Given how sternly we’ve been warned against taking athletes as role models for their sporting prowess in the past, where’s the outrage against falsely idolizing them for their mating habits now? If the past few months have taught us anything, it’s that the pros are anything but when it comes to their game with the ladies.

Consider Tiger Woods. He’s rich, he’s famous. He could’ve landed the jumpoff of his choice in a sentence or less. Yet when time came to close the deal, he opened not his mouth but his cell phone; in one especially dispiriting instance he whipped it out to holler at a shorty sitting right next to him. Instead of going with the tried and true lean-in-and-whisper approach—which probably would’ve gotten the job done—he went with the head-bow-and-sext, which eventually spawned a cottage industry. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to think I’m pretty highbrow. I’m a faithful New Yorker reader, my favorite band is Steely Dan, my oldest friend is French. Needless to say my standards for entertainment are pretty high.

But every now and again, I’ll come across something that is at the complete opposite end of my taste spectrum—and wind up completely riveted by it. Right now that thing is Kat Stacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Jordan pictured with Antoine Walker in 2002

Athletes going broke is an old story, which is why recent news of former Celtics All-Star Antoine Walker hitting rock bottom is hardly surprising. Neither does the most salient detail of his downfall—which emerges at the 5:30-mark of this clip. According to former teammate Cedric Maxwell, Walker’s gambling appetite didn’t reach Precious-like proportions until he spent an offseason hanging with Michael Jordan, in 2001.

The bromance was famously consummated during a post-exhibition game bender at the Mohegan Sun, during which the two played $15,000 hands of blackjack until the wee hours, and their debts soared well above six figures. (The “opening act,” Maxwell aptly called it.) It was supposedly at that point that MJ warned Walker that he would “smack the [expletive]” out of him if he caught him laying down bets as big as his. Of course, Walker did, and now, in part because of his gambling, he’s more than $100 million in the red. Read the rest of this entry »

After three months and millions more dollars in lost wages, Gilbert Arenas has learned his lesson. In the April issue of Esquire, the gun-loving Washington Wizards guard reflects on the gambling debt argument with teammate Javaris Crittenton that culminated with the two men drawing guns on each other in the Wizards locker room—and ultimately earned Arenas a season-long NBA suspension.

Among the things that we learn is that Arenas is a serious gun aficionado—he owns “about four to five hundred” of them—and that he was a big fan of the late Washington Wizards owner Abe Polin. Read the rest of this entry »

Hypothetical: Let’s say you have a high-level job at a major corporation, and for the past four years you’ve proven very good at what you do. You’re so good, in fact, that your company decides to transfer you to another division, where it believes your Midas touch could bring long unseen riches. Ever the company man, you tell your bosses you’ll happily go—your contract’s up after this year, so what do you care?—but on one condition: an advance on 30 percent of your salary so that you can smooth over a paternity situation that involves seven children, six women and spans five states. It’s complicated, you add.

Now before you start imagining how you on earth you managed to score such a plum job in the midst of all that domestic strife, it helps to step out of the Land of Make-Believe and into the world of the NFL, where bad decision-making is a liability only when it happens on the field.

Antonio Cromartie—the NFL’s reigning King Friday—doesn’t always make the best decisions in games. But Cromartie does have coveted size (6-2, 203 pounds) for his position and world-class speed; in his four years with the San Diego Chargers he would emerge as one of the league’s best cover men. The best, fourth-year vet Darrelle Revis, plays for the New York Jets. The team’s brass was so enamored with the idea of having another dominant player opposite Revis that they traded a third-round pick in this year’s draft to San Diego to bring Cromartie to the Big Apple. Given his sexual appetite, he probably can’t wait to take a bite out of the nightlife here. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m old enough to remember a time when music videos ruled the airwaves, when MTV, VH1 and BET served as their sprawling habitats, and when athletes were drawn to them like safari junkies to the Serengeti. Of course today the music video is an endangered species—the African elephant of small-screen memes—and the Viacom-owned domains in which it once reigned supreme have since been redeveloped at hyper speed and overpopulated with realty show after reality show. Still, it seems, just when you think the art form is well on its inexorable march toward cultural irrelevance, an athlete will wander into the picture and give us a reason to stop and sit and watch and reminisce about a time before YouTube, when music videos were worth the price of admission.

Certainly, that same cost-benefit sentiment is true of Chad Ochocinco. He never fails to entertain, be he or on Twitter or seemingly out of his tree. He reached a new vista when Monica featured him in the video for her latest single “Everything to Me,” which has risen steadily up the Billboard charts since the afore-embedded video dropped last week. Along with Chad’s poverty of acting skills, the vid gives us an occasion to consider the once-proud tradition of athlete music video cameos, and the jocks who so thoroughly enriched them. Over the years their invaluable contributions have fallen into a few loose categories: Read the rest of this entry »

Can’t wrap your head around curling? Don’t know what to make of ice dancing? Not sure what qualifies as an Olympic sport anymore? Well, here’s one that definitely should: pole dancing. A contingent of, ahem, “pole-dance advocates”—another name strippers can take cover behind when being coy about their profession—is pushing for a test event in the 2012 London Games, with the hopes of making a more formal pitch at the 2016 Games in Rio, where there figures to be no shortage of candidates to represent the home country. The line to judge the event, meanwhile, would be a lot like the one at Scores, stretching out the door. Good luck bumping Tiger from the front of the cue. (Rimshot!) Read the rest of this entry »

After an Eight-Year Wait, The NBA’s Original Mr. Personality Heads to Prison

Before Charles Barkley reigned supreme as the NBA’s commentating clown prince, Jayson Williams wore the crown. Tall, toothy and telegenic, Williams was a must-quote in his nine years as a player with the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Nets, and he was a must-watch as a network studio analyst—a job he segued into after suffering a career-ending leg injury in 2000. His larger-than-life personality never left him at a shortage of stories to tell—some of them too good to be true, and one so sad you wish it weren’t. Read the rest of this entry »

Props to Tiger for delivering a note-perfect public apology this morning. He had three months to prepare for his moment of contrition, and it showed in the stagecraft. The blue curtain backdrop was straight out of the politician’s playbook, but the lack of American flag—as well as the lack of a tie around Tiger’s collared neck (why invite the noose metaphors, after all)—reminded us that he’s no public official, and really didn’t have to be going to these lengths. The press conference-style setup was straight out of the Mike Vick playbook, but a “guest list” that was confined to a few friends, PGA officials, employees, three wire service writers and a closed-circuit TV hookup was a much stronger reminder that Tiger is still firmly in control of this narrative. Read the rest of this entry »