Blake Griffin took over MySpace today? At least it ensured that one 21-year old visited MySpace today – that’s assuming of course that MySpace made Blake actually go on MySpace to do stuff for them.

I’m not a sports marketing technician, so let’s not belabor the brand alignment here. Also, some of this content is pretty damn sweet. For instance, Blake palling around with comedian Ben Gleib.

1st Half – More than Just a Baller – Blake Griffin

@BlakeGriffin | Myspace Video

2nd Half – More Than a Baller – Blake Griffin

@BlakeGriffin | Myspace Video

Too saccharine for some of you Blake maniacs? Check out this video of what Blake sees when he posterizes someone:

Dunk You Very Much

@BlakeGriffin | Myspace Video

Still too whimsical? Maybe abandon Blake’s MySpace content, and go read this Salon article on the rappers who were on Jimmy Fallon last night, Odd Future – Rape, Murder and SWAG…

(Hey, cool! You can now post to a WordPress blog from Quora, which is what I did here. Had to log-in and doctor the post – not surprising – which is what I’m doing now.)

What stadium or arena is the most dangerous to walk into wearing the jersey of the opposing rival? 4 answers on Quora

What stadium or arena is the most dangerous to walk into wearing the jersey of the opposing rival?

Since we’re living in the era of Instapaper, I thought it best to wait a few days to post about the longform profile that came out earlier this week about probably the sports blogosphere’s most prominent blogger of late, A.J. “Tethered to the Machine” Daulerio. He got a bunch of quotes in the article, and one of literally said You’re just kind of tethered to the machine.

In reality, I’m not going to quit sports blogging, because as Daulerio’s friend and the founder of his site Deadspin, Will Leitch, said recently: writing about sports is infinitely fun. However, this profile about how the rigors of the job contributed to Daulerio seeking counseling earlier this year definitely put me at my most solemn this week (and I saw Blue Valentine this week).

I guess call me naive for not assuming that dads were calling up Daulerio – weeping – about watching their daughters have sex in urine on a stadium floor bathroom.

Check out the story at GQ.com. Leave your own thoughts on A.J.’s profile in the comments or @mikehayes19

(Photo from GQ.com)

On Monday, ESPN.com columnist, former Associated Content VP and guy known best in some circles as the blogger personally uninvited to last year’s Blog With Balls sports blogger conference by Joakim Noah, Dan Shanoff, launched Quickish, an almost-realtime, editor-curated news recommendation service. I’ve been scanning it a few times a day and really enjoy it, predominantly because Shanoff, true to form, launched with sports as the flagship subject-matter.

If for nothing else, commend him for launching this before the Verizon iPhone announcement.

Here’s what TechCrunch had to say about Quickish…

News recommendation services are plenty, and they all try to crack a similar nut: getting news updates more rapidly in front of people who are likely to be interested in them. Quickish is no different, yet, as the name implies, recommendations for online news items are shared quickly but decidedly not instantaneously.


That’s because Quickish shuns automated systems and relies on editor-vetted news recommendations, which are nonetheless delivered at modern media consumption speed.


In Shanoff’s words:
“People have made it clear how they want to stay updated: fast. Quick to know something happened, quick to access the best of what is being said, quick to consume, quick to recognize if something is worth their time. Quickish is built for them.”

Personally, I’m up for vetted – hopefully more intelligent – content recommendation in 2011. Along with the launch of Quickish, consider the success The Daily Beast continues to build with The Cheat Sheet and the recent mass growth of Q&A platform Quora – who reserves the right to delete your question if it’s too foolish (Yahoo! Answers-esque). Maybe seeking smarter content will become a trend this year? Could mean big things for sites like Quickish if they do a good job.

For those who don’t know why I mentioned Joakim Noah…

Blogs With Balls 3.0 | Joakim Noah from HHR on Vimeo.

Recently, Sony launched The Players Clubhouse on VYou featuring Josh Hamilton, Torii Hunter, David Ortiz and Brian Wilson answering questions like Wait, I’m Confused. is this really the Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson?

A few blogs picked up on how hauntingly enigmatic Wilson is, and then the initiative kind of fizzled. I can’t believe it’s for lack of interest in the facial conundrum.

Wilson, himself, hasn’t answered a question in two days. I just posed the straight-forward inquiry: Care to comment on Cliff Lee coming back to the Phillies and the National League, Brian?

We’ll see if he takes the bait. I’m on something of a hot streak having athletes respond to my quips.

In any event, you should all go continue to goad the mind of Wilson. This has much more possibilities – I mean, read his VYou bio:

Hold an IQ of 188, trained in the art of verbal assassins, Beard ranks 3rd in NFL sacks and ninja enthusiast along with being one. FACT!

Brian Wilson on VYou

They’d probably prefer a link on SI.com Hot Clicks to this, but just wanted to take an opportunity to point out that NBA blog The Basketball Jones is murdering the game today with their Lebron coverage.

If you’re interested in what went down at Quicken Loans Arena last night, you should really check them out today. I poached some of their best content for the purposes of this blog post, including a pic of my favorite sign from the game last night (’11-8?? Looks Like You Left Your Talents in Cleveland’) and a soon-to-be widely viewed video of the Cleveland coaching staff telling Lebron to STFU that Tas Melas tweeted earlier.

TBJ’s latest podcast is also a must today. They talk to Yahoo! Sports’ esteemed Adrian Wojnarowski, one of straightest shooters in NBA writing. Skeets and Melas are hilarious as usual. The TBJ Overdose is in my Top-3 podcasts, along with Dan Levy’s On the DL and Bill Simmons’ B.S. Report. What other great sports podcasts are out there? (Leave for me in the comments)

Shortly after – and I’m talking moments after – the 2022 announcement came down, US National team striker Jozy Altidore tweeted, simply – I’m heated.

His teammate and cohort in spearheading the USMNT Twitter spokesman duties, Landon Donovan got a little more descriptive in disclosing his frustrations:

As a matter fact, Qatar does have a team. A bad one, of course – they’re ranked 113. However, before Landon or any other player’s vexations earns them a date with Qatar bid ambassador Zinedine Zidane, I advise that they tone it down – perhaps, stop worrying and start loving the wife of Qatar’s Emir, her highness Sheikha Mozah.

World Cup Bids: Russia 2018, Qatar 2022, USA 2034…maybe? (The Big Lead)

It’s been confirmed, by the next viable chance for the US to host the World Cup (2030 they’re saying), I’ll be damn near 50 years old.

Beckham here will be like 90 by the time the Brits get one, I imagine.

Going to write a post about the conversation spike around the World Cup today, possible search term include: oil, bribe, corruption.

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)

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