballtalk.com came out with a list of ten coaches on the hot seat for The Sporting News.

I understand his reasoning, but things can and do happen.  What if Tony Romo breaks his leg and the team has to win with Brad Johnson as the starting quarterback?

I’m a fan of Wade.  I think he did done a darn good job of getting 13 wins out of last year’s club.  They were learning a new defensive and offensive scheme.

The offense didn’t have it’s #2 wide receiver in Terry Glenn and the defense was never at full strentgh because starting corners Anthony Henry and Terence Newman rarely played together because of injuries.

Unlike Bill Parcells, Wade made sure he got Terrell Owens the football and always tried to make sure it was about the team and not him.

Here is Florio’s take below:

1. Wade Phillips, Cowboys. Coaches from playoff teams aren’t usually on the hot seat. Then again, not many coaches preside over teams that haven’t won a playoff game since 1996, are expected to go to the Super Bowl in 2008 and have the next head coach, Jason Garrett, ready to step in at a moment’s notice.

Wade Phillips has the temperament to withstand the pressure. Besides, he’s no stranger to being fired. But it doesn’t make the pressure any less real.

So if the Cowboys don’t make the postseason, or if they don’t win a game or two once they get there, Wade won’t be back in 2009.

For the second time this year a Texas Rangers minor league pitcher has thrown a no hitter.

Dustin Nippert threw a seven-inning no-hitter for Triple-A Oklahoma today. Nippert walked two and struck out five. He is now 6-2 on the season with a 3.98 ERA.

Maybe they really do have some arms down on the farm.  I hope they don’t trade them away.

I have seen it all.  Mini Me from the Austin Powers movies has a sex tape out.  Even R. Kelly is shocked.

US Weekly has the latest.  Verne Troyer, Mini Me’s real name, is suing because a national website released footage of his sex tape:

Verne “Mini Me” Troyer has filed a $20 million lawsuit against celeb Web site TMZ.com for running a clip of his sex tape online.

In the suit (filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles), the actor, 39, alleges that the site violated his privacy rights, infringed on his copyright and misappropriated his name and likeness.

Wasn’t Dr. Evil who once said, “Mini Me, you complete me.”