I have long searched for an African sports story that had nothing to do with AIDS or violent deaths, and it seems we’ve finally got a nice European-style soccer sex scandal in Zimbabwe, where the nation’s head of soccer, Henrietta Rushwaya (right), allegedly overruled a standing team policy of a pre-match curfew for the players so that she could bed star striker Benjani Mwaruwaru (left).  Zimbabwe was bounced from World Cup qualifying in the first round.

Rushwaya is reportedly in the habit of cowing the number one coach Jose Claudinei Valinhos into sanctioning the departure of some players from camp to moonlight in secluded night spots and even to have a brief encounter off the blankets with her.

“When [Mwaruwaru] comes home especially on a siesta from his overseas club, he camps at Rushwaya’s residence where they live literary [sic] like husband and wife… Rushwaya herself is known for being generous with her body and numerous scribes have had a go. She is a very kind boss whose generosity has won her friends especially in the media as most of her scandals are deliberately swept under the carpet,” said the source on condition of anonymity.

This is great.  I’m already a fan of women sleeping their way to the top, then continuing to sleep with people to stay on top, but this story especially warms my heart.  I love the way no one was killed by rampaging lions or flesh-eating bacteria.

[Unprofessional Foul]

Steady Burn, which has already introduced us to D.C. guerrilla kickball protests, arrested pirate kickballers, kickball brawls in Florida and almost everything else kickball-related, continues its kickball, uh, kick by tipping us off to zombie kickball. Apparently there's an annual game played in Portland, Maine where people dress in tattered clothes and smear fake blood on themselves before staggering around a field with a red ball. Either that, or they contracted the horrible virus that causes them to become the walking undead. Please, oh, please be the latter. No? Dammit.

Combining the deathly slow with a game that calls for a moderate amount of speed may seem odd, if not hilarious, at first.

But it's a purposeful juxtaposition, said Catherine Krupsky, an organizer for this year's match.

"How mundane is a kickball game, but how bizarre is it to see hordes of zombies walking around the Eastern Prom," she said.

Great. This sounds like the work of hipsters. Don't they know not to take lightly the zombie menace? Why, they probably listen to Fela Kuti's "Zombie" and quote heavily from Max Brooks books while playing. Luckily, hipsters and zombies can be dispatched in the same manner: head shots. Like zombies, you may be attempted to empathize with them because they possess something resembling the human form. Don't be fooled. Fire! Quickly! Before they're upon us in greater numbers!

A Zombies vs Humans game at Alfred College in New York shut down the entire campus when a Nerf gun used to "stun" players who are zombies was confused for an actual gun.  Yeah, I don't know how that happened, either.

"One faculty member saw one of our players walking through an academic building. And we think they just glimpsed one of the Nerf guns and thought it was a real gun," said Alex Geddes, the game's organizer.

For any pod people out there who never had a childhood, this is what a Nerf gun looks like.  I hope to God that that faculty member doesn't have tenure.  Seriously, if your kid goes to Alfred, congratulations: you've officially failed as a parent.

(thanks to Upstate Underdog for the tip; original story with Va Tech-style scare here)