Thomas explained his decision on his Facebook page, clarifying that it wasn’t about “politics or party,” but, rather, had to do with his general dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Federal government is being run:

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT

RELATED: Commitment: Sen. John Kerry Shows Up At Hockey Event With Black Eyes And Broken Nose

The White House has not responded directly to Thomas, but President Barack Obama did make sure to mention the player’s contributions during yesterday’s White House celebration. “This Stanley Cup,” he said, “was won by defense as much as by offense. Tim Thomas posted two shutouts in the Stanley Cup Finals and set an all-time record for saves in the postseason, and he also earned the honor being only the second American ever to be recognized as the Stanley Cup playoffs MVP.”

Yahoo Sports also notes that Thomas has always been politically minded — in fact, he’s “long been a fan of former Fox News channel host Glenn Beck, once saying he aspired to appear on Beck’s talk show as a guest.”

Thomas’ move has inspired its fair share of support and criticism. The Boston edition of Barstool Sports wrote that Thomas “decided to play a little GOP hooky and interject politics into an apolitical event when he refused to join his fellow Stanley Cup-winning teammates at the White House,” adding that his decision “reeks of pettiness.” Meanwhile, Boston Globe writer Kevin Dupont wrote that Thomas’ actions were “Shabby. Immature. Unprofessional. Self-centered. Bush league. Need I go on?”

But Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski noted that visiting the White House is, in itself, already immersed in the political. “Good on Thomas,” he wrote, “for using this moment — where a professional sports team participates in what’s both an honor for its accomplishments and a political photo opportunity — to make a political statement of his own.”

Boston-based radio duo Dennis & Callahan called Thomas a “polarizing figure” now, who could formerly “do no wrong.” They also guessed he’d garner boos next time he’s on the ice. Have a listen:

h/t Washington Post, Yahoo Sports

RELATED: Rick Perry Declares Himself ‘The Tim Tebow Of The Iowa Caucuses’

CBS sports writer Gregg Doyel admitted that Tebow’s situation is a unique one, but if religion was not involved he would just be another interesting football player. Dave Zirin, writer for Progressive, argued that Tebow has gotten a pass from the media for the most part. Zirin suggested Tebow’s Super Bowl ad made him into something more than a football player, and under normal circumstances a public figure who puts himself out there like Tebow has would be subject to much media scrutiny.

Doyel stated tongue-in-cheek that Tebow should focus more on morally acceptable behavior among football players like dogfighting or drunk driving, but admitted that he personally doesn’t see Tebow as someone he would want to be more like. Zirin admitted it was uncomfortable to see Tebow getting a pass while staging himself on the “right-wing edge of Evangelical politics.”

RELATED: Jesus Politely Requests Tim Tebow ‘Take It Down A Notch’ On SNL

Unlike Zirin, who is more concerned with Tebow’s politics, Doyel admitted he doesn’t care about someone’s politics if they happen to be a good football player. He suggested that most people who watch football don’t care what their favorite athletes have to say off the field, they just want to kick back and watch the game. And when Tebow starts talking about God and his Christian faith, it might make some people uncomfortable.

Watch the video below, courtesy of CNN:

Host Greg Gutfeld appeared initially unconvinced that Allen was a racist particularly– after all, sports banter had done so much to strengthen his relationship with Andy Levy. But panelist John DeVore disagreed, calling him a “nice, casual racist”– the kind that assumes you like basketball because you’re dating a black person, but doesn’t necessarily actively think of minorities as inferior. He later described him as an “uncle” type that had had a few beers, though Levy later thwarted his theory with a tweet from a white reporter who chimed in that, for what it’s worth, Allen constantly asks him about sports, too. “Racism solved!” DeVore exclaimed.

Gutfeld got more support from Remi Stern, who argued the sports talked was “like a bad second date where the person doesn’t remember anything he asked on the first date,” and agreed with Gutfeld that NBC reporter Craig Melvin‘s decision to confront Allen over Twitter and not in person was in poor taste.

Meanwhile, there was an entirely different genre of objection to Allen’s comments to be explored. Panelist Jesse Joyce just objected to Allen as a “shitty conversationalist”– “nobody cares about sports questions… do you really want to hear his little league conquests?” He instead suggested more interesting topics to ask during small talk, like “what medicines he takes” or airport security experiences.

The discussion via Fox News below:

Maddow took a detailed look at the soccer players’ individual failures– from Ronaldinho’s inability to make the Brazilian team after starring in the ad to Ribery’s team, the French national team, breaking out into near-civil war to Ronaldo’s uncharacteristically passive play. Then there’s Federer, who isn’t even a soccer player (though he almost was!), who made an uncharacteristic early exit at Wimbledon this week against the twelfth-ranked Tomas Berdych. In sum, the only people in the ad who have yet to be affected by the curse are three Spanish players are Homer Simpson.

The truth is, several of these players– Rooney, Ribery, and Cannavaro in particular– were simply on teams that grossly underperformed this years for various reasons. And the World Cup is close enough to being over that it makes sense most of the players would be out by now. But Roger Federer losing? At Wimbledon? Forgive us all if we suspect the hand of the supernatural intervening in this.

Watch Maddow explain the curse below:

Outsports’ Jim Buzinski lays out the case that the teen blogger, known as “Mikey,” was actually a man in his late 40s who advertised on gay sex sites, served on his homeowners association, and apparently fell in love  with a blog follower.  The blog follower, who had off-blog conversations with the blogger, helped unravel the mystery of the person who wrote about his life as a skilled hockey player who was struggling with being a teen in the closet.

The attention “Mikey” originally got from Outsports resulted in other media picking up the story.  “Mikey” was featured in a profile on 365Gay, the blog connected to the LOGO network. He was also interviewed for the podcast Ben and Dave’s Six Pack.  Podcaster Dave Rubin told Buzinski after the interview “I actually fully bought it after we spoke.  I told Ben that you could hear the nervousness and although his voice was very deep sometimes that’s just a puberty thing. Ben was a little more skeptical, as were some of our listeners.”

Outsports first revealed the possible hoax in late April which resulted in hundreds of comments from Mikey fans and people who believed they had been duped. There was also some speculation that the hoax was a hoax, and that Mikey was looking for a way to get out of the blogging so he said he was a 40 year old so the blog would end.

This is not the first time that gay blogs have found themselves duped by fake bloggers.  In 2008, Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod found himself embroiled in a mystery when a blog about gay firefighter and his two adopted kids turned out to be a hoax and that the blog was actually written by a middle-aged woman in Canada. In 2005, blog readers were duped into believing the livejournal of Priori Ad Lib, a gay grade school teacher in Canada dying of leukemia who also turned out to be a middle-aged woman.

Buzinski told Mediaite that one of the reasons gay blogs may be so susceptible to hoaxes is that being in the closet, or not being open about being gay, means you are willing to trust someone who says they are struggling with being out.

“The whole nature of the closet is that you can’t talk about it publicly, so when one blogs about being a closeted athlete you accept it for sports reasons,” Buzinski explained in an interview.  “We accept anonymity of gay people all the time.  We believe in anonymity.”

Here’s how Buzinski described the blog when her first wrote about it:

I find myself rooting for Mikey, on and off the ice, and hope he can work through the frustration of being a closeted jock. We have been writing about this for years on Outsports, and it’s people like Mikey who show the importance of people reaching out to each other. Despite him thinking he is being weak for staying closeted, he is dealing with the circumstances he is in, and his writing has the potential to make a difference to others. I hope others in his situation check out his blog and drop him a line.

Buzinski was not alone. In a heartbreaking post on Outsports, an 18-year old gay hockey player talked about why he identified so much with the blogger:

To any gay teens who may be reading this, please do not feel alone. There are young gay athletes out there, and even though Mikey turned out to be false, the people that came together as a result of his blog were real, living people whose feelings were hurt by this ordeal. People like Corey Johnson and Brendan Burke are real, just like you, and these people are real heroes. Perhaps the next gay teen role model will come out of this experience. Regardless, one can only hope that those affected by the fall of Mikey will come to be stronger as a result.

Buzinski said that what is interesting about the alleged hoax is that “Mikey” maintained the persona quite convincingly on the blog, but that it was inconsistencies in private conversations that finally raised questions about his identity.

Buzinski’s partner at Outsports–Cyd Zeigler–told Mediaite in an email that despite the perception of the hoax, the “Mikey” phenomenon actually had a benefit because it created an entire community of people–many of them gay teens–who met each other because they were fans of “Mikey” and his blog.

“Whether we want to admit it or not, Mikey did do a lot of good. Many young gay people found a community on his Web site. They felt better about themselves because they got to interact with other people who were like them, going through the same tribulations in life. The fact that Mikey was a fraud doesn’t mean that the hundreds of young people who shared with one another are frauds. They are very real people,” Ziegler said in his email, pointing out that people can still come to Outsports and Saved by the blog to be a part of that community.

Looking ahead, both Ziegler and Buzinski said they will be more careful in checking out the identity of people who write for the blog–”Mikey” had contributed stories–and that they will try to do more research before promoting anonymous blogs. But, as Buzinski said, as long as athletes are closeted, there are always going to be anonymous blogs and people who are looking for role models and people who will share their story.

As many observers have noted, the club already provides more secure surroundings — and more security — than any golf tournament in the world. But Tiger’s people weren’t only looking for protection from the masses; they also wanted protection from the ink-stained wretches. And they got it, assembling an audience of writers that would go only so far when asking questions.

The moment Tiger referred to the writers in that room as “my friends,” I knew it was just another set-up.

Understand a few things about The Masters. It’s an invitational, which means players are “invited” to attend. True, those invitations are based on numerous criteria (past champions, position on the money list, finishes in other tournaments, etc.), but a number of players are asked, well, just because. Since its inception in 1934, The Masters has always had a party feel to it. A private party.

The same is almost true for the press. Newspapers, magazines, and other organizations request credentials and the media committee can say yes or no. The New York Times, Golf Digest, and the Associated Press usually don’t have much to worry about (although if they ask for 10 badges they might only get 8). But in the last few years, largely due to Tiger, more and more outlets have requested badges and The Masters has had to be more critical in its judgments.

So it was a pretty good bet that TMZ, the National Enquirer, and Hooters magazine weren’t going to be credentialed.

Then, for yesterday’s press conference, only 200 reporters—and supposedly not more than one from any organization—would be ticketed. That allowed The Masters to exercise even more control over who would be in a position to ask potentially insightful (or incite-full?) questions.

But once a group of reporters got Tiger in their sights they’d fire away, right? Well, not exactly. As Dan Jenkins, the grand old man of the golf media, tweeted during the proceedings, “That sound in the background at Tiger’s press conference was the great sigh of relief from his employees at the softball questions.”

It wasn’t until Christine Brennan of USA Today (one of the best sports reporters when a real story comes along) asked about Dr. Galea and performance-enhancing drugs that things got interesting. Tiger, to his credit, answered the question, saying he’s never taken PEDs and never taken any illegal drugs. (Really, even at Stanford?) Dr. Galea is also known for the platelet-enriched plasma treatments that Tiger said he used to help his ACL heal faster. And Tiger’s rationale for calling on Dr. Galea — “there’s a certain comfort level to that when a person has worked with athletes” — makes perfect sense.

Then someone asked about Tiger’s 45 days of rehab and he responded, “I’ve come out better.” But when then asked what the rehab was actually for, Tiger stared at the writer and said, “That’s personal, thank you.”

In other words, drop it. And it was dropped. As was just about everything else.

No one asked about the reports in Vanity Fair about Tiger’s “sexting” messages to his girlfriends.

No one followed up about Team Tiger’s involvement in his assignations. Tiger may say he takes total responsibility, but the text messages implicate both his friends and his agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG. Most of the people in that room know that possibly the only thing worse than pissing off Tiger is pissing off Steiny.

The only question about Tiger’s wife Elin was whether or not she’d be at the tournament that week. The answer was no. I wonder if the club refused to credential her, too.

Then there’s the pressure of being at Augusta National, one of those “cathedrals of the game” golf writers love to wax rhapsodic about. Ask a pointed question and maybe you don’t get a badge next year. The club wants us all to think that simply saying the word “sexting” while on its grounds would be like farting in church. (It’s okay, I’ve been to The Masters about half a dozen times; I don’t expect to be invited back. Certainly not now.)

While I think the golf press corps could have done a better job chipping away at Tiger — read the transcript and you’ll see they asked some pretty good questions — I understand why they didn’t do more. We aren’t investigative reporters, unless you consider asking a player what club he hit into 15 an investigation. Most of what we do is reactive, reacting to the ebb and flow of a tournament, analyzing revisions to a golf course, profiling a hot player. One of the reasons we love golf is that we haven’t had to be proactive. The game has always been relatively trouble-free: No steroids (well, not much), no cheating (well, very little), with a strong connection to real people, like ourselves, who play the game.

Everything that made the Tiger story so shocking and so riveting to the outside world the last five months—scandal, sex, drugs—are things golf writers don’t usually write about. A fact Team Tiger, Augusta National, and anyone else who had a hand in planning yesterday’s press conference was counting on.

The story of Tiger’s fall from grace was broken and reported by a completely different media. I’ll get interested again — and really listen — when he has a press conference with them.

James A. Frank was editor of Golf Magazine for 18-plus years and editor-in-chief of Golf Connoisseur. He also has written more than a dozen golf books. He now writes on golf for numerous publications and his website, jimgolfrank.com.

But according to a GQ.com profile on ESPN’s burgeoning plans for local sports, this image is only partly accurate.

The piece, written by Gabriel Sherman, contends that the new local sites offered by ESPN – New York, Boston, Dallas, LA, and Chicago – are pretty modest operations:

Each site is staffed by a half-dozen or so reporters and editors to cover the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, the MLS, and high school sports. It’s a shoestring effort, given that sports desks at some of their newspaper competitors have staffs ten times that size, even after layoffs.

And although the new local sites can pull content from ESPN.com’s slew of writers and treasure trove of videos, the local outfits still have to battle for respect:

It’s an odd position for ESPN to be cast as an underdog when in every other medium it’s been dominant for years. When the Cowboys opened their new stadium this season, the press office assigned Watkins and MacMahon terrible seats in the press box, shunting them off next to The Gilmer Mirror and KTXS News 12 out of Abilene, Texas. (“We got fucked,” MacMahon griped.)

Still, ESPN’s ragtag group of local reporters and bloggers will get no respect from grizzled New York Post vet Phil Mushnick. On sports journalism, and ESPN’s role in its perceived decline:

“Sports journalism is dead. The games have become props; the sports have become props. I think at the start of every day, ESPN’s motives are pure, but before it’s put on the air, on the Web, or in the magazine, it’s all been ESPN-ized: It’s there to self-promote, cross-promote. I’m frightened for whistle-blowers. It’ll be a good time for bad guys when newspapers go down.”

And although, as the article notes, ESPN didn’t kill print journalism (it’s not dead yet, is it? How do we know when this is official?), its local operations are being perceived as their latest attempt to monopolize sports news. ESPN contends that the local sites are just an evolutionary tactic in cross branding, a natural next step in achieving “synergy” across their various media platforms.

Regardless, it’s not too crazy to picture a future where ESPN is the only game in town.

In a piece published today on the Daily Beast, Peter Lauria cites four sources close to Robert Johnson who say his sale of the Bobcats was motivated by a “need for liquidity to fund his other investment obligations.”

Johnson, the founder of BET and the nation’s first black billionaire, sold the Bobcats to Jordan for $275 million (he initially wanted upwards of $325 million), only $25 million of which was cash. The rest includes “assumption of debt and other liabilities taken on by Jordan.”

From the Daily Beast:

“If he didn’t get out now,” says a former colleague of Johnson’s who asked to remain anonymous because of their prior relationship, “he’d be [out of cash] soon.”

“Bob is in a lot of businesses that require a lot of upfront capital expenditures, like hotels and gaming,” adds a financial world source close to Johnson, “so he needs to husband cash flow for the assets that are growing rather than the ones that are not.”

It comes at an interesting time for MJ, who was pretty much blamed for Tiger Woods’ infidelity yesterday. Jordan was able to (mostly) keep his personal life out of the spotlight during his playing days, but that was before the 24/7 news cycle.

Like Woods, he’s an internationally dominant brand, and also like Woods, he has his demons. The question is, now that he’s an NBA owner, and thus, back in the national sports conversation, will said demons be scrutinized? Or will the public perception of Michael Jordan, the best athlete of our time and telegenic pitchman, remain unscathed?

It’s with this in mind that Mediaite founder <Dan Abrams will be launching his sports-themed website, aptly titled “SportsGrid”, in late April.

The site takes Mediaite’s Power Grid and applies it to the wide world of sports, covering the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA Football and Basketball, NASCAR, Golf, and sports media using a bulked-up version of Mediaite’s proprietary algorithm. From the SportsBusiness Journal:

The new site would join sister operations Mediaite.com, GossipCop.com, Styleite.com and Geekosystem.com. The power rankings would be tabulated by using a specially developed algorithm that pools a variety of metrics, including TV ratings; Web traffic and circulation counts; attendance; number of Twitter followers; on-field performance for players and coaches; and franchise values.

The site will also be providing unique content on the latest events on the field and off of it – from Butler’s surprise run to the Final Four, to the Tiger Woods scandal. But the Power Grid, our all-in-one argument starter, will be the main focus:

“We’re really doubling down on our rankings element for SportsGrid, and this will provide an effective, fun way to see how somebody in one part of the sports world such as an owner or an executive stacks up against, say, a linebacker,” Abrams said. “We’ll have that master buzz ranking and also smaller ones within specific sports and segments. And we’ll be able to see movement up and down the rankings pretty close to real time as events and games happen.”

Sports personalities will be ranked by a variety of metrics that include on-the-field performance (numbers courtesy of RotoWire), and off-the-field buzz, and will include a Hype Meter to indicate whether the buzz surrounding an athlete is deserved – a way to quantify whether an athlete is underrated or overrated.

Categories ranked include players, coaches, teams, owners, and executives. In the world of sports media, SportsGrid will track radio hosts, writers, announcers, sports anchors, and TV personalities.

So when SportsGrid launches in the next few weeks, feel free to start arguing about what you think the rankings (and the posts about them) get right and, of course, wrong.  After all, if sports have taught us anything, it’s that if it’s not up for debate, then what’s the point?

Follow SportsGrid on Twitter here, and read the full SportsBusiness Journal article on SportsGrid here.

Dancing With the Stars waltzed up over last year’s spring debut leading ABC to a big nightly win. DWTS scored a 6.3/17 (rating/share) with adults 18-49  and 23.89 million total viewers in the overnights between 8p-10.

[...]

Last night was much improved compared to last fall’s DWTS premiere on September 21, 2009 when it averaged a 4.1 rating with adults 18-49 between 8p-10p.

It’s hard not to conclude that this year’s inclusion of Andrews (also, Mediaite’s number-one-ranked TV Reporter), helped out a bit. She’s currently ranked #1 in Google News buzz, and #2 in Blog buzz, signs that she is being talked about a lot at the moment.

Andrews, you may recall, unwillingly found herself in the middle of a media controversy last summer, when a stalker secretly filmed her naked in her hotel room. This week, the stalker was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

The sentencing was clearly not a distraction, as last night she was pretty awesome. Video via Rickey.org via The Big Lead:

In April, SportsGrid will take Mediaite’s proprietary Power Grid algorithm and apply it to sports, gauging the performance and popularity of over 5,400 players, teams, coaches, front office execs, and members of the sports media.

To get a leg up on the launch, and the crazy arguing that will ensue (LeBron vs. Kobe, Ohio State vs. Michigan, Stuart Scott vs. local sports anchor Chip Carter), SportsGrid’s Dan Fogarty and Glenn Davis count down their Top 25 sports bloggers and internet personalities.

There are plenty of heavy hitters on the list, but much like every good lineup needs a three-point specialist or a defensive stopper, this squad wouldn’t be complete without writers who serve a more niche audience. Think of them as Bruce Bowen, minus the contempt from their peers.

Note: if you are not a fan of the gratuitous use of sports puns when arbitrarily ranking bloggers, TOO BAD, because we’re going to the hole until the fat lady sings.

With that in mind: every team needs a couple of goons to start fights, and some bangers on the inside…

The United States is still leading the pack in total number of medals with 14, though Germany is close behind with a total of 10.

Note: While this competition has yet to air in the US (thanks NBC tape delay!), the results were first reported by NBC on the subsidiary Twitter feed Breaking News, and is now being reported on NBCOlympics.com.

[Image via NY Daily News]

Much of the country tuned in for last night’s game, and there was no question where the most interesting place to watch it was. Bar None, the bar in Manhattan’s East Village that just happens to be shared by Saints and Vikings fans, was a magnet for crazy people decked out in purple, black, and gold:

The Vikings took a 7-0 lead in the first quarter with Adrian Peterson’s 19-yard touchdown run. Vikings fans responded with hugs and high-fives that sent beer splattering onto the bar. Someone blew loudly on a purple plastic horn.

The Saints tied the game later in the quarter when Pierre Thomas took a pass on the right side, weaved through six tacklers and crossed the goal line standing up on a 38-yard play. Howling fans hoisted open black umbrellas in celebration.

The Saints-Vikings matchup was the most-watched non-Super Bowl sporting event since the 1982 NFC Championship between the Cowboys and 49ers (68.7 million viewers). If you missed it last night, here’s how the game ended:

The Washington, D.C. area is about to become a one-newspaper sports town with the demise of the Washington Times‘ sports section, announced Dec. 30 by the conservative paper’s top brass. The Unification Church-run paper slashed 40 percent of its staff and will focus on national news and politics, while shuttering its Sunday edition.

While the writers may be out of a job, they haven’t quit tweeting about the end of an era at the paper.

RT @SI_PeterKing RIP @TWTSports. We have got to find David Elfin a job. He is one of the best beat men in America, covering any sport.

#10yearsago we had a sports section. Some decade.

Teams that won: Unification Church RT @dcsportsbog Teams that lost their last home game with TWT beat writer: Skins, Caps, Wiz, Terps BB, FB

RT matthewsbunch Looks like @washtimes killed the most respectable section of its newspaper. Au revoir, @TWTsports.

The future is unclear for most of the sports writers, as Washington Nationals beat writer Ben Goessling said in his own goodbye. There was also this from his colleague, Mark Zuckerman, who said “Hopefully, by the time Opening Day 2010 rolls around, I’ll be stationed somewhere in the press box at Nationals Park. Maybe a few seats down the row. Maybe tucked away in the far, rear corner. Maybe not there at all.”

The end of the WT sports section also brought out the best in their cross-town rivals, the sports folks at the Washington Post. Dan Steinberg at WaPo’s Sports Bog explains all the reasons he is going to miss his competition, which covered things like lacrosse, combat sports, sports media and the business of sports in ways WaPo doesn’t. He also lamented the said reality of what happens when a newspaper loses its competition.

Aside from the general lament about so many good people losing their jobs in such a shoddy way, the worst thing about this news is that it hurts D.C. as a sports town. Sports towns have rollicking media contingents, packs of beat writers, inter-paper feuds and all the rest. They have columnists with rival sport-talk shows on at the same time, and they have beat writers whispering covertly into cell phones while talking to editors, and they have hurt feelings and back-stabbings, and they have drunken group dart games after playoff wins during midwestern road trips.

Sure, bloggers are rapidly filling in the holes, and the Examiner does a lot with a small staff, and various Web sites are beefing up their coverage, but that’s no substitute for being a genuine two-paper town, with multiple full-time beat writers covering every team.

The questionable play call on 4th and 2 opens the door for criticism of Belichick’s coaching strategy, and is one of the first instances that his coaching style has so obviously and negatively effected his team. Although he’s familiar with negative attention from the press, it usually has nothing to do with the X’s and O’s of football. But last night sportswriters were finally given license to publish the “Bill Belichick is an Arrogant Prick AND a Bad Coach” piece that has been saved on their desktop since the Pats’ first title in 2001. Leading the charge, and giving a preview of his two-minute beatdown on “PTI” later today, is Micheal Wilbon:

“No great coach, no head coach with multiple Super Bowl victories, would have made that call — except the most arrogant great coach of them all, Bill Belichick. And the decision to try and pick up those two yards in Indianapolis last night instead of punting, fittingly, is the most arrogant end-of-game decision I’ve ever seen in 40-plus years of watching pro football.”

Up until this point, the only thing protecting Belichick from this type of coverage was his reputation as a master strategist and schematic mastermind. Sure, his post-game handshakes with opposing coaches usually last 2 seconds, and his press conferences are marked by muffled answers and bouts of floor-staring (have you ever seen a guy who didn’t want to be there as much as Belichick?). But his antisocial behavior was seen as a quirk, a completely understandable side effect of being an NFL genius. Now, we are seeing the effects of that genius being called into question.

“Ask yourself if Vince Lombardi, with his team leading by six points, would have gone for it on fourth and 2 from his own 28 with two minutes to play in the game? You think Don Shula would have made that call? Tom Landry. No, of course not.”

Finally, Wilbon imagines what it would have been like had things gone differently:

“If the play works, we’re in awe of the Patriots again. They’re 7-2, they knocked the Colts from the ranks of the undefeated again, they’re looking like the best team in the AFC again, what with Brady healthy and firing rockets to Randy Moss. If that play works you could have cued the Gladiator music because the Patriots would have been on their invincible train once again.”

Here are how some others are covering Belichick’s misfortune:

Dan Shaughnessy says this is worse than anything Grady Little ever did.

Rodney Harrison, former Patriot and current “Football Night in America” analyst, called it the “worst decision” he’d ever seen.

Game On! compares Belichick to Bill Buckner, and also notes that the vaunted Belichick coaching tree isn’t doing so hot.

In addition to the backlash, there is also a strong contingent of writers defending Belichick’s call:

USA Today points out that, statistically, Belichick made the right choice.

Wayne Winston also defended the move on HuffPo, but don’t worry, Bill Belichick is still “one of his least favorite people in sports.”

Joe Posnanski of SI.com says Bill’s lack of empathy made him do it, marking the first time an NFL coaches playcalling was defended because of his sociopathic tendencies.

By now, everyone has likely seen the video of the hair-pulling, punching female college soccer player who has been suspended indefinitely. Dr. Nancy Snyderman took this as an opportunity to delve into the topic of whether women athletes are just too darn aggressive and emotional these days.

We don’t know exactly what Dr. Nancy is implying here, but we’re pretty sure it’s not 100% un-sexist:

You want women out there aggressive, smart, nuanced. How do you take them up to that spot and not sort of, I don’t want to say let girls be girls, but push them toward the kind of stuff you would expect out of men’s sports, but just perhaps an inch or two shy of that?

So we want women to be almost as aggressive as men, but just not quite as much or else we can risk incidents like some crazy woman punching an opponent?

William Wiener, a sports pyschologist, was one of Snyderman’s guests, and he had a different, but equally cringe-worthy theory. “As we see a growth in women’s sports in general, I think this kind of aggression and people losing control of their emotions is a natural outgrowth of that and I think the systems aren’t really intact to sort of contain that,” he said.

The isolated incident (yes, there’s another high school soccer fight video now making the rounds) is the exact thing cable news likes to make into a trend.

This screengrab has nothing to do with soccer or overly emotional, aggressive women, but was from the segment after and made me laugh:

As we’ve reported before, Dr. Nancy has some of the best chyrons.

Do you have a pick for Chyron of the Day? Email me at Steve@mediaite.com. Check out all the past Chyrons of the Day here.

Here’s the video of the segment, naturally headlined “Girls Behaving Badly”:

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3. From Deadspin, “Our Man in Boy Clothes Is Not Feeling Generous Today”:

Mike Lupica‘s ego is to sportswriting what Milton Berle’s c*ck is to comedy. It is an occupational totem, around which colleagues spin fantastical-seeming yarns that just so happen to be true. Here are a few such tales.

Thanks for reading down this far! This lede is a total one-percenter, but it shows that Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs has got it got it. Also, it subtly conveys the homoeroticism latent in the sports world. I mean, [something about guys patting each other on the butts or something]? Come on.

2. From The Miami Herald, “Line of Scrimmage: Vick Signing Brings More Questions Than Answers”:

If your hard-earned money was on Michael Vick wearing the midnight green of the Philadelphia Eagles, well, then you just made yourself a substantial wad of midnight green. (emphasis added)

Do you see what he’s doing there? Although: is money really midnight green?

1. From Times Online, “Women’s boxing merits a place at the Olympics”:

In the autumn of 2006 I went to York Hall in Bethnal Green to watch the British bantamweight title showdown between Cathy Brown and Juliette Winter.

It was the first women’s title bout sanctioned by the British Boxing Board of Control and proved to be a curious, at times disconcerting, but ultimately revelatory experience.

The women entered the ring — like their male counterparts who had dominated the rest of the card — toned and lithe. They exuded a combination of anticipation and aggression. Both offered a flurry of shadow punches and a pumped fist to the skies as they were introduced by the master of ceremonies.

The audience — a pretty even split between men and women — responded with a passable ovation, but there was no mistaking a pervading sense of ambivalence.

The action was unrelentingly brutal. Brown was instantly revealed as the superior prizefighter, emitting a distinctive, guttural grunt as she unleashed impressively timed left hooks and right crosses, her muscles flexing in the flashbulb light. Her opponent was spirited, but it was not long before her body began to sag with each new assault on her torso, Brown working the body before redirecting her fistic assault towards the jaw.

Blemishless when she first strode across the canvas, it was as early as the third round that bruising became visible on Winter’s face and blood began to dribble out of her mouth, by now gaping with exertion. Even Brown shipped enough punishment that her gum-shield, particularly visible when she flexed her jaw muscles while executing her punches, became crimson. It had become, as with all bona fide prizefights, a battle of wills and a mutual refusal to accept defeat.

By the final bell there was little doubt as to the identity of the victor. Brown, drenched in sweat, limp with exertion and smudged with her opponent’s blood, reached to the skies as the MC announced the judge’s decision, before slipping through the ropes in search of the dressing room and medical attention. She had become the first woman to win an English boxing title, a pioneer as well as a pugilist.

Tomorrow, Olympic chiefs will meet to decide whether to include women’s boxing as part of the programme for London 2012.

Maybe British readers have longer attention spans (News of the World aside), but this sure is a long way to say it’s a mixed bag that women’s boxing will be in the Olympics. Then again, Matthew Syed, the guy who wrote this, is apparently the Sports Journalist of the Year, so this should probably be read as “riveting” rather than “way, way too long.” The end of the article, in which he talks about how you can still be beautiful when you have a “haematoma” on your face (from being punched in your face), is not to be missed.

As training camps opened last week, players were told that the same standard — read: paranoia — that applied to the flow of information to reporters also applied to Twitter. In Green Bay, players were told they would be fined if they texted or tweeted from team meetings or coaching sessions.

Though you just know it’s going to happen anyway. People like to share their thoughts! Athletes are no different in this respect. Actually the smart thing to do would probably be to password protect the Twitter feeds and sell the passwords on team websites, or something like that. We bet people would pay for that.

The second store is slightly more understandable and occupies a much grayer area. The Wired blog Danger Room is reporting that the military is also banning Twitter (and Facebook and MySpace along with it). This from the Marines Corp.:

“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries…The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

So yeah, it’s not hard to imagine Twitter, or Facebook, or MySpace becoming some sort of security hazard. That said, the military has apparently been jumping into the deep end of the social networking pool of late. Per a story from CNET back in June:

The U.S. military in Afghanistan is launching a Facebook page, a YouTube site, and Twitter feeds as part of a new communication effort. Officials said this would help the military reach those who get their information online rather than via printed materials.

So how to reconcile the the official pages and feeds and the official ban? Looks like the military is trying to sort that out along with everyone else. In the meantime Danger Room points out the ban is actually only in place for the next a year. No doubt by that point we will have entirely new online problems and questions to contend with!