"I'm not naked! I TRICKED YOU into thinking I was! Point, Solo."

Back in 2011, Hope Solo was the greatest. She was helping sell women’s soccer to America and posing nude in ESPN The Magazine with a garden hose, simultaneously taking the world by storm as both sports hero and sex symbol. She was an awesome combination of talent and gigantic beauty, and it was fun to write about her on the Internet.

After that, things started to get … complicated. She went on ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ but ultimately claimed the show was rigged and that her partner had physically abused her. She married NFL tight end Jerramy Stevens, a guy previously convicted with assault and accused of rape, immediately after he’d been taken in for assaulting her. She also sorta ratted out everyone in the Olympics.

In 2013, Hope continues her slow descent into being the soccer Amanda Bynes by (accidentally?) tweeting her phone number, then using it as an excuse to tell us we are stupid.

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In one of the better “Boys will be boys” stories of this early sports year, New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony reportedly took offense to something that Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett said to him during Boston’s 102-96 victory on Monday night. According to various websites, Garnett supposedly told Anthony that his wife and decision-maker, La La Vasquez-Anthony, “tasted like Honey Nut Cheerios”. Honestly, I don’t really know how that’s an insult, because it mostly just reminds me of Patrice O’Neal’s birthday cake joke (watch “Elephant in the Room” if you’re unfamiliar).

Now, if I had to guess, Garnett has never had sex with Anthony’s wife. Maybe he has, and therefore is qualified to make such a statement, but this is probably just an example of what the kids call “trash talk”. However, some people believe that this sort of trash talk crosses a line, including Anthony, who waited for Garnett by the Celtics team bus so they could settle this like men. After all, you can take the millionaire professional athlete out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take the Brooklyn out of the corporate product spokesperson.

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With the 2012 Summer Olympics a week away, we’re incredibly thankful to have something so important to take our minds off of the St. Louis Cardinals sucking the annual summer lull. While the biggest Olympics news so far has been the opening of the world’s largest McDonald’s at London’s Olympic Park and the company’s subsequent monopoly on French fries, we finally got some juicy details from the athletes’ village earlier this week when U.S. Women’s Soccer goalie Hope Solo revealed that errbody is getting freaky in London.

I pray to everything sacred that my precious Alex Morgan is behaving herself.

‘There’s a lot of sex going on at the Olympics.

‘I’ve seen people having sex out in the open, getting down and dirty on grass between buildings.’

She added: ‘I may have snuck a celebrity into my Beijing room without anybody knowing and snuck him back out. But that’s my Olympic secret.’ (Via the Daily Mail)

It’s not really a secret, because she revealed that she was hanging out with Vince Vaughn and some other celebrities and they all went back to the U.S. dorms (or whatever they’re called over there, flats maybe) despite the oh-so-serious rules and curfews that the athletes must obey – wank, wank. But since the entire world knows that all of these teenage and 20-something athletes are going to party, the fine people at Durex have sent over 150,000 condoms to be dispersed amongst the 10,000+ athletes.

That’s roughly 15 condoms per athlete for 17 days of action. That means that some of those female athletes are coming home +1, if you know what I mean. I mean they’ll be pregnant. Especially if they’re American teenagers.

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Man, time sure does fly. It seems like just yesterday I was praising Drew Brees. Actually, it was just yesterday, but I was referring to when I named Brees and the New Orleans Saints winning Super Bowl XLIV the top Sports Moment of 2010. And you know what? That was a boring, predictable pick and it left nothing to the imagination of you, our beloved readers. You deserve more than just the run-of-the-mill year end list, because With Leatherites are smarter than the average sports blog reader, and I know that because I was called an idiot by you guys plenty this year.

You also have a better sense of humor than the average sports blog reader, so when I was entering the qualifications for this year’s Best Sports Moments into my sophisticated super computer (read: old yellow notepad) I wanted to kick the sentimental crap to the curb and really focus on what makes us all tick – namely, poop jokes and hot models. But mostly fun sports moments. As always, I don’t expect everyone to agree, and I’m sure that I left out a few moments here and there (sorry hockey). So feel free to school us on your biggest moments of the year, and let’s all hope that 2012 is a little more sex scandal free…

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ESPN The Magazine has released a batch of photos from the 2011 installment of their annual “The Body Issue”, and while full-on nudity isn’t something we can really share with you at With Leather, we can’t see a picture of Blake Griffin dunking with his pants down and not share it with you. It gives the whole “dunking over a car” thing an extra degree of difficulty.

This year’s issue isn’t as conservative as 2009, when most of the athletes were wearing shorts, but it remains tasteful and doesn’t tread near the whole “seeing Patrick Willis’ pubic hair” thing from last year. There are a lot (a lot) of gorgeous women from nearly every corner of the sports world featured, including-but-not-limited-to Hope Solo, LPGA rookie Belen Mozo, foxy roller derby star Suzy Hotrod, the WNBA’s statuesque Sylvia Fowles and the lady pulling a LeBron James in the image up top, Olympic silver medal gymnast Alicia Sacramone. I’m really glad that isn’t LeBron James.

Of course, the following gallery is only a sampling, and you should head on over to ESPN The Magazine The Website to see more, including the pictures I’m not authorized to show you (or, “Wow, time to Wikipedia the sh*t out of Stephanie Gilmore”). Also, consider buying the magazine itself, if that’s your bag. Now please click through and laugh at that weird picture of Jon “Bones” Jones peeing in his swimming pool.

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One of my professional goals as editor is to get myself and the With Leather domestic readership into soccer.

It’s a hard sell sometimes, but it’s getting easier thanks to the fact that we’ve got tons of great soccer happening across the country at any given point; for example, the United States women’s national team took on Canada’s national team in an exhibition game in front of 18,570 at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland on Thursday night. It was a reminder that we can (and should) like these women outside of their 15-minutes of Letterman fame and that Abby Wambach — who scored two second-half goals one of them a header — should be showing up at every Kids and Teens and ESPN choice awards things to win a trophy.

In case you weren’t one of those nearly 19,000 people who saw the game, I’ve put together a gallery that should simultaneously tell you “the U.S. Women’s National Team is pretty great” and “Alex Morgan looks amazing in those little shorts”. Because they are, and she totally does. Be sure to click through thoroughly enough to get to the fan photos, as they are wonderful. Yes, girls lift their shirts and write things on their stomachs at U.S. soccer games.

All photos are via Daylife by way of Getty Images, unless otherwise noted. The video in slide 2 is from Oregon Live. The increasing desire to know everything about these people is totally mine.

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