One of my favorite things in sports is when athletes make jokes in their postgame or practice press conferences and reporters either don’t get them or they do get them but still turn them into mini controversies for the sake of slow news days. Case in point – when asked about Chad Henne’s 59 rushing yards against the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football, Brandon Marshall laughed and called him the “White Michael Vick.”

SOUND THE RACISM ALARMS! LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF DOUBLE STANDARDS!

Or don’t. Because this is completely stupid. Here’s what Marshall said:

Reporter: “What do you think of scrambling Chad, Brandon?” (laughs)

Brandon: (laughing) “I like it as long as he don’t get hit.”

Other Reporter: “You called him Michael Vick.”

Brandon: (smiling) “Yeah, the White Vick.”

(Everyone laughs)

And that’s the end of the story. At least it should be. Instead, it’s being reported as if Marshall honestly believes that Henne’s panic scrambles for his career-high rushing yardage really equates to Vick’s talent. Hell, Henne had 52 rushing yards all of last season, so it should be clear as day that Marshall was simply making a joke. But hey, that’s the joy of reporting without context. Let’s fire up the masses and stir up controversy around the guy with the mental problems.

That is, until Tim Tebow circumcises another child and we can run a story about how he diddles kids. Respect the power of the sports media.

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Sports

NBC Buys 80′s Wrestling Drama from The Rock - Matt Ufford gave me a shout-out in this, and he’s right; my personal career goal is to have the people in charge of this show find my Best and Worst reports, realize I’m the man for the job, put me in charge and let me turn it into an actual NWA 80s wrestling show without any confrontational family moments or walking conversations. [Warming Glow]

Kevin Durant’s Summer Blossom Has Hip Hop Roots - By the time the NBA comes back, Kevin Durant will have like six championship rings. I don’t know how it’s gonna work, but it’s gonna happen. [Smoking Section]

Henry Winkler F’n Loves Fly Fishing - And he’s very good. [Adult Swim]

Brandon Marshall Has All The Crazy - Worth reading if only for those pictures of Marshall making that face. That’s the face I make when I’m trying to concentrate and not die in video games. Maybe he got stabbed in the mouth. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

With Leather

Female Reporter Wants Her Butt Signed - ESPN is like five years away from doing this. Rachel Nichols is just gonna whip out her junk one day to hoots and it will have happened so gradually we won’t notice. [With Leather]

Athletes Take to Twitter for the Great East Coast Earthquake of 2011 - Read this, then go back and click the Buzzfeed link in the intro where everybody blames the earthquakes on gay marriage. I didn’t know getting gay married turned you into one of the Teen Titans. [With Leather]

LeBron James Is Like A Dead Kid From A Movie I Once Saw - The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter isn’t a great movie, but if you don’t give this post a bunch of hits I’m comparing Andy Dalton to Return To Oz, and I promise you it’s not nearly as solid a connection. [With Leather]

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 8/22 - Update: I won’t be doing Best and Worst of Smackdown this week, as I’ll be on a plane to Virginia while it’s on. I will, however, do a Best and Worst of Super Duper Live Smackdown next Tuesday, even though that’s when I’m on the plane back. [With Leather]

Not Sports

16 Rejected Titles for Toy Story - The person who suggested “Rex’s First Movie” should’ve been fired on the spot. I bet it would’ve had “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind in the trailer. I hope John Lassater’s response was “we aren’t making the f**king Rugrats” and a slap across the face. [Film Drunk]

7 Famous Album Covers Featuring People Who Didn’t Want to Be There - Who sues Dido, honestly? She’s been through enough. One time her boyfriend stuffed her in the trunk and drove her off a bridge. [The Smoking Jacket]

The 11 Worst Songs to Have Sex To - This is pretty funny, but my biggest pet peeve ever: people who identify a song by saying an entire line. The song isn’t called “in the arms of an angel”, it’s called “Angel”. Even worse is calling it “that in the arms of an angel song”. Consider your ass McLachlan’d. [Buzzfeed]

Classic Video Games As Stage Plays - I’m almost too old to think this is funny, but I’m not there yet. The Duck Hunt clip isn’t great (other than the pre-existing Duck Hunt sound effects), but I’m gonna say that Donkey Kong play is probably hilarious. [Gamma Squad]

Now that we’ve all calmed down from last week’s controversial running back rankings, I figured it was time to start the week off on the wrong foot with an equally controversial and debatable fantasy football wide receivers ranking. However, I don’t think that it will be the receivers and where I have them ranked that will fire everyone up, as much as it will be the means in which I group them – 80s TV sitcom daughters. I know, we’re like Harvard and MIT had a big, stupid baby after a drunken weekend in Cancun.

After all, let’s look at what happened since I posted that RB feature:

- The Kansas City Chiefs signed LeRon McClain, which means that Jamaal Charles might get one touchdown this season. Meanwhile, Ray Rice is all by himself. I’ve never said that our readers aren’t smarter than me.
- Mikel Leshoure tore his ACL and will miss the entire season for the Detroit Lions.
- Ashley Tisdale showed up at a gym looking like this. It’s just baffling.

As for the football meat of this ranking, I always have a lot of fun picking my wide receivers, because this is where you can really find some hidden gems, especially if you’re in a standard format league and you start 3 WRs or 2 WRs and 1 RB/WR flex spot. But of course there are also always the standard studs, definitive duds, and those guys who are just good enough to keep that one guy in your league sending trade offers for your top RBs all season long.

Oh, and if you couldn’t already tell by that banner pic, it’s pretty obvious who the No. 1 choice is.

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard that Miami Dolphins wide receiver and shy gentleman Brandon Marshall was stabbed by his wife Friday night. Marshall was kept in the ICU at Broward General Medical Center on Saturday and was eventually released in good condition. You know, except for that whole being stabbed in the stomach thing.

And of course his storied past isn’t helping the cause, as Brandon has a history of relationship troubles, to be kind. So let’s look at what we know first.

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The Miami Dolphins ran out of quarterbacks last Sunday. Last night, they may have lost their star receiver. Brandon Marshall re-aggravated a sore hamstring and watched the second half as his team lost to the Chicago Bears, 16-0.

The Dolphins went 1 for 12 on third down, and a 46-yard kickoff return to start the game created their best scoring threat. They moved inside the Bears 35 for the first time on the game’s final play.

Thigpen, pressed into duty after Chad Pennington and Chad Henne were hurt in Sunday’s game, finished 17 for 29 for 187 yards, and he had 27 of the Dolphins’ 39 yards rushing. But he found himself scrambling often and fell to 1-11 as an NFL starter.

–FOX Sports.

The Dolphins also had two starting offensive linemen sit out, which probably didn’t help Ricky Williams or Ronnie Brown who, if you did the math in the blockquote, didn’t do much. Obviously Miami can’t wait to go to an 18-game season. If only some of those Cubans floating over to the coast in bathtubs and homemade rafts could learn how to pass-block…

The Miami Dolphins kept their dwindling playoff hopes alive with a 29-17 win over the Tennessee Titans yesterday, but they’ll have to keep pressing on without quarterbacks Chad Henne and Chad Pennington, who were both removed from the game with serious injuries. Coach Tony Sparano had named Pennington the starter after Henne was throwing picks at a Cutlerian/Favrean rate, but the oft-injured veteran was injured very early in his return. Pennington reinjured his surgically repaired shoulder, which was already agitated by his notebook paper physique, and this pretty much means his career is over.

Henne, on the other hand, played for most of the first three quarters, ignoring Brandon Marshall with Hall-of-Fame precision, before he eventually took a shot to his knee, dislocating his kneecap and most likely ending his season. Tyler Thigpen took over for the banging Chads in the fourth quarter, and seeing as the former Kansas City Chief is the only QB left in Miami with a solid bill of health, it’s his ship to sink now.

Raise up our new hero, Sun-Sentinel, and let us worship this golden idol:

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