Ramdom Sports Articles

I will start this of with this article about Junior Seau.

ShareretweetEmailPrintMon Oct 18 10:43am PDT
Junior Seau drives off cliff hours after domestic violence arrest
By Chris Chase

Hours after being arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, former San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau(notes) drove his car off a cliff in California, 30-feet below the road, and sustained injuries in the wreck. The future Hall of Famer survived, according to law enforcement officials.

Both stories were first reported by TMZ, but have since been confirmed by other sources such as the Associated Press.

Seau was arrested early Monday morning in San Diego after an alleged incident with his 25-year-old live-in girlfriend. Police say Seau assaulted her during a verbal altercation late Sunday night. TMZ reports that she suffered minor injuries but did not require medical treatment.

The former NFL star had left the house before police arrived but was arrested immediately upon his return. Seau was briefly booked in a detention center on charges of felony spousal assault and was released at 3:20 a.m. PT after posting bail.

Six hours later, his car drove off a road near Carlsbad, Calif., and landed at the bottom of a hill a few feet from the Pacific Ocean. Persons familiar with the road say the section Seau drove off was not curved. In a later statement to police, Seau insisted he wasn't trying to kill himself and that the crash was the result of him falling asleep at the wheel.

Seau was taken to a local hospital. Reports say he emerged from the car with only minor cuts and bruises.

The 41-year-old Seau was a nine-time NFL All-Pro and played in 12 Pro Bowls during his career. He played in seven games for the New England Patriots last season but went unsigned during the offseason. When he becomes eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015, Seau is a near-lock to be enshrined on the first ballot.

Seau is well-known in the San Diego area for his charity efforts. His Seau Foundation has donated nearly $4 million to youth organizations in the area and also gives scholarship money to college students of limited means. In 1994, Seau was named NFL Man of the Year.

This post will be updated as news breaks.

I use to live there.

Lesnar just keeps getting better
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Oct 20, 12:45 am EDT



Brock Lesnar had never gotten punched in the face like he did when Shane Carwin unloaded on him.

Lesnar had barely taken any direct shots in his brief, championship-winning, mixed martial arts career. And Carwin had arguably the heaviest hands in the game anyway. So this was the moment everyone had been waiting for.

Could Brock take a punch?
UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar has shown he won't often make the same mistake twice in the Octagon.
(Getty Images)

The ultimate answer was yes. Lesnar wound up taking a barrage of Carwin strikes, survived Round 1 and eventually retained his Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title last July. He defends that belt Saturday in Anaheim, Calif. at UFC 121 against Cain Velasquez.
Other Popular Stories on Yahoo!

Initially, though, Lesnar didn’t handle Carwin’s blasts very well. He backed up in a crouching, defensive posture that allowed Carwin to attack without fear of counter punch. Carwin eventually knocked Lesnar to the ground and unleashed a pounding that came very close to knocking the champ out.

It was an understandable reaction. Carwin punches like a mule kicks. No one else had ever survived the first round with him. All of Lesnar’s training – he worked on circling out of trouble and counter-attacking to gain some recovery time – went out the window.

The bad news for all the contenders to Lesnar’s belt is that he isn’t likely to make the same mistake again. If there’s one thing he’s proven during his soaring career is that he’s a quick study on making corrections

It means even as the competition remains considerable – Velasquez is both capable and formidable – we may be settling in for a long title reign here.

Lesnar faced myriad questions when he made the jump from professional wrestling to mixed martial arts. He begged UFC president Dana White to throw him in immediately against top competition.

Yes, Lesnar was a freak athlete, a former NCAA Division I wrestling champ and a guy athletic enough to nearly make the Minnesota Vikings despite minimal football training. Still, there was so much for him to learn. None of which he had the patience to do in the lower levels of MMA.

“It’s no place for on-the-job training,” White cautioned.

“I’m either good at this or I’m not,” Lesnar said.

He’s good at it. That much we know. The long-term question though was whether he viewed this as a quick, sideshow payday or an actual career he would dedicate his life to. Could he keep improving?

The obvious growth to his game, honed during endless sessions in a nondescript warehouse-turned-training-gym hard by the Alexandria, Minn. airport has answered that emphatically. He pays his staff top dollar. He brings in a slew of sparring partners. He reinvests his big earnings into getting better; his camp, he says, costs “six figures.”

Not even a serious illness that sidelined him for a year has stopped his obvious progress. There are still plenty of fans who dislike Brock Lesnar. The one thing they can’t question is his commitment to the sport.

He’s gone from an inexperienced fighter that left himself vulnerable to a Frank Mir knee bar in his first UFC fight to a guy with good (and improving) submission defense. He’s gone from a wrestling-first mountain of force that once smothered Heath Herring for three consecutive rounds but couldn’t finish, to an all-around fighter capable of submitting Carwin.

There’s no substitute for experience though and it stands to reason he’ll grow from watching and rewatching his reaction to that first Carwin punch.

Velasquez offers a different, unique challenge. He’s also a Division I wrestling standout who is in his prime at 28. Unbeaten (8-0), he’s known for cardiovascular fitness and relentless work ethic – i.e. he may not punch as hard as Carwin, but he isn’t going to punch himself out as quickly either.

For his part Lesnar has again taken the fight seriously and is said to already be at or even under the 265-pound weight limit. In the past, where strength and girth were more important, he was cutting weight until the final hours. He’s clearly been working on his cardio.

Velasquez is a talent and he’s certainly capable of beating Lesnar. Besides, this is MMA, where everyone gets caught eventually – even heavyweight legend Fedor Emelianenko lost his most recent match in the Strikeforce promotion.

That said, you can almost see something being built by Lesnar. He’s shown a dedication to preparation. He’s worked on his weaknesses. He’s systematically answered every question about his game, all while maintaining the natural advantages he holds in size, strength and agility.

With each hurdle cleared, he seems to be picking up speed.

Lesnar separates public from private



ANAHEIM, Calif. – Brock Lesnar doesn’t read any of the millions of words that have been written about him. He doesn’t have “The Ultimate Fighter” set to record automatically on his DVR. On Thursday during a television interview with Jim Rome, Lesnar claimed not to know Chael Sonnen, who only two months ago came within seconds of defeating Anderson Silva for the Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight title.

The UFC heavyweight champion is an outsider in the sport he dominates. Few of the other fighters know him well and those who do don’t have anything to say about him. There are more leaks about President Obama’s plans for the war in Afghanistan than there are from Lesnar’s camp about any aspect of his life, in the cage or out of it.

Lesnar does his share of interviews and public appearances in order to build interest in his fights, as all UFC fighters are required to do. But Lesnar controls his appearances in a manner that others are unable to do. Many of the fighters are exceptionally open and reveal the most intimate details of their private lives with the public. Court McGee has been extraordinarily open about his battles with heroin addiction. Aaron Simpson was forthcoming about his mother-in-law serving as his child’s surrogate mother.

They provide a look into their souls and what makes them tick as men and as fighters.

But there is no such look inside Lesnar’s world. There are no photos of Lesnar with his wife and family on a weekend outing, since Lesnar declared them off-limits.

He’s by far the biggest star in mixed martial arts, as evidenced by the fact that each of his last three bouts has sold more than a million pay-per-views and generated about $14 million in ticket sales.

He’ll fight in front of another sellout crowd on Saturday at the Honda Center when he defends his UFC heavyweight title against unbeaten Cain Velasquez in the main event of UFC 121.

But ask his training partners what kind of camp he had and how he’ll cope with Velasquez and they’re suddenly very late for an appointment.

The truth is, there isn’t a lot to know. He’s a simple guy with simple tastes who prefers a night at home in Alexandria, Minn., to a night in a club packed with people.

“It’s very basic for me,” Lesnar said. “When I go home, I don’t buy into any of the b.s. Like I said, it’s pretty basic: Train, sleep, family, fight. It’s my life. I like it.”

Lesnar is an extraordinarily competitive man – “I’ll tell you, I’m a sore frickin’ loser,” he said – and in an amazingly short time, has become one of the world’s finest fighters.

For as much success as he’s had, though, he still doesn’t get the kind of recognition he deserves. This is a man who in four of his five UFC fights has faced a current or former heavyweight champion.

In his last three fights, Lesnar has defeated Randy Couture, a Hall of Famer and the best strategist in the sport; Frank Mir, the best ground fighter in the heavyweight division; and Shane Carwin, the most powerful heavyweight in the world.

The scary part is, he’s still improving rapidly. He’s only been a professional for a little more than three years and he’s still picking up the finer points of MMA that Couture had down solid years ago.

“I consider Brock one of the best of all-time and he’s just getting started,” UFC president Dana White said.

When it’s all finally second nature to him, he may be virtually unbeatable. And so if there is a good time to get him, it must be now. In Velasquez, he meets a guy who has essentially the perfect style to beat him. Velasquez is a better pure boxer, has good movement and unlimited cardiovascular endurance.

The conventional wisdom is that if Velasquez can survive the first three rounds, the pendulum will tilt enormously in his favor.

Lesnar’s legendary competitive nature won’t allow him to concede even the smallest point to an opponent, and he’s unwilling to concede he won’t be able to keep pace if the pace is fast and the fight moves into the later rounds.

He loves what he is doing and fighting, unlike professional wrestling, gives him a vehicle to channel his competitiveness. Fighting is a job, and a means of supporting his family, but it’s also a way of life for him.

As he’s talking about the UFC’s growth potential, White often says that “fighting is in our DNA; we get it and we like it.” Lesnar’s DNA is clearly loaded with the love-for-fighting genes.

Because he loves it so much, he’s eager to go to work and, as any human resources director will tell you, a happy worker is a more productive worker.

“At the end of the day, we all sit up here and we just love this,” Lesnar said of the fight game. “I don’t have to prod myself to get out of bed in the morning. I try to be the first one to the gym. I’m so thankful and glad there is an Ultimate Fighting Championship, because if there wasn’t, I don’t know what I’d be doing with myself.

“I just want to be better and I want to be the best I can be. Everybody who fights and gets into the cage, that’s the whole purpose of this: Proving that I’m better than the guy I’ve stepped into the ring with.”

Since being submitted by Mir in his UFC debut, which was only his second pro bout, Lesnar has won four in a row and has gotten better each time out. But when it’s over, he retreats into the anonymity of his home in Alexandria, Minn., where he keeps a small circle of friends and a very low profile.

During his appearance on Rome’s show on Thursday, Lesnar was as revealing as he ever has been about his desire for privacy in his personal life.

“I’ve been in front of the cameras for 10, 12 years,” the 33-year-old Lesnar told Rome. “I was a star at the University of Minnesota. I went on to World Wrestling Entertainment. Wannabe NFL player. And here I am, the UFC heavyweight champion.

“I just don’t put myself out there to the fans and prostitute my private life to everybody. In today’s day and age, with the Internet and cameras and cell phones, I just like being old school and living in the woods and living my life. I came from nothing and at any moment, you can go back to having nothing.”

So, his private life will remain private. But he’s leaving us a heck of a lot to talk about in his public life, and that’s plenty good enough.

L.A. Times Issues Correction to Jillian Michaels Op-Ed
By Erin Carlson | Friday, October 29, 2010, 10:34 AM

A Yahoo! TV blog post referencing information from an October 11 Los Angeles Times op-ed reported that Jillian Michaels obtained introductory fitness certifications 17 years ago but didn't seem to have been re-certified since. The newspaper has issued a correction about this information.



The Times "For the record"correction, in full:




"The In-Your-Face Fitness column in the Oct. 11 Health section about a kettle bells instructional DVD by Jillian Michaels said that Michaels obtained introductory fitness certifications 17 years ago but didn't seem to have recertified, based on information on her website. After the column was published, Michaels provided copies of her most recent certifications with the Aerobics and Fitness Assn. of America and the National Exercise and Sports Trainers Assn., and the two organizations confirmed that her credentials with them are up to date."




Michaels, a tough-love trainer on NBC's "The Biggest Loser" who has branched out with a series of popular workout DVDs, said earlier this month that she would take legal action against the L.A. Times unless the paper issued a retraction. "Shame on the Los Angeles Times for saying I'm a fraud and not a trainer," Michaels told Us Weekly.

Source: TV.yahoo.com

Quote :

Top recruit quits Facebook following 'living nightmare'
By Cameron Smith

Everyone is on Facebook ... except one of the nation's top football recruits, who officially logged off the site last week after he blamed it for making his recruiting process "a living nightmare."

In full, here's what Philadelphia (Miss.) High linebacker C.J. Johnson wrote on his Facebook wall just before signing off the site for good.

"This is my last Facebook post and I'm gonna leave facebook with this. Linda Johnson has never worked as a house worker making 100,000 dollars a year and I will not be a Mississippi state bulldog and I'm not considering Mississippi state anymore bc you have constantly comment on my page send me crazy inboxes and has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare. Goodbye facebook."

The potential college star's exit from the social media realm, which was first highlighted by The Clarion-Ledger, has sparked new questions over the role of Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the age of hyper-focused modern college recruiting, where fans have new unfettered access to the stars they desperately hope will choose their school.

The issues of appropriateness and access really become an issue when a teenager changes his mind, adjusting his pledge from one school and picking a rival. That was the case with Johnson, who had committed to Mississippi State, only to de-commit and eventually pick Ole Miss after Mississippi State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left to take the same position at Texas.

That's when things got out of hand.

"I saw rumors on the Internet with people saying I de-committed from Mississippi State because my momma has been working for this Ole Miss guy and she cleaned his house up for a year and she made $100,000," Johnson told The Clarion-Ledger. "If my momma made $100,000 a year, I wouldn't be driving the truck that I'm driving. I would have had a vehicle a long time ago. It's just the little stuff like that.

"I got a lot of trash talking by both schools on Facebook, but that didn't have a lot to do with it. But when you start getting my mom involved and my family involved, that takes it to a whole another level."

Johnson is one of the highest-profile recruiting victims of Facebook attacks, but he's almost certainly not alone. Unless Facebook, Twitter and their cohorts instill an increased level of privacy -- a trend completely anathema to the very notion of social media -- the attacks will almost certainly get worse for recruits in the future.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Follow Yahoo! Sports on Facebook and be the first to know about the most interesting stories of the day.

Source: rivals.yahoo.com