(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

***UPDATED at 2:39 PM ET***

The Archbishop says Majerus should be disciplined, according to STLToday.com.

We happened to mention this in the “The Power Lunch” earlier today, but we just glossed over the issue.

Saint Louis University hoops coach Rick Majerus attended a Hillary Rodham Clinton pep rally at a St. Louis-area high school on Saturday and was asked by a KMOV reporter on his thoughts on varying topics.

Majerus told the reporter that he was a pro-choice advocate and backed the idea of stem cell research in hopes of science finding cures for diseases.

Of course, that didn’t sit well with the Archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond Burke, who told KMOV the following:

“I simply would have to insist that it’s not possible for a representative of the university to espouse these views which are, in open, uh violation of moral law, let alone Catholic teaching. …What people hold in the privacy of their own consciouses and so forth is between God and themselves, but when you represent a Catholic institution and you make public declarations that are contrary to Catholic teaching, uh that’s not unacceptable.”

There’s just one teeny, tiny problem with that: his views don’t.  Saint Louis University was declared a non-religious institution by the Missouri State Supreme Court in 2006 in order to get tax increment financing (TIF) for their new basketball arena.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Ah, the beauty of predictions: they’re completely worthless to utter, yet so tempting to try and look like a friggin’ genius by picking the winner.

If you’re a regular reader of this site (and who is…really?), you’ll know that throughout the playoffs, we made attempts at being experts by selecting winners for each series.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Last time around, we patted ourselves on the back for getting all four of the division series correct.

Well payback is a b-i-t-c-h: we completely erred in stating that the Diamondbacks would win in seven games and the Indians would take the Red Sox to seven games and capture the ALCS against the Red Sox.

You’d think we learned our lesson and not dip our toe into the waters of predicting the World Series, right?

Wrong. We’ve chosen to embarrass ourselves again and break down the 2007 Fall Classic.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Stop if you’ve heard this before…

One team is a media darling and a behemoth, having a high payroll and filled with All-Stars at nearly every position.  The other is the David to the other’s Goliath, playing in a smallish media market and a payroll that roughly equals the rotation pricetag of the team they’re playing.

If you guessed the media monoliths as being the Boston Red Sox and the budgetary bravehearts the Cleveland Indians, you might want to keep reading this scintillating analysis.  If not, read it anyway: we can use the traffic.

Before we move on to breaking this thing down, we’d like to point out — again — we did awfully well with our division series predictions, nailing all four of them (the duration of each series doesn’t count!).

With that, a series that features the likely top two finishers in the AL Cy Young voting going in Game 1…

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Two teams have made it to the National League Championship Series and they’re both squads that no one thought would reach it this far: the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rockies swept the NL East champion Philadelphia Fightin’ Phillies in three games, continuing their unbelievable stretch of winning 17 of their 18 games.  The Diamondbacks took out the NL Central “champion” (we use that term loosely, like sorta saying you’re the world’s tallest midget) Chicago Cubs in three games, extending the Cubs post-season futility to its 99th consecutive season.

Before we move on to breaking this thing down, we’d like to point out we did awfully well with our division series predictions, nailing all four of them (the duration of each series doesn’t count!).

With that, let’s get crackin’!

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Major League Baseball’s post-season kicks off Wednesday with their Division Series and we couldn’t be any happier.

Outside of the WNBA’s playoffs, there’s nothing more exciting than Division Series baseball. Of course, we come across as a little bit bitter that our favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals, crapped the bed a bit this season amid a myriad of problems and that might have dampened are mood.

In any case, it’s time to just go through a quick hit list of predictions for the first round Division Series’ (Serieses? Serieie?)

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

In a bit of poor planning, the NHL begins anew on the first night of Major League Baseball’s division playoff series.

Yeah, we know they fired up the regular season schedule in London, England over the weekend but did anyone get to watch any of it?

Nevertheless, we’re fired up that hockey’s back and we have a team that’s slowly — but surely — gaining steam and making positive steps in attaining the ultimate goal: Lord Stanley’s Cup.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Now for something completely different…

You’re an earlier adopter and just got to have an iPhone because it’s just so darn freakin’ cool.  You decide to take it to Europe because you can — and it’s on a GSM network, so you can use it anyway.

Once you get there, you barely use the damn thing and think everything is great because, hey, you got the freakin’ iPhone.

Then you get home after a nice trip filled with tales of drunken debauchery, sight seeing and coffeerdness (That last one is an ode to Peter King of SI, in my attempt to make this sports-related) and get around to opening your bills.

This is where the fun stops, as the New York Times points out.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Being fans of the Birds on Bat, we sure would love to believe that there is nothing to the Rick Ankiel story that broke late last night via The New York Daily News. Of course, there very well might be nothing to the story than being a familiar name caught by the press on a list of professional athletes that received shipment of human growth hormone (HGH) back in 2004.

Then this little passage opened up our eyes and harkened us back to the Mark McGwire steroid storm of the past.

According to records obtained by The News and sources close to the controversy surrounding anti-aging clinics that dispense illegal prescription drugs, Ankiel received eight shipments of HGH from Signature Pharmacy in Orlando from January to December 2004, including the brand-name injectable drugs Saizen and Genotropin. Signature is the pharmacy at the forefront of Albany District Attorney David Soares’ two-year investigation into illegal Internet prescription drug sales, which has brought 22 indictments and nine convictions.

We’d love to believe that one of our very own would be innocent of such evil deeds, given that a doctor prescribed the HGH. But in today’s sports world that is filled with cynicism, skepticism and innuendo, that can — and will not — be the case.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

The FanHouse took a look at the state of the NHL’s business model and uncovers what we have long thought: it’s pretty damn grim.

After three years of mostly negative national press, the NHL urgently needs to cast itself in a more positive light to try and regain the sport’s standing that was mostly lost in the work stoppage.

[…]

So, this is a watershed year for the National Hockey League, as there needs to be growth again in the game that a little over a decade ago seemed poised to threaten the NBA for the third spot among the big four. Now, thanks to the lockout and poor television visibility, the league is arguably not even among the sports’ elite in the U.S., and needs some positive press to help turn around a tide that right now has the league washing out to irrelevance.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

On Wednesday, the Texas Rangers put up some monster numbers in their 30-3 white-washing of the Baltimore Orioles. While culling the boxscore earlier Thursday for a bit, we’ve run across some interesting facts that you may — or might not have — heard.

• It’s the second-most runs all-time as the Chicago Colts (now the Cubs) scored 36 against the Louisville Colonels on June 29, 1897.
• The 30 runs given up by the Baltimore Orioles was the first time a Baltimore-area team had given up 30 in a score since the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens gave up 42 points to the Cincinnati Bengals in week 12 of the — wait for it – the 2005 season. (Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com)

There’s more facts where those came from…after the jump

More after the jump »

All-time Gold Glove team named (AP/ESPN/Rawlings)

Hitting the way back machine, we wrote up a small blog post announcing a Rawlings Sporting Goods’ contest that would culminate with the winners of their “All Time Gold Glove Team” being selected by combination of experts and fans.

Rawlings established the Rawlings Gold Glove Award® in 1957 to recognize excellence and performance in the field.

The Rawlings Gold Glove Award has since been the measuring stick, the benchmark, the high bar of great defense.

Since 1957, more than 250 major leaguers have won Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, and more the 150 have won multiple awards.

We also listed whom we thought was deserving of the award, so after the jump, we’ll list our picks with in one column and the actual selections in the other.

More after the jump »

Schreiber: For ESPN, what next? (ESPN)

Earlier this year, we noted that ESPN had hired a new ombudsman named Le Anne Schreiber to overlook the store and provide critiques on how “The Worldwide Teaser” handled stories they were covering.

As with anything related to the network, we met the move with some skepticism as the prior ombudsman, George Solomon, provided analysis that seemed to lack a bit of bite most times. But not so with Ms. Schreiber.

In her most current piece, Ms. Schreiber takes “The Teaser” to task over the much-maligned “Who’s Now?” production of letting assembled panels of “experts” weigh the merits what athlete is currently the “nowiest.”  What made it even funnier is those same panelists got to debate the final match-up of LeBron James and Tiger Woods, only to be told by “moderator” Stuart Scott that their voiced opinions didn’t matter as it was the fans that would decide who would win.  In a landslide, Tiger Woods downed LeBron.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

We’ve long had reservations about the anonymous hockey blogger known as “Eklund”.

White flags are always raised with us when people make claims about things they know that the public isn’t typically privy to gathering.  The anonymity. The “sources”. The breaking news that he delivers.  The contract negotiations. The rumors and speculation. All raise suspicion when perusing the Internets (ourselves included as we read his site occasionally to see what’s going on, but it’s mostly for entertainment purposes).

Hell, we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t trust us with information that we’ve passed along because it’s the nature of the beast when posting information anonymously.

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

It’s that time of year: the MLB non-waiver deadline trading extravaganza!

We here at The Buried Lead will attempt to post the latest and greatest acquisition and rumors that run across our desk in the next few hours, so there won’t be any other news posts unless it really, really is warranted.  This post will regularly updated, with a timestamp in parenthesis.

So without further ado, the fun begins after the jump…

More after the jump »

(From time to time, we’ll post a short blog entry regarding a current topic or something else that catches our fancy. It might be something trivial or something that really makes us wonder what the hell is going on.)

Once upon a time, we couldn’t wait for the Tour de France to begin as we saw the race as one of the most grueling, demanding singular achievements an athlete could put themselves through over the course of a month’s time on a daily basis.

Now, it’s become a complete and utter farce as the Rabobank team removed Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen from the Tour for repeatedly missing Tour-mandated drug testing and then lying about his whereabouts to team officials before the Tour began to avoid out-of-competition testing.

The ruse? Rasmussen claimed that he was with his wife in Mexico — she’s of Mexican descent — but he was actually in Italy working with a physician. Rasmussen missed four mandatory tests in the last 18 months and is also under investigation for shipping banned blood products in 2002.
Wait, it gets better: another rider got the boot on Wednesday.

More after the jump »