Cheeta the Chimp, one of several primates used in the filming of the Tarzan movies, died of kidney failure on Christmas Eve. He was believed to be 80 years old. Katie Baker and Paul Horton, of KPHO in Phoenix, found some time in their newscast to honor Cheeta’s life with a little remembrance, and — as tributes to dead chimps usually do — it managed to work in the fact that he sometimes threw his poop around:

In anticipation of SportsGrid, Mediaite’s upcoming sports baby (babies having babies!), and the crazy Power Grid-related arguing which will follow that launch we’ve decided to count down our list of the top 25 most influential sports bloggers, writers, and tweeters currently shaping the online sports narrative.

It’s a New Yecade! I am going to keep saying that until it catches on. But either way, we’re four days in and everything feels COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Actually, and weirdly, it sort of does — maybe it’s because of all the decade-end stuff, but “2010″ looks, well, normal. Which is a very good sign. Which means we can now share all our shameful secrets from 2009. Like loving “Party In The USA.”

Hostile takeover! Blogger coup! Get the big guns! Call Nick Denton? Nope — false alarm — it’s just Young Manhattanite guest blogging the weekend at lawsuit magnet/sports blog Deadspin. That’s right, just a couple of friends sharing their blogs and hiding behind anonymous bylines. Nothing to see here! But isn’t Foster busy with the flagship? Him being the mouthiest and all, how are they turning out any content at all?

Bill Simmons is many things to many sports fans: a popular ESPN columnist, an influential Twitterer, and now, the author of a New York Times #1 bestselling book, The Book of Basketball.

Mediaite recently spoke to Simmons about the pressures of fame and bestsellerdom, his feelings about a fanboy named Will Leitch, and his plans to take over the Power Grid:

On Election Day this Tuesday, HBO will premiere By The People, which chronicles Barack Obama‘s campaign to win the presidency of the United States. And what better time to summon the energy and excitement of last fall than Election Day, one year later, as Obama seems increasingly slow to act and his legislative initiatives are slow and stalling.

Here’s a tip for any ESPN employee looking to engage in some good old-fashioned questionable behavior: you may want to time your transgressions to light sometime during the third week of the month. Why? Cause then you can fly under ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer’s radar for at least 30 days.

Being Phil Mushnick ought to be exhausting. His “Equal Time” column, a cranky collection of gripes that generally coalesce around the topic of sports media, runs thrice weekly in the New York Post. That’s a lot of outrage for one writer to manufacture!

CNBC can be a tough slog these days: the frantic noise of the past year has settled into a dull roar, and the endless hours of Congressional footage can make the network seem more like C-SPAN. Punctuating the monotony, though, are the colorful segments by Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell. Katie Baker interviews Rovell inside.

Last night while Nadal was changing his shirt after his match a man ran out on court and hugged him. The way it was filmed it looked like it was a family member or something (and I think Nadal thought maybe it was too, the way he initially reacted) and then two security people pulled the guy away and I felt really uncomfortable because everyone’s good naturedly comparing it to the time a gremlin pranced out and shook up Federer but what I thought of was the time a guy lunged out and stabbed Monica Seles.

Just in case our mandate of covering the media is not recursive enough for you, we gather here today to watch the watchmen watch the watchmen. In other words: How did ESPN’s new ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer do in his first column for the World Wide Leader in Sports? The answer: pretty good… if you could make it far enough into the nearly 4,000-word column to get to the point.

I can’t say I started crying during the opening credits of the upcoming HBO documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, but only because I got to the theater five minutes late. The film — which will air on November 3 on HBO — begins in Iowa in 2007, eight months before the caucuses and light years before today, and spends nearly half of its two-hours focusing on the state and the young supporters populating its campaign headquarters.

I’d like to apologize to Erin Andrews. Apparently, my lifelong obsession with professional sports — the tears I shed when the Giants won the Super Bowl and when the Mets lost the Subway Series, the John Starks “Dunk” poster I had on my bedroom wall, the tiny radio I kept in bed with me, tuned [...]

Even non-tabloid readers have heard that Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is the subject of a civil lawsuit, filed by a casino hotel worker in Lake Tahoe, that accuses the two-time Super Bowl champ of forcing her to have sex after a celebrity golf tournament in 2008.

They may have heard about it from any number of outlets, just not the self-proclaimed World Wide Leader in Sports, ESPN.