Andy Levitre has been a mainstay on the Buffalo Bills offensive line since being drafted in 2009. Since the Bills suck, however, it's unlikely that many people outside of Buffalo have any idea who he is. After tweeting out the photo you see above sometime last night, though, Levitre will at least be remembered as The Side Boob Guy.

We have no idea who the woman in the picture is, but we do know what the side of her boob looks like now. So there's that. Levitre deleted his Twitter account shortly after sending out the photo, which means we're all back to waiting on J.R. Smith to provide our next dose of Twitter nudity.

Here's the full-size photo:

Twitter is a wonderful thing. It's the only place I can think of where we can witness former NBA player Pooh Jeter (and brother of Olympic sprinter Carmela Jeter) getting a truth bomb of epic proportions dropped on him by former NBA player Keith Closs.

Last night, Jeter went on Twitter and pondered that which so many of us have before:

That's when Closs came in, armed with the realest knowledge:

Jeter was appalled:

And Closs just kept coming with the real talk:

Boom. We hope that Jeter got to speak to Closs's wife, thus freeing his mind.

h/t David Roth

Donté Stallworth hasn't seen much playing time with the Patriots this year. He's only played in one game, and his 63-yard touchdown reception against the Texans marks the only time he's gotten his hands on the ball. This doesn't mean that Stallworth hasn't been busy, though. He spends a lot of time sharing his wit and wisdom with his Twitter followers, and today he shared some groundbreaking discoveries about H1N1. Continue reading only if you are unafraid of knowing what "they" don't want you to know.

You know what? Stallworth is probably right about this, but I'm way too lazy to look into the issue myself. So I guess "they" win. Pizza time!

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Go ahead and do something fun tonight. The usual weekend warriors will be here dive into the NFL playoffs with you tomorrow.

A Group Of Bros Infiltrated The Knicks Locker Room, Asked Gregg Popovich About J.R. Smith, And Got Kicked Out After Snapping A Picture Of Half-Naked Carmelo | The conclusions are obvious. If you act like you belong, you do belong. Read »

Mike Shanahan Lied When He Said That A Doctor Cleared Robert Griffin III To Play After He Sprained His Knee In Week 14 | Mike Shanahan was lying to the collective face of the news media, as football coaches often do-but this time about health precautions taken to ensure the long-term safety of his star player. Read »

Robert Griffin III Twisted His Knee On A Dead Patch Of Sports Language | If the Redskins had held onto their early lead, this would have been a tale of heroism. Read »

Here Are A Couple Pictures Of Johnny Manziel Having A Nice Time At A Nightclub After His Cotton Bowl Win | Manziel was in apparent violation of the Avenue dress code, but our tipster notes that he was there with his father, so it's probably OK. Read »

"Johnny Footbaaaaalllll": Two Drunk Ladies Hijacked The CBS Cotton Bowl Pre-Game Show | Jeff Jamison made it, oh, zero seconds into his segment on CBS DFW before getting accosted. Read »

A Mad Genius Zlatan Ibrahimovic Fan Bought His Favorite Player's Domain Name, Will Give It Back If He Completes One Of Twelve Challenges | "Beat me at taekwondo. I've heard you're not too bad at it. As I've never practiced that sport myself, I recommend you to choose this challenge." Read »

Whimsical Local News Segment On The Vikings Turns Violent, Hilarious | An awkward catch-and-throw segment ends up with Lee getting absolutely dump trucked by her psychotic camera man. Read »

This morning, DC sports blogger Dan Steinberg retweeted a number of tweets from Redskins fans who claimed to have heard fake crowd noise coming from the FedExField PA system at yesterday's NFC Wild Card game.

Scandal! Well, not exactly. This is something that NFL teams get accused of all the time, and although it may be bush league, it's something that likely happens at games (especially playoff games) every single week. Even if there was fake crowd noise, it didn't do much to help the 'Skins overcome the Seahawks. Maybe it's time for Dan Snyder to start worrying less about how loud his stadium is more about how it is home to knee-mangling field turf.

Shit is getting bad for the Los Angeles Lakers. After losing to the Denver Nuggets at home last night, the Lakers' record now sits at 15-18. Furthermore, the locker room atmosphere appears to be getting more and more posionous each day. Dwight Howard is publicly complaining about the Lakers' inability to share the ball, and today brings reports that he and Kobe Bryant nearly came to blows after a New Year's Day loss to the 76ers.

Often lost in the drama of the Lakers season, though, is the plight of poor Pau Gasol. The embattled power forward is suffering through an abysmal statistical season, can't find a way to fit into the Lakers offense, and is receiving zero sympathy from his teammates. Gasol is way too talented and way too adorable on Twitter to remain mired in such a dysfunctional situation.

The folks at Ballerball have decided to take matters into their own hands, creating the video above in an effort to rescue Gasol from the Lakers. We dare you to watch the entire thing and not come away convinced that Gasol deserves your help more than the collected abused animals of the world. Such is the power of Sarah McLachlan.

[Ballerball]

According to ESPN's Tom Rinaldi, Alabama players and coaches spent last night watching Zero Dark Thirty, the much anticipated film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The movie doesn't come out until Friday, meaning that someone on the Alabama staff got their hands on an advanced copy. We're super jealous.

Anyway, a spy thriller (one that runs 157 minutes to boot) strikes us as an odd choice for a pump-up movie. Something like 300 or Gladiator would be a more logical choice for amping up a bunch of post-adolescents who are about to go violently banging into other post-adolescents in the biggest game of their lives.

But as Rinaldi explains, the coaches wanted their players to take inspiration from a scene at the end of the movie, in which Seal Team Six has to complete its mission even after suffering through a helicopter crash. That scene could provide the players with a good lesson in overcoming adversity, but we're willing to bet that Nick Saban got much more inspiration and enjoyment out of the torture scenes.

[ESPN]

On the morning of March 31, 1931, TWA Flight 599, en route from Kansas City to Los Angeles, fell out of the sky over the Flint Hills of central Kansas, near the community of Bazaar. Farmers on the ground reported hearing a bang before the right wing snapped off, sending the plane into a dive. All eight people on board were killed in the crash, five of them thrown from the fuselage during the descent, the bodies landing in the pastures in a neat row. Among the dead was Knute Rockne, Notre Dame's football coach, who was headed to Los Angeles to assist with the production of the upcoming film The Spirit of Notre Dame.

Rockne was 43. He was already the caretaker of his own mythology and that of his football program. Jerry Brondfield, in his book Rockne: The Coach, The Man, The Legend, described the impact of Rockne's death on American culture in terms Rockne would've appreciated:

Until Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in April 1945, fourteen years later, there simply wasn't a funeral in American history that produced as much emotional impact as the funeral of Knute Rockne in April 1931.

An exaggeration? So it went with the coach. Even now bullshit and hyperbole seem to hang on every word uttered about Rockne, not least because they hung on every word uttered by Rockne. This was a coach who used his newfound Catholicism to motivate his players just two days after his baptism. He told his team in 1922 to beat Georgia Tech for his "poor sick little boy, Billy, who is critically ill in the hospital." Afterward, a crowd met the team in the station, a player recalled in Sports Illustrated, "and running around in front of everyone was 'sick' little Billy Rockne, looking healthy enough for a Pet Milk ad." And as the historian Garry Wills has pointed out, there is virtually no aspect of the George Gipp "Win one for the Gipper" story that Rockne didn't invent outright.

It was only natural that bullshit and hyperbole would take up their places in the story of Rockne's death, too.

On Jan. 6, 1933, the South Bend News-Times published a harrowing cover story under the headline "U.S. Agents Find Explosion Caused Airplane To Crash." In the story, the News-Times cited information from "unimpeachable sources" claiming that Rockne's plane was brought down by a bomb that had been planted there with the intention of killing a priest, Father John Reynolds. Reynolds had witnessed a mob hit in Chicago in 1930 and was supposed to be flying on Rockne's plane four days after testifying in the murder trial.

The murder that Reynolds witnessed was that of a Chicago Tribune reporter named Jake Lingle. As a crime reporter for the Tribune, Lingle had numerous connections to the Chicago underworld, and he wasn't shy about using those connections for his own benefit. He was a "fixer," a middleman who brokered deals between mobsters, police officers, and judges. It was a good gig. He reportedly had a annual income of $60,000 ($830,000 in today's dollars). When he was killed, he had $1,400 ($20,000 today) in his pocket.

But at some point, Lingle got in too deep, and on the afternoon of June 9, 1930, a man walked up behind Lingle in Chicago's Randolph Street train station, put a gun to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger. Reynolds was there that day, and it was his eyewitness testimony in court that the News-Times article referenced as the impetus behind the alleged bomb plot.

The article reads in part:

A gangster's bomb intended for a witness in the Jake Lingle murder case in Chicago brought death to Knute Rockne of Notre Dame and seven other men, it was learned by the News-Times today from unimpeachable sources. The murder case witness, according to information now available was the Rev. John Reynolds, C.S.C., of Notre Dame

[...]

According to the information, government authorities have traced every item of evidence and are satisfied that it was a time bomb planted in a pouch in the Western Airline plane which caused the explosion and disaster above a Kansas ranch on March 31, 1931. Father Reynolds, according to the information, had booked passage to California on the plane, but changed his plans at the last minute.

The article goes on to make claims about government agents being positive about the bomb plot theory and moving to "trap the gangsters" who were responsible. No further details are provided about who the News-Times's "unimpeachable source" might be or where the information came from.

The News-Times report did grab the attention of other papers across the country. The same day that the story was published, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune made inquiries to the FBI regarding the government's supposed investigation into the Rockne plane crash. An FBI memo addressed to J. Edgar Hoover on that day, which Deadspin recently obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, reads:

The New York Times called up and asked if the Bureau's Agents had done any work on the crash of the aeroplane in which Knute Rockne was killed. He was told the Bureau's Agents had not.

Another memo, also obtained by Deadspin, reads:

Chicago Tribune called and said the Chicago papers were carrying a story that the Department of Justice was investigating the possible bombing of the plane on which Knute Rockne was killed. [Redacted] wanted to talk to you. I said you had gone and I did not know where you could be reached; that [Redacted] was the publicity man. He said he would try to get [Redacted] mob.

Even an Indiana congressman sought answers. Samuel Pettingill, representing the state's 3rd congressional district, also contacted the FBI about the bomb-plot theory. In response, Hoover writes to an agent:

I said we were not conducting any investigation of this, insofar as I knew or had been advised but that I understood the investigation was being made by the Commerce Department.

(These documents can be found at the end of the story.)

That seems to have been enough to satisfy everyone's curiosity, and talk of the supposed plot faded quickly. The archives of The New York Times and Chicago Tribune show no mention of the theory in the days and weeks after the News-Times article was published. Today, the standard explanation—that the Fokker F.10's wooden wing succumbed to air turbulence because of interior rot—isn't in doubt.

But what caused the News-Times to publish that article in the first place? It's hard to believe that the paper—which folded in 1938—would invent such a story out of whole cloth.

At this point, it's essentially impossible to answer that question. There was, however, at least one person with intimate knowledge of the Lingle murder trial who also believed Rockne was the victim of a bomb attack. That person was Father John Reynolds himself.

In 1978 a man named James Bacon published a book titled Made in Hollywood. Bacon was a former reporter who had worked in Hollywood his entire career and rubbed elbows with some of the biggest stars of the early 20th century. Made in Hollywood is a collection of tawdry anecdotes that Bacon had witnessed or heard about throughout his career. There is one story of particular interest in the book, which comes from Bacon's days as a student at Notre Dame in the early 1930s. Bacon relates an incident from 1934 in which he and one other student found themselves drinking beer with Father John Reynolds, who was a rector at the university, in Reynolds's office.

From the story:

Just as the South Shore unloaded its passengers, Jake Lingle got his. Father Reynolds, on a trip to Chicago, rushed to the stricken Lingle and gave him the last rites, hearing his confession.

Father Reynolds didn't even know whether Jake was Catholic or not. In fact, he had no idea who he was, just that he had been slain in front of the priest's eyes.

It was all reported in banner headlines in all the papers. The story got wide play because it was one of the few times not counting innocent bystanders, that the hoods had not killed one of their own.

Of course, Lingle was one of their own, but the general public didn't know that. To the public, he was a newspaper reporter for one of the biggest newspapers in the country.

Father Reynolds then told Kitty and me a horrendous tale of his harassment by gangsters, all of whom wanted to know what Lingle had divulged to him during that last confession.

The priest gave all of them the same answer — that the seal of the confessional prevented his revealing what was said.

This only increased the phone calls and the mysterious visits. But Father Reynolds never told. Threats were made on his life and person. Still he never winced.

Then one day he was walking across the campus and bumped into Knute Rockne. The two chatted and the famous coach told the priest that Universal Pictures in Hollywood had just called him to make a fast trip to Hollywood.

The studio was making a movie called The Spirit of Notre Dame, starring Lew Ayres and Andy Devine, and needed Rock's expert advice on some phase of the production.

Rock was moaning that he couldn't get an airline reservation and would have to take the long train trip instead.

Father Reynolds said he had — in his pocket — reservations and tickets for a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles the next day.

The priest was in no hurry to get to Los Angeles and told Rock to take them. Father Reynolds would take the train trip.

Rock and Reynolds were old friends. Both had been track stars at Notre Dame. Rock was to football what Babe Ruth was to baseball in those days, a superhero of the Golden Age of Sports.

So it was not surprising when the banner headline around the world on March 31, told of Rockne's death in a fiery plane crash over the Kansas farmland, near Bazaar.

A farmer, plowing his field, was an eyewitness to the crash, which also killed eight others. He said the plane exploded in midair, as if by a bomb.

Father Reynolds told us:

"My name was on Rock's tickets and reservation. He didn't have time to change them. And then all those threats on my life. Did those people plant a bomb on that plane for me? I don't know. "I know if I hadn't given Rock my tickets, he would have been alive."

Last I heard of Father Reynolds, he was a Trappist monk someplace in Utah.

And little Billy Rockne was laid up sick in the hospital. Bacon stood by his account, however. In 2003, a writer from Notre Dame named Dorothy Corson (whose own research was of enormous importance to the writing of this piece), got in touch with Bacon while she was trying to unravel the mystery of Rockne's death herself. Corson wrote about her conversation with Bacon, then 86 years old, on her personal website:

[Bacon] was surprised to learn how I had happened upon his Rockne story and verified that the story about Fr. Reynolds' hair-raising experience with the Chicago mob was factual—he never doubted the story—but that as to proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt all these years later might be difficult with most of the principal players being deceased. He wished me luck with my research and thanked me for my call.

(Attempts to contact Corson directly were unsuccessful.)

Father John Reynolds. (Photo via.)

Despite Bacon's assurances, much of the story would eventually be refuted by Reynolds himself. In 1986, the 92-year-old priest gave a lengthy interview about his life that was recorded by a man named Dan Karton. It's unclear where the interview took place, but it appears to have been recorded sometime after Reynolds left the Trappist monastery in Utah. Reynolds's words in that interview directly conflict with much of what Bacon claims to have been told.

The entire interview is over 40 minutes long, and Reynolds makes some radical claims throughout. He believed that the man who was convicted of murdering Jake Lingle, Leo Brothers, wasn't the real killer but was in fact a fall guy chosen by the mob and the police department. He claims to have been pressured by the police to testify against Brothers and to have been threatened by various mobsters in an effort to get him to identify Brothers as the killer.

According to Reynolds, he did testify that Brothers looked like the man he saw shoot Lingle, but refused to say outright that he was the killer. Reynolds also does not mention issuing Lingle his last rites.

Things get interesting, though, when talk turns to Rockne's plane crash:

Father John Reynolds: Later on, some reporter got the idea that I was supposed to be on that plane.

Dan Karton: Now, what happened with the plane?

Reynolds: To the plane? They bombed it.

Karton: That Rockne was on?

Reynolds: Yeah.

Karton: Were you supposed to be on the plane?

Reynolds: No, no. It was going out to make a picture, see? They made another picture later on and the president represented Gip in that picture, see? But all of the newspaper headquarters were phoning me wanting to know if I was on the plane, see, and I told them I wasn't. But, that is the way they [the mob] got even with Notre Dame.

This contradicts much of Bacon's version of the story, then seems to go charging into a new fiction altogether. Why would the mob choose Rockne as the target of revenge rather than just kill Reynolds? Karton puts the same question to Reynolds, who claims that the mob was too afraid to kill him because murdering an Irish-Catholic priest would have reflected poorly on them (as opposed to murdering the most famous college football coach in America).

The bomb theory, to the extent that it makes sense at all, only holds water if Reynolds was supposed to be on the plane. He testified in the Lingle murder trial on March 27, 1931, and Rockne's plane went down on March 31. There's a giddy B-movie logic to the mob using the plane ride as an opportunity to kill Reynolds, but choosing to kill Knute Rockne as a way of punishing Reynolds by proxy is an entirely different story.

What's more, the mob wouldn't have had much reason to punish Reynolds following his testimony. A March 28, 1931, article in the Chicago Daily Tribune describes Reynolds's testimony thus:

Again the courtroom stilled to silence as Mr. Brooks [the prosecutor] asked the question which had been asked of each identifying witness:

"Do you see anyone on the courtroom today who resembles that man you saw running?"

"Well," said the witness [Reynolds] choosing his words with care, "Mr. Brothers answers the description."

"Will you point him out?" asked the prosecutor.

[...]

The witness descended from the stand and with quick steps went over to where the defendant sat and laid his hand on the defendant's shoulder

Reynolds may not have given the most vehement testimony against Brothers, but he certainly didn't go out of his way to try and get him acquitted, either.

Reynolds was a 92-year-old man when the interview was recorded, but on the tape—which I accessed through the Notre Dame library—you can hear his voice still cracking with excitement when he talks about the Lingle case and the Rockne plane crash. He is giddy. He is wrong, too, of course, but you start to understand why Reynolds continued to believe his story well into his emeritus years. He believed it for the same reason that Grantland Rice believed Rockne's horsepucky about George Gipp. He believed it for the same reason Rockne's team believed in poor sick little Billy Rockne, laid up in the hospital. It was a great story.

Karton: Is it true that the mob rubbed out Rockne because they let you testify?

Reynolds: Yeah, yup, absolutely, oh I am sure of that. Oh, yeah. Isn't that some story? You like that story? I have plenty more.

Rockne FOIA

Unsolved Mystery Surrounds Rockne's Ill-fated Plane Trip to California [ND.edu]

Robb Flynn, the lead singer of the heavy metal band Machine Head, posted a story on the band's official website today that included an unexpected cameo from Elaine La Russa, wife of former Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Life has a funny way of playing out, how seemingly innocuous encounters can take you to places you never thought you'd go.

Flash back to about a year and a half ago... I'm walking through Whole Foods in Walnut Creek talking on the phone to my friend Tom when a lady and her daughter approach me wide-eyed. "Are you fucking Robb Flynn?!" ... "I could be..." They scream with delight and make a big ol' to-do, "oh my god, we're huge fans, I love ‘The Blackening', I'm Tony La Russa's wife!" I'm tripped out, they're both super nice, we take pictures, my friend is laughing his ass off, more about the fact that I was swarmed in a freakin' Whole Foods than anything else.

We're going to go ahead and assume that this is the first time that a heavy metal musician has been accosted by a screaming fan who also happens to be the wife of a former major league manager. This story is already strange enough, but it doesn't stop there.

So, last February we headline The Warfield in San Francisco, and after the show, who walks in but Elaine, Devon and Tony La Russa. A bunch of my Chicago buddies are there and lose their minds, and hilariously begin sneakin' pictures with him while he's talking to someone else by "leaning in" and snapping a quick pic (which became the legend known as "The La Russa Lean"). My baseball fanatic Dad FREAKS OUT, and Tony L blows my mind when he tells me that I "have so much charisma, he wishes he could bottle it and make his players drink it".

"You have so much charisma, I wish I could bottle it and make my players drink it." Those are real words that were spoken by Tony La Russa to the lead singer of Machine Head. That actually happened. The world is a strange place.

Flynn goes on to talk about how La Russa recently invited him to play an acoustic set at a fundrasier, at which Elaine's credibility as a true metalhead became undeniable.

I get back to him on New Year's Eve and and say yeah, and if he's up for it, I can maybe jam a couple of acoustic songs. He's down.

It's an anniversary gift for his wife Elaine, who is a raging metalhead... like, bananas for super-random-obscure-euro-metal kind of metalhead. Elaine La Russa is the real deal folks.

Flynn isn't just making stuff up, either. A three-year-old article about Elaine and Tony's Animal Rescue Fund includes this tid bit:

A hard core heavy metal music fan, she travels frequently to attend shows across the country to see her favorites - KISS, Metallica, Black Eyed Peas, Guns 'n Roses, Iron Maiden, and other groups, including California Symphonies, Journey, Yanni, and more. She also giggles about playing Rock Band video games at home.

OK, so the Black Eyed Peas and Yanni don't exactly qualify as "super-random-obscure-euro-metal," but we'll assume that Elaine toned down her musical tastes for the sake of the readers of the Belleville News-Democrat.

But yeah, Elaine La Russa: big time metalhead. Now you know.

h/t Nirav

The Ohio State Buckeyes, the lone undefeated team in college football after the Notre Dame Fighting Irish woke up this morning and realized they were supposed to play a game last night, finished the season ranked No. 3 in the Associated Press poll. The Buckeyes—bowl ineligible because some players who aren't on the team anymore were found in 2010 to have gotten free tattoos—were thus denied a share of the national championship. Outrage! No 12-0 season should go unrewarded! That's why Deadspin is awarding Ohio State the 2012 Outlaw National Championship. And we got some temporary tattoos made to commemorate the occasion.

UPDATE: We have run out of tattoos. Sorry folks. Now stop emailing us.

We've ordered 100 temporary tattoos bearing this design, and we will be giving them away until we run out. Want one? Email us with your address at tips@deadspin.com, subject line: "outlaw champs."

Tattoo designed by Jim Cooke

The only thing worth noting about last night's BCS championship game was Brent Musburger's old-man boner over Katherine Webb, the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron. In the video above, you can see reporters telling McCarron that his girlfriend was the night's breakout star, and then you can see Mcarron's world begin crumbling around him.

That's a very specific kind of panic that flashes across McCarron's face, the kind that can only be brought on by learning that your girlfriend, who is indeed a very pretty lady, is now a very famous pretty lady. McCarron keeps his composure as best he can, but he looks as if he's about to start yelling about how everyone needs to back up and stop eyeballing him like that because he's about to sock someone and yeah he'll show them WHAT A REAL MAN LOOKS LIKE.

And that's basically what McCarron did on Twitter right after the game:

According to The Oregonian's John Canzano, last week's Fiesta Bowl featured a real-life Rudy moment. Coming into the game, Oregon's Dane Ebanez had never made a bowl-game appearance, despite playing at the school for four years and being named scout team player of the year in successive seasons.

In the closing minutes of the Fiesta Bowl, one of Ebanez's teammates, Keanon Lowe, sought to change that by faking an injury just before an Oregon kickoff. Ebanez was sent into the game in Lowe's place, and very nearly made a tackle on the play.

At the 1:06 mark of the video above, you can see Ebanez streaking down the field and getting a hand on the ball carrier before falling to the turf. A missed tackle isn't exactly a storybook to a college career, but we still think it's pretty cool that Lowe went out of his way to get his teammate onto the field. And Rudy was offsides, anyway.

[The Oregonian]

This video comes from last night's Lakers-Rockets game, which ended as another demoralizing loss of the Lakers. That's Steve Nash wiping the sweat from his armpits with a towel, casually handing the towel to his teammate Metta World Peace, and then walking away as World Peace proceeds to bury his face in the gross, sweaty towel.

It sure looks like World Peace sees Nash jam the towel all up into his sweaty pits, and yet he's still eager to take it and use it on his own face. And Nash just gives it to him like it's no big deal, without even the slightest warning about where that towel has just been. The pit sweat seems to have had a positive effect on World Peace, however. He finished the game with 24 points and went 4-5 from the three-point line. There's just no end to the ways in which Steve Nash can make his teammates better.

Tonight, a new show called 60 Minutes Sports will premier on Showtime. The first episode will feature an interview with Travis Tygart of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, who will be talking about his investigation of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.

CBS News has leaked a few tidbits in advance of the interview, the most interesting being the allegation that Armstrong tried to bribe his way out of being investigated.

Armstrong once gave the International Cycling Union, a regulatory body for his sport, a gift of $100,000. Tygart called that "totally inappropriate." Then someone representing Armstrong tried to give USADA a large sum of money sometime in 2004. "I was stunned," he tells Pelley. "It was clear — it was a clear conflict of interest for USADA. We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer," says Tygart, who said the amount was "in excess of $150,000." Told by Pelley that "60 Minutes" had learned it was $250,000, Tygart replies, "It was around that ballpark."

That's quite the allegation, but one that should be taken with a grain of salt. Tygart has had it in for Armstrong for a very long time, and as you can see in the video clip posted by CBS, he's not shy about diving into the melodramatic. And, as Cycling News points out, there was no mention of Armstrong's attempted donation to the USADA in the organization's 1,000-page report on Armstrong's doping habits, although the $100,000 donation to the ICU did earn a mention. An attempted bribe of the USADA strikes us as something that would have been worthy of inclusion.

If you are an unhappy, soulless person who still actually cares about any of this and also happens to have Showtime, be sure to tune in for Tygart's full interview at 10:00 pm EDT.

[CBS]

Just a few minutes ago, Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that a near-finalized deal is in place to move the Sacramento Kings to Seattle:

It's nice to see pro basketball return to Seattle, where residents were left outraged and bereft by the cold-blooded dealings that turned their Sonics into the Oklahoma City Thunder. Now that moral high ground can slide into Puget Sound, as Sonics fans claim a pillaged team for their own. That should be fun to watch! Now everyone commence being deliriously happy/queasily guilty/blindingly angry.

See also: Steve Ballmer's Buying the Sacramento Kings and Bringing Basketball Back to Seattle [Gizmodo]

Ryan Potter is a senior cornerback at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tenn., and the star of the video above. Ryan's looking to take his football career to the next level, and so he has put together a rousing mixtape of his most impressive on-field exploits in the hopes that he will catch the eye of a college recruiter. The highlight reel features Ryan running down the field on kickoffs, getting blocked a lot, kicking a few extra points, and maybe kind of making a tackle at least one time. It's glorious.

I can't decide if my favorite part of this video is the incongruity of the soundtrack, the expertly deployed telestrations, or the fact that its YouTube description is simply, "football." And don't worry, Ryan is absolutely in on the joke:

Ryan Potter is our new favorite high school athlete. Get at him while you can, recruiters.

[SBNation]

Basketball's return to Seattle seems to have hit an unexpected snag at the 11th hour. Here's Adrian Wojnarowski describing just how close to done the sale of the Sacramento Kings was a few hours ago:

And now, it looks like Woj's last-minute cautioning was not without warrant. Here is CBS 13's Steven Large raining on everyone's parade:

No word yet on what may have caused the Maloofs to reject the offer, but we'll just assume that it had something to do with their persistent ineptitude. The Maloofs are the worst.

Previously: It Looks Like The Sacramento Kings Are Headed To Seattle

Fox MLB reporter Ken Rosenthal was on the MLB Network today, talking about the Hall of Fame vote and bow ties and whatever else it is Ken Rosenthal likes to talk about these days. At some point, the conversation turned to Jack Morris and his continued inability to garner enough votes to get into the Hall of Fame. Rosenthal took the opportunity to shake his damn head at the sabermetrics community and its "over the top" campaign against Morris's Hall of Fame candidacy. And then he compared people who like sabermetrics to the Tea Party.

[15-minute long sigh]

We don't really need to explain why such an analogy is so stupid, do we? I mean, the Tea Party that Rosenthal is referring to is responsible for giving us stuff like this, whereas sabermetricians are simply baseball fans who like to apply things like math, logic, and quantitative analysis to the sport that they love. The two are very different.

At least he didn't call sabermetricians nerds who live in their mother's basements. So that's progress, maybe?

According to ESPN, former NFL linebacker Junior Seau had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) at the time of his suicide last May. In an interview with ESPN, Seau's widow and son claim that researchers at the National Institutes of Health informed them of the diagnosis after completing a thorough examination of Seau's brain. From the interview:

"I think it's important for everyone to know that Junior did indeed suffer from CTE," Gina Seau said. "It's important that we take steps to help these players. We certainly don't want to see anything like this happen again to any of our athletes."

She said the family was told that Seau's disease resulted from "a lot of head-to-head collisions over the course of 20 years of playing in the NFL. And that it gradually, you know, developed the deterioration of his brain and his ability to think logically."

CTE is the same degenerative disease that is believed have been the cause of dementia, depression, and memory loss in a number of former athletes. Former NFL safety Dave Duerson had CTE when he, like Seau, took his own life via a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Andre Waters, a former NFL player who committed suicide in 2006, was also diagnosed with CTE.

[ESPN]