According to ESPN, former Jayhawks Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur were booted from an NBA rookie program on Wednesday after allegedly being caught in their hotel rooms with marijuana.
It's a surprising story. Not because Chalmers and Arthur brought the University of Kansas a national championship. What's odd is that the NBA cares.
Considering current and former players have attested to the widespread smoking of pot, it almost seems like there's something missing from ESPN's story. Perhaps what led to the violation wasn't that they were smoking a bit of grass but the way in which they were smoking it.
Arthur and Chalmers, just out of college as they are, could've been wasting their weed in rolling papers instead of a pot-conserving water bowl. An NBA official could've stumbled upon the scene and fined them $20,000 apiece for flagrant disregard of the bud, something that's probably a rulebook violation in the pros.
Or perhaps it was their alleged lonely method of smoking out. No entourage? No bitches? No group of teammates puffing smoke out of a cracked window so housekeeping didn't detect the smell?
There's always the possibility of a source-sharing violation. The two were lighting up at the Doral Arrowwood resort in Rye Brook, New York. Can you imagine how hard it would be to find a source in a tiny town like Rye Brook? Maybe they found a valet or the dude at the smoothie place. And they just smoke it up, just the two of them, while surrounded by pot-loving NBA players?
I got word recently that my Royals season tickets are in a section closed off for construction of Kauffman Stadium. It seems the team assumed they would be out of the playoff run way back at the start of the season, figuring they wouldn't need my section by October.
When I brought my new tickets to the stadium recently, I discovered a bonus. The new tickets they sent me were for another section that was also closed off for construction.
When told of this, the usher said, "Sit wherever you want."
That wasn't so hard considering the crowd looked like this:
Here I was about to write about the cheapening of the name of Arrowhead Stadium when I came across this well-put version of the same idea at the blog See Katy Write. The author, local magazine editor Katy Ryan, laments about the fact that the Chiefs want to "besmirch the name of the greatest football stadium in the nation" by naming it after a sponsor.
Do you seriously expect me to hold a stadium named after some blood-sucking corporate entity in the same esteem as the hallowed Arrowhead? And your compromise is to keep the original name somewhere in the title. Super. I can't wait until I attend my first game at McDonald's Double Cheeseburger Arrowhead Stadium.
Ryan gives cred to her stance with her own tales of suffering through "the cold, the snow, the rain, the heat," only to see the team flounder. She even backed up her premise with a photo to prove she's been through the worst.
Yep, that photo says it all. Nobody wants to wear ear muffs to Double Cheeseburger Arrowhead.
Royals manager Trey Hillman acts like a dick on occasion, and the media are starting to call him on it.
A few weeks ago, the Royals faced Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. In preparation for the game, Hillman, an ex-infielder who fooled around with a knuckler in his playing days, tossed batting practice.
810 WHB's Nate Bukaty tried to engage Hillman in a light conversation about his knuckler. But Hillman was having none of it. His terse answers suggested a man who had just buried his dog and broken up a fistfight in the clubhouse.
If you're debating between watching Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination or catching the Chiefs in the final preseason game, here's a primer.
Fans expected to watch Obama speak at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium: 76,273 Fans expected at Arrowhead Stadium: 27 (estimate)
First lady credentials at Mile High: A seasoned lawyer and mother, Michelle is an impressive speaker in her own right. First lady credentials at Arrowhead: Kelli Croyle doesn't hurt the eyes.
Possible spoiler at Mile High: Hilary Clinton supporters continue to call for her nomination. Possible spoiler at Arrowhead: The return of Trent Green, now playing for the Rams, overshadows the three backup-quality quarterbacks fielded this year by the Chiefs.
I got a text message last night at 8:58 from a friend with some pretty big breaking news. The Royals, he reported, have dropped the Kiss Cam for a more Disney-style version called the Hug Cam. "Dunno for sure but if so that is too creepy conservative," he wrote.
Admittedly, I haven't been to the 'K in a couple months, so I called someone who had been to a recent game. Yep, on Monday night, he saw the Hug Cam but no Kiss Cam.
These sources did enjoy the beverage selections at the 'K. That, of course, leads to the need to visit the concourse facilities. So both of them could've missed the Kiss Cam while headed to the can. So I called the Royals to find out if they had, in fact, turned the Kiss Cam conservative.
A young Chiefs fan expresses his opinion of the rankings.
Forbes ranks Kansas City as a the sixth worst city to be a sports fan. Forbes writer Tom Van Ripper reasons: "Ticket prices are reasonable, but the Royals just can't shake over a decade's worth of the doldrums. The franchise has had just one winning season since 1995."
Forbes refuses to acknowledge soccer as a sport, denying the existence of the Kansas City Wizards. But neither does The Kansas City Star.
Fantasy football guides are making it evident how badly the Chiefs screwed up the selection of a special-teams player in the 2007 draft. Nick Folk – bypassed by the Chiefs in favor of Justin Medlock – is the top-rated kicker in draft guides published by Sports Illustrated and USA Today.
The Chiefs took Medlock with the 160th pick in the ’07 draft. After a poor pre-season, the former UCLA Bruin failed to make the team.
The Dallas Cowboys, meanwhile, selected Folk, who kicked at the University of Arizona, with the 178th pick. In 2007, Folk made 26 of 31 field-goal attempts and went to the Pro Bowl.
Just got back from the press conference announcing the 2009 and 2010 Iowa State and Kansas State neutral site games at Arrowhead.
Good to see the Cyclone beat writers -- both of them -- made the trip south on I-35. The pre-press conference jabber was whether the Cyclones had settled their quarterback conundrum. Of course not. The season opener is only SIX DAYS AWAY!
By acquiring Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox in the ’20s, the Yankees began what has become a time-honored tradition of buying their way into success.
Back then, the survival of a ball club depended on the one-dimensional business of putting butts in seats. Fans turned out in droves to watch the player who could change games in the space of a single swing.
But like A-Rod and strippers, or Giambi and steroids, the hitter apparently had some skeletons — perhaps one even big enough to kill for. Such is the premise of J. Anderson Cross' upcoming novel, The Bambino Secret, which blends conspiracy theory and all-out fictional adventure à la The Da Vinci Code.
The book chases an Overland Park lawyer’s investigation into the mysterious death of a Negro Leagues ball player who stumbles upon evidence that the Babe was actually African American.
I've been one of those people fairly hooked on the Beijing Olympics. Take last night's heartbreaking final in the women's 100-meter hurdles, when American LoLo Jones blew an early lead by tripping on one of the last hurdles. Or how about Nastia Liukin scoring high enough to get the gold but then ending up with a silver medal because of some obscure tiebreaker rule? You couldn't script better sports drama.
But the more I hear about the regime in China and the more the news comes out about crackdowns on protesters, watching the Olympics is starting to feel like shopping at Wal-Mart. Or drinking from disposable water bottles. Or putting Huggies on your baby. There's something dirty, something guilt-inducing about watching the Beijing games.
This struck home last week when local members of the Falun Gong movement held a press conference in Overland Park to protest the reported 8,000 members of their group to be rounded up by Chinese cops.
At the press conference was Jin Pang, a student at Missouri State University. Pang says her parents were kidnapped by Chinese authorities on July 9. The only reason she can figure is that they're Falun Gong practitioners.
God of Iowa State athletics, Jamie Pollard, will be at Arrowhead Stadium tomorrow morning for a "major college football announcement." Kansas State Athletic Director Bob Krause will also be there. Rumor is the Cyclones and Wildcats will split a couple of football games in Kansas City, likely in 2009 and 2010. That's great news for Kansas City Cyclone fans. Not so great news for businesses in Ames (and Manhattan), with the possibility of losing a home game.
The last time the Cyclones played in Arrowhead -- a 38-31 loss to No. 3-ranked Florida State in the 2002 Eddie Robinson Classic -- was the most thrilling football game that I have ever witnessed.
Legendary Iowa State quarterback Seneca Wallace engineered what was almost the greatest comeback in Cyclone history, rallying from a 24 point deficit and nearly permanently retiring Bobby Bowden with a chest grabber.
In the midst of filing multiple columns a day from Beijing, Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski announced on his blog that he's going to start writing a weekly column for SportsIllustrated.com. SI.com will also link to Posnanski's blog.
Showing his trademark humility, Posnanski says he is thrilled at the prospect of sharing the same pixilated banner as Frank Deford and Gary Smith. "Don’t even ask how that happened," Posnanski writes on his blog.
Posnanski says he will continue to write for The Star.
Don't be sad, Huard. Yahoo says you're better than Brodie.
There's little doubt the Chiefs will stink this year. But further proof turned up yesterday when I joined a fantasy football league and discovered how poorly Chiefs players are ranked. Remember back just a few years ago when Dick Vermeil fielded an offense full of potential fantasy football stars? Yeah, Herm Edwards isn't that kind of coach.
Overall, the Chiefs have no players among the 10 best this year. Only three are listed in the top 100. A mere five rank among the top 200. And after that, no players crack the top 1,000.
If you haven't seen fantasy football rankings before, they're used to figure out how many points the players will score and how much yardage they will put up. Picking the top 10 players is always a gamble, but after that, Yahoo usually does fairly well figuring out where a player ranks.
Hockey great Mario Lemieux confirmed at yesterday's arena groundbreaking in Pittsburgh what we already knew: The Pittsburgh Penguins used Kansas City like a cheap whore to get a new arena deal in Pittsburgh. KMBC has the video here. The highlight was Lemieux saying there was never a possibility of the Penguins moving to Kansas City.
"We had to do a few things to put pressure on the city and the state," he said. "Those trips to Kansas City and Las Vegas and other cities were just to go, have a nice dinner and come back."
I wonder if AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke ever believed this November 2005 statement to The Kansas City Star:
"The Pittsburgh Penguins can be the Kansas City Penguins, no question about it."
And like a whore, the Sprint Center waits for the next team to promise her they'll call her after they screw her.
Team USA is cruising toward a medal in women's basketball in Beijing. And if AEG President Tim Leiweke kept his promises, Lisa Leslie, Candace Parker and other stars of the WNBA would roll through the Sprint Center once the season resumes on August 28.
The failure of AEG, Sprint Center's part owner and programmer, to land an NBA or NHL tenant is well documented. What's received less attention is Leweike's big talk/no results in regards to women's hoops. In 2005, Leweike was quoted in The Kansas City Star as saying that progress was being made on bringing a WNBA franchise to KC in 2008.
I'm hopeful every August. This year cannot possibly be worse than last year, I lie tell to myself. A 3-9 season in a coach's first year is understandable, right? And we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in a few of those. God does hate the Iowa State Cyclones.
But I'm an optimist (check back with me after week 4). So I renew my season tickets. I know there'll be "growing pains." It's only year two of the Gene Chizik era, and Chizik's still building up a basement dweller. Hell, the Cyclones have more holes to plug than a New Orleans levee.
Watching preseason football is, to borrow from Jerry Seinfeld, like rooting for laundry.
Football fans so eagerly await the season that we pay and watch the preseason, even when we know how inherently meaningless these games are.
If we're lucky, starters last less than a quarter before they're replaced by players
with unfamiliar names, numbers and backgrounds ("Pass caught by Oscar Jones from
Whatsamtta U with the uniform number signifying the elemental symbol of Hassium"). The announcers are also forgettable, even though Roger Twibell allegedly hosts a three-hour talk show in this town.
Today is traditionally the last day of the Royals’ season for most local sports fans.
Sure, the Royals muddle through for another five weeks, but tomorrow begins Chiefs Pretend Football, and local fans need to obsess over assessing the relative qualities of players they won’t watch in September.
His first tip -- “be honest” -- is a clear illustration of Fleischers’ public relations genius. First, its audacity in never conceding that he ever misled the American people from the White House podium puts his audience completely off-balance. Second, it distracts the audience from every previous lie uttered by Fleischer, no mean feat for the president’s primary spokesperson before the Iraq War.
Kansas City’s sports teams need Fleischer’s mendacity to distract local media from finishing in last place. For example, the Royals may no longer feel the need to give out poorly made crap to fans, instead opting for a press spokesman to peddle crap. After all, unlike a Billy Butler jersey, effective half-truths and deceptions are never demoted to Omaha.
The Chiefs would also eagerly seek a consult from Fleischer – after all, there is no better way to distract attention from Carl Peterson than have someone take abuse from Kansas City’s media on a weekly basis:
Q: They sacked Brodie Croyle 10 times today. Is the offensive line a concern?
Two events occurred that serve as a reminder concerning the most critical decision the Royals faced in the previous decade. First, Mike Sweeney’s left knee “locked up” this week, putting an end to his season and perhaps his major-league career. Second, the trade deadline passed – five years ago, the Royals traded away Carlos Beltran a month before the deadline.
Why aren't there any Chiefs jerseys on the chosen?
The New York Times reported yesterday that Tyndale House Publishers, the publishers of Left Behind, are now publishing football books.
Left Behind, for those unfamiliar with the series of fifteen (!) books, begins with (spoiler alert!) the Rapture, describing a massive depopulation of the world that includes pilot-less aircraft and World War III. This is viewed by its readers as an event to be welcomed with anticipation (“at last: justification for my letters to advertisers on 'Desperate Housewives'”), sort of like porn for the excessively pious.
The Rapture then leads to the rise of the Antichrist, the Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, a charismatic head of the United Nations who seeks only to serve evil. This is clearly fiction, as I can think of no Romanian who is charismatic or an instance in which the United Nations is competent. Oh, and the protagonist is Buck Williams, who, much like the former Nets power forward with the same name, performs valiantly for a seemingly lost cause for years.
Some hate Left Behind. I welcome the publishers’ football venture for one major reason -- having the rest of the NFL swept up in a Rapture is the only possible scenario in which the Chiefs win the Super Bowl this year.
More to the point, as Sam Mellinger points out, if it were true that Jose Guillen wanted out, this would be the first time Guillen did not shout his wishes and thoughts to the first passing reporter.
Pole Dancing is not yet an Olympic sport, while rhythmic gymnastics is, although the latter sounds dirtier, is more inexplicable and is far less practical from a commercial standpoint.
The Kansas City T-Bones announced recently that they will honor former Kansas City Athletics players at this promotion on August 16. It may seem odd for one team to honor another, especially one that fizzled out so famously.
It's a curious thing about sports how fans forget a departing team so fast. Take the Royals, for instance. Here's a team that's likely on its way to yet another 100-loss season. It hasn't made a run at the playoffs in a decade. Yes, a decade. But still you see guys dressed in Royals gear from visor to shoelaces, headphones tuned to the radio broadcast, keeping score at every home game. But if the Royals were to head to, say, the friendly confines of Las Vegas? The City Union Mission thrift store would be inundated with Royals clothes.
So while you don't see any remnant of the long-departed KC Athletics around town, there's plenty of documentation on the Web. Like this sweet photo of Municipal Stadium.
There's also plenty of trinkets for sale on the online auctions. The best of them has to be this asexual doll that any father would surely be proud to give to his son.
Earlier today, Dave "Chilidog" Crawford, the cross-dressing local punk rocker, sent out a MySpace bulletin titled "I don't get a free pink hat? Well fuck you."
Crawford's message explained that he went to the Royals game last night and expected he would be one of 20,000 fans given a pink Royals hat adorned with rhinestones for the team's "Girls' Night Out" promotion. "I Love pink and often choose to wear this color as an expression of who I am," Crawford wrote. Then he explained what happened when he asked for a hat:
"To be told (in a loud obnoxious voice by an employee named Bill) 'What's to talk about? It's ladies night and you're not a lady.' When I questioned him about why I couldn't receive a hat, he was hurtful and infuriating. While I eventually was able to calm down and enjoy the victory by our Royals, I still harbor a resentment and feeling of exclusion that will, in the future, prompt me to consider entertainment options other that baseball."
ESPN.com's Rob Neyer posted this piece on George Brett yesterday, attempting to link the former Royals star to coke (in order to read Neyer's writing, click here):
“In the early 1980s, many baseball players were using cocaine. Some of them got into trouble, and a few of Brett’s Kansas City teammates went to prison. Now, I’m not going to suggest that Brett was using cocaine, but I do know he was considered one of the hardest partiers in the Midwest at that time. Funny thing, though … Brett never got into any trouble. None that made the papers, anyway.”
Look, I know that with a blog it is easy to publish un-vetted musings. That said, Neyer presumably has an editor and Neyer (with a column and a book or two under his belt) knows better.
He should explain himself, apologize and preferably both.
This week, the Royals placed Jimmy Gobble on the disabled list. This comes even though the only visible pain he's been pitching with is that which he inflicts on those rooting for him.
According to the Royals, he “admitted to back pain,” which I suspect was not a product of a Gitmo interrogation or an examination by Dr. Christian Szell. He also admitted to having a 20.77ERA over the last 10 games – more than two runs for each inning pitched.
“Back pain” is a better description in the disabled list ledger than the following potential entry: Jimmy Gobble, 15-day DL on July 21, ineffectiveness.”
Even in today’s information age, the media ignores Kansas City sports fans.
The Star is here to help with the Star Voices column, which lets anyone who calls in with an opinion about the city’s teams to get it printed in the daily newspaper. This isn’t to mock the Star -- it's just providing a voice to the KC sports fan’s id.
I, for one, find a hotline devoted to musings, rants and comments immensely beneficial and tempting. If I didn’t already have a blog, I might call with the following musings tonight:
“There are too many World Team Tennis teams in today’s standings – please eliminate three.”
“Bradford Doolittle needs a shave.”
“WHERE THE HELL DID I PUT MY CAR KEYS?”
But often the Star Voices poses questions that are unanswered. That’s where I come in.
Bob Costas asked all-star Seattle outfielder Ichiro for his favorite American expression. What he got was, well, you've got to watch the video. I'd say Kansas Citians might be mad about what he says, but, alas, it's true.
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starting to call him on it.
First lady credentials at Arrowhead: Kelli Croyle doesn't hurt the eyes.
Just got back from the press conference announcing the 2009 and 2010 Iowa State and Kansas State neutral site games at Arrowhead.
seats. Fans turned out in droves to watch the player who could change games in the space of a single swing. 
God of Iowa State athletics, 
Hockey great Mario Lemieux 
Two events occurred that serve as a reminder concerning the most critical decision the Royals faced in the previous decade. First, 
This week, the Royals placed Jimmy Gobble on the disabled list. This comes even though the only visible pain he's been pitching with is that which he inflicts on those rooting for him.
