Every year since the magazine’s inception in 1954, Sports Illustrated has awarded a ceramic urn depicting Greek athletes to “the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement.” (Source: Wikipedia) The 2010 award will be announced today (at 12:00 midnight according to my Facebook events UPDATE: SI just posted on their Facebook page that they’ll announce the Sportsman of the Year at approximately 8:30 AM EST tomorrow).

Who’s it going to be? Perhaps, Edison Peña, the freed Chilean miner who ran the NYC marathon in a shade over 5 1/2 hours? (Nominated by SI writer Richard Deitsch)

Whoever it is that get to follow up Jeter’s 2009 award, SI.com is going to have them available to video chat live tomorrow via Ustream and their Facebook page, tomorrow, at 11:00 AM EST.

My heart thinks it should go to Ed Pena, but I also wouldn’t hate getting to chat with Ron Artest.

Visit and like SI’s Facebook page to get the details.

(photo via SI.com)

But more importantly, what’s up with the website?

It may just be a clever ruse to get Pro Bowl votes (hey, Marcus Vick tweeted it!), if so, that works for me. This will be the second day in a row that I mention that the entire website is a full-browser link to the Pro Bowl ballot, currently.

According to the MikeVick.com homepage, the website is launching today. It was supposed to be yesterday. Frankly, I don’t expect to be wildly impressed – Lebron’s website is slick as hell, and I’ve only been back once (to see the nine year old phenom, right) since the launch. Just thought launching yesterday, post-record setting MNF performance, would have been a huge win. Also, got to believe they’ll be something interesting on their about, let’s call it, the journey back?

Stay tuned, Marcus.

I was interested in hearing about some new athletes out there worth following who, despite showing promise on Twitter, remain obscure, non-mainstream, questionably professional or – best yet – all of the above. I asked a group of my sports blogging constituents to contribute to a quick poll: Who’s the most fringe athlete that you follow? The list is good to the point that it inspired me to go the extra mile and create Fringe Athletes on Twitter Lists*.

First, mine: Gerald McCoy, the Tampa Bay Bucs’ first round draft pick.



I first became engrossed with Gerald on Twitter when he was pointing out his fellow draftees’ “wrist game” on Draft Night. Since then, here’s what Gerald’s been up (according to @GK_McCoy):

1.) He got a Droid
2.) He threw out the first pitch at a USA woman’s softball game vs. Japan
3.) He’s been enjoying the Twilight saga

Thurman Thomas (Isaac, Guyism)

He has over 21,000 Tweets right now, and I’m confident every single one of them occurred after his career ended in 2000. Thurman may be a Hall of Famer, but when it comes to Twitter, he remains largely misunderstood – the man has a Top-5 Stupid List (http://huggingharoldreynolds.blogspot.com/2010/05/thurman-thomas-dares-me-blocks-me-moves.html) and only 7,300 Followers.

The Iron Sheik (Eric, Camel Clutch Blog)

Is your mom on Twitter? There’s an 11% chance she follows the Iron Sheik.

These first two probably weren’t fringe enough for purists, it’s about to get super fringe on this list.

Leonard Weaver (Matt Lo Cascio, Jay Cutler Superstar)

If you didn’t know who Leonard Weaver is professionally (an NFL fullback), you wouldn’t learn from his Twitter bio. He’s currently using that forum to promote the Leonard Weaver Family Foundation (respectable) and ask people to help him name his new dog (sort of ridiculous). He’s currently calling that dog New Baby.

Mix Haxholm (Jared, The Atlantic Wire)

She’s a professional archer. A former Miss Thailand. And was recently named Cosmo’s Fun Fearless Woman. Less than a month into her Twitter tenure, but possessing a tremendous upside as she works towards the 2012 Olympics.

Todd Stottlemyre (Scott Lewis, TheScore.com)




When he submitted this, Lewis called ex-MLB pitcher Stottlemyre “the worst follow going” on account of the fact that he just tweets about stocks all day. I just scanned the feed, most recent conversations were around a recent life-changing Financial webinar that Stottlemyre was involved in.

Don’t worry, I didn’t add him to the Fringe Athletes Twitter list.

Speaking of great submission copy for athletes who probably don’t belong on this here…

Jose Canseco (Sooze, Babes Love Baseball)

“@JoseCanseco isn’t obscure at all, but he’s by far the biggest douchebag/delusional moron I follow on Twitter.” – Sooze





Andre Caldwell (Chris Richardson, Intentional Foul)



How annoyed is Viacom that this tweet only came from the Cincinnati Bengals third string Twitter wide-out?



Marcus Jordan (Ethan Jaynes, NESW Sports)




Michael Jordan’s son who averages 8.0 pp. for the University of Central Florida men’s basketball team – an all-around fringe human being, if you ask me. Worth following,  although he probably peaked during Game 7 of the Finals this season.

Robbie McEwen (Phil, Gunaxin)

This guy is an Australian cyclist, and even if you care very little about him you’ll want to hear what he has to say. Decorum is not his strong suit.



Here’s one linked to a video where he does a lot of effin’. Here’s another one linked to a photo Robbie referred to as “the best picture of the day” from Tour de France, Stage 10.

Dee Gordon (Paul Raymond, My Sports Rumors)

He’s the son of Tom “Flash” Gordon, and according to Raymond, one of the best hitting prospects in the Dodgers organization. Must be something. He’s got one of those fabled verified account with just 603 followers.

Last, but not the least fringe, not by a long shot: Jason Richards (Bob, Detroit For Lyfe)



It’s with a heavy heart that Bob, Davidson alum, submits Jason Richards, but I believe he decided to do it because he knew that Richards was almost too perfect for this list. here’s what he had to say:

“He’s a friend and also the point guard of the Stephen Curry-led Davidson squad that lost in the 2008 Elite Eight to Kansas. He’s the one Curry inexplicably passed to for the final shot that missed just left and crushed our itty bitty school’s hopes of reaching the Final Four.

Jason went on to play for the Miami Heat summer team and fall team after being undrafted. He tore his ACL in a fall practice,but got paid a handsome minimum contract because he was injured on their clock. After rehabbing and living luxuriously off that min. contract, he bounced around between Europe and D-League teams before re-tearing his ACL. All that in the past 2 1/2 years. He is now an assistant coach/film guy for Pitt’s basketball team.”

*Note: As soon as Twitter is not over capacity I’ll finish up that Twitter list.

Pleased to post that with the help of people far more capable than myself, Steady Burn was able to thwart a malicious attack by some Malware scoundrel.

Wanted to take this opportunity to post that the whole site is back up to snuff, and also thank a few folks for helping out of this bind:

Thanks Isaac from Guyism, Ethan from NESW Sports and the whole crew of sports bloggers who worked their contacts to get me some help.

Thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for the tips on Google Webmaster Tools, which should help me keep the Page Rank intact.

Thanks to Bryan, Steady Burn’s designer and my go-to web guru, for making some very necessary updates to my WordPress template that made it more secure.

Lastly, special commendation to Michael VanDeMar who fixed what had become a site-wide infection in one half hour flat. I’d definitely recommend him to any blogger facing a similar issue.

In the interest of taking the bad with the good, wanted to add that Steady Burn’s Tumblr now has 18 followers as a result of most of the intermittent posting taking place over there for the last few weeks.

If anyone has a blog that needs a similar treatment, feel free to email me. The word going around is that there’s Malware attacks going on that target WordPress blogs hosted on GoDaddy – which is like 150% of the blogs on the internet.

I should be back to regular posts almost immediately. MH

Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that The Ref had a verified Twitter account, that is until he called Stephen Slater a ‘bag nazi’ and a ‘super slider earlier today. I apologize for not paying attention, Denis, because you’re first rate on Twitter; in the past week he hit the nail on the head re Whoopi Goldberg, Eat Pray Love and Snooki.

Yesterday, Leary put it to Alex Rodriguez nicely, using his own brand of scientific analysis to compare A-Rod to the past stars in a series of tweets dubbed ‘If the Old Stars Had Steroids’:

If you’re interested in that old school ‘No Cure For Cancer’ brand of Leary, follow him on Twitter. Also, Rescue Me is starting to pick up this season too if you ask me.

Immediately following last night’s NBA Draft lottery, columnist David Steele, posted on Twitter asking that armed guards keep Michael Jordan from coming anywhere near D.C. until the draft is over. Wizards fans who remember when Jordan drafted Kwame Brown with the #1 pick in 2001 do not find this statement one bit outlandish.

I thought it worthwhile to revisit that hot debacle, and my research led me to discover that not only did Kwame expect, presumably, that he would average more than 10 points per game more than once (10.9 ppg, his career high in 8 years in the league), but he also thought he might get a chance to shine alongside M.J.

Here’s an exert from a June ’01 article in USA Today:

One of those dreams is possibly playing with Jordan, who is contemplating a comeback this season. Broken ribs 2 weeks ago slowed Jordan, but he is getting in condition to play again.

“I had to make my (selection) as if Michael Jordan will not be playing,” Jordan said. “If I decide to play, it’ll only add to what we’ve done.”

Brown is eager to play with Jordan.

“Who else has a chance to say that their boss is the best player ever,” Brown said. “If he plays, I can learn a lot, and I can still learn from him even if he doesn’t.”

Jordan did in fact return during Brown’s rookie season to lead the team in scoring with 22 ppg in 60 games, Brown contributed 4.5 ppg in 57.

Without getting too carried away with the hindsight here, what’s appropriate to describe these statements? Lousy with delusions of grandeur?

Apropos of nothing other than that Wizards fans have been having entirely too much fun today.

Earlier this week on Twitter, Friday Night Lights author, Buzz Bissinger, added some biting commentary to the story surrounding outed 22-year old Guerdwich Montimere, who posed as a 16-year old basketball superstar at Odessa-Permian High School in West Texas, the setting of Bissinger’s formative FNL novel.

The Associated Press story puts much – if not all – of the blame on Montimere’s shoulders, and casts Permian as being duped on account of their good nature. Buzz’ tweets obviously do not concur.

He clearly believes that something was up with Montimere’s handlers in Texas, and I can’t help but see his point. Consider these details:

Montimere presented himself as Joseph after moving to Odessa in February 2009 and enrolling as a ninth-grader at a junior high. He showed officials a Haitian birth certificate indicating he was 15 and claimed he lived with a half-brother in the dorm of a local university, [Mike] Adkins said.

After admitting the person was a friend, not his half-brother, Montimere moved in with Permian boys basketball coach Danny Wright when the friend left the state last summer, Adkins said.

The story about living with a brother in a University dorm is at least a little suspect. It then becomes a highly suspect situation when he confesses that this person was actually just a friend and he needed to move out. I don’t question Danny Wright’s or anyone else’s compassion – but I bet Buzz does – but I wouldn’t be surprised if their hiding behind it to mask that they did nothing to question the situation that was unfolding, and came to a head this week.

Buzz has since switched gears to ranting about Lebron and bloggers (his favorite topic to run wild on).

People seen a little tense about Maurkice Pouncey. I don’t want to talk about Maurkice. I want to talk about Trent Williams. He may sound like a character from a movie co-starring Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz. He’s actually the 6′ 5”, 315-lb O-lineman taken by the Redskins with the fourth pick in last night’s draft. And since anyone who tells you that they know how anyone picked last night is going to pan out is lying, and since Williams was the only guy picked to give M.C. Taskmaster a big old hug when his name was called at the podium, let’s call Williams the feel good story of the first round.

Who knows if this guy is going to be any good. What we have learned about Trent in the last 24-hours: 1.) His nickname is Silverback and 2.) He has, to quote his close confidant and fellow draftee, Gerald McCoy, wrist game.

McCoy, who went #3, one pick ahead of Williams, was keeping track of the draft board’s wrist game throughout the night. He also posted what Joe Haden and himself were sporting at Radio City last night on TwitPic.

Back to Williams. They don’t just let anyone be known as Silverback. He’s probably going to be really good.

BREAKING: Skins Draft Trent Williams (Mr. Irrelevant)

She went on to be an ace at Tuttle High School and is currently an integral part of the starting rotation at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

Here’s a profile of Cassie from 2007 when she was a senior at Tuttle that aired on FOX 25 Oklahoma City.

From what I’ve gathered over the years, their is one type of pitcher in highly competitive softball – power. You’re either a full-scale Luis Tiant-type or you’re the shortstop – making Chambless that much more amazing.

Her SWOSU Bulldogs are having one their best seasons in team history.

See, it’s not all tongue-in-cheek and nonchalance when it comes to the phenom category.

Here’s the music video, presumably, brought to you by the curators of today’s festivities.

Not sure I’m compelled to fully embrace this, and start high-fiving randoms on the street. But I say good for those guys; they’re influencing the Winnipeg Free Press to dedicate a staffer to try and break the world record: Most High Fives in 24 Hours.

Check out the perceived origin of the high five and its ties to Duke basketball.

http://www.nationalhighfiveday.com/

Photo via TwitPic