Could You Fight Off Serena Williams?

“Dad, do you think — if I had to — I could beat Serena Williams in a fight?”

“No chance. Serena Williams has more testosterone than you do.”

“With those thighs? She’d scissor you to death,” my dad’s girlfriend added.

To be clear: I do not wish to fight Serena Williams. She is a post-racial ambassador for the game who transcended it. An inspiration to daughters, mothers, and grandmothers everywhere. I grew misty-eyed when she countered her sister Venus in the 2002 French Open finals.

But suppose the 27-time Grand Slam titlist was overtaken by a seething fit of rage. Could you fend her off?

On a tennis court, no. Her forehand is the stuff of legend. Serena’s serve clocks up to 129 MPH and fells All-American defensive linemen. Serena’s ground-game would prove formidable. Her aforementioned thunder thighs would suffocate me instantly.

I’m a bro in my mid-twenties. I endured years of rough-and-tumble fights with my brother until my innovation of the head-butt ushered in a Pax Fraternus. I run every-day and bench every other. Nonetheless, Madden is the closest I’ve come to a tackle in the last three months. I lack any martial arts training but for Intro to Karate my Senior year of college (I passed).

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Cleaning Up The Dirtiest Sport in America

Steroids in baseball? Weak. Doped up Olympians? Yawn. Colluding NBA superstars taking their talents to South Beach? Not even close. The dirtiest, most egregiously corrupt sport in the United States is college football.

Of course, it’s easy to say right now. Miami was recently smashed upside the head by Yahoo! Sports’ investigative team, laying out allegations made by former booster Nevin Shapiro. Using funds from a near billion dollar Ponzi scheme to fuel his over-the-top rock star lifestyle, Shapiro allegedly provided illegal benefits to what seems like every relevant University of Miami Hurricanes football player from the past decade.

Let’s not forget some of the other schools to get in trouble to various degrees recently: Alabama, West Virginia, Florida, South Carolina, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Boise State, North Carolina, Auburn, Ohio State and the school that started this latest series of crackdowns, University of Southern California (USC).

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A Life Without Fantasy Football Is A Life Not Worth Living

I’ve played Fantasy Football (in the business of Fantasy sports writing, we’re taught to capitalize the term) since 1997. I was 14 then and I joined on a whim because I was a big San Francisco 49ers fan growing up in the wine-country suburbs of Santa Barbara county in California.

My appreciation for the sport has grown over the years and it’s most certainly close to an obsession now. To illustrate my point, let me tell you that I’m one of those football fans who follows high school recruiting. I keep track of where teenagers choose to go to college to play football. So from high school to college and into the NFL, I follow the full trajectory of football players. I say this not to brag, but to properly demonstrate how much I enjoy the game and how sad my day-to-day life is. Every individual should always find joy in their chosen games/athletic activity, and I highly recommend archery as it’s undeniably a cool and captivating sport.

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Why America Deserves Lebron James

Again he walked the lonely June walk. His sixth. But the first time he would rip off a drenched jersey not of the Cavaliers. He unclipped some luckless bracelet, slinked away from the TunnelVision camera, and into his first full summer as LeBron James: The Villain.

A sultry summer locked in the gym. Of endless jump shots and low post spin-moves. Months of watching his first name scroll along ESPN’s ticker as its own category, headlining his every passing thought and tweet. Months of couldas, wouldas, and What Should I Do Nows? Months to dwell on the mid-career crisis.

LeBron James is 26 years old. Half of his career remains. Legacy is still a six letter word tossed around by restless sportswriters. But LeBron James has played 627 NBA games. He is decidedly middle-aged in a young twenty-something’s game. He has an Olympiad on Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose. And just as many titles.

Year 8 was LeBron’s closest yet. But still two wins short. Still six rings short of MJ, five of Kobe. Even one ring short of Brian “The Janitor” Cardinal. And so LeBron James slips another year behind the MJ trajectory. Another year the crown sits a little heavier. Another blemish on the King’s name. In 2009, he walked off the court against Orlando. In 2010, there was Game 5 in Boston. And in 2011, The Fourth Quarter.

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Bad Bromance: The 2011 NBA Year In Review, Part 1

It should have been the dumbest tattoo ever inked. Or at least since Mike Tyson went tribal on his left eye. Seasoned shooting guard Jason Terry got carried away during a Mavericks team powwow at DeShawn Stevenson’s pad last October. The whole team was there, Stevenson’s personal tattoo artist as well.

Terry wanted to pump up the boys. But the usual Us Vs. The World rah-rah wasn’t cutting it this time. Not with Kobe, Phil and the Lakers gunning for another three-peat. Not with the Thunder a year older. And not with the Big Two & A Half already shopping ring insets down in South Beach.

So Jason Terry had the Larry O’Brien trophy emblazoned to his right bicep. Right then and there. He would have the tattoo removed if the Mavericks fell short. He would have to, the league smirked. Because this was the Dallas Mavericks. The Buffalo Bills of the NBA. The proverbial one-and-done team that always followed the same script: Dirk put up his 24 points a night, they’d win 50-something games, lock up a four or five seed in the West, and bow out early to some young upstart like the Blazers or the Grizzlies.

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