It has been a little more than four months since that insane Deadspin article blew open one of the most absurd hoaxes in sports, at least in this Internet era, as it revealed that Lennay Kekua, the reported dead girlfriend of Notre Dame star Manti Te’o, was the fabrication of a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Sure, we all had a ton of additional questions and would have loved to have a little more insight into how a grown man fell for such a trick, but Te’o and Tuiasosopo sort of told their stories and were content to leave us believing that Te’o is just a big, dumb schmuck.

Of course, between that January article and today, plenty of other things happened in sports and we’ve turned our attention elsewhere, because we thought that we’d beaten this joke into oblivion. That suggests, however, that sports fans are all on the same wavelength, and obviously Te’o jokes were going to be made during and after the NFL Draft. But today? Talk about timely.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in April, two buddies decided over a few adult beverages that they wanted to have a little fun with the National Basketball Association and declare themselves eligible for the upcoming draft. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, but for some reason I get a kick out of it every time that someone does it, ever since a friend of mine did it in the months before we graduated high school.

(RELEVANT UPDATE: I knew I had read a similar story before, and apparently Maxim Magazine ran a story about an “average yutz” who went through the NBA Draft eligibility declaration process back in 1999. That I remembered even a hint of a Maxim article from that long ago means I wasn’t that bowled over by Melissa Joan Hart’s cover and spread.)

Except while some people might say, “Big deal, bros” to Nick Moran and Andrew Hunter for their joke, I tip my flat-billed cap with all the NBA team logos to them for not just making the joke but also taking it from coast-to-coast for the easy layup. Since receiving a letter from NBA Vice President Andy Taub, who informed them that because they graduated college in 2010 they’re actually free agents and are therefore ineligible for the NBA Draft on June 27, the friends have even created their own website called “We Declare”, hoping to catch the eye of… someone.

Read the rest of this entry »

From ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,’ a show that is not afraid to bring on Billy Crystal, put him in some old-timey baseball clothes and have him reenact sports jokes from only 50 years after he was born:

Fallon, Crystal, and Seinfeld revisit Abbott & Costello’s classic “Who’s On First?” routine, where we finally get to meet the team’s first-baseman “Who,” second-baseman “What,” and third-baseman “I Don’t Know.”

I’m not sure where this falls on the list of funny sports things ‘Late Night’ has done — it’s better than the Pro Bowl Shuffle, but isn’t as inspired as ‘At The Bar With Roger Federer’, and nothing ‘The Simpsons’ didn’t tackle more succinctly 20 years ago — but it’s cute, and antiquated baseball stuff will always make me smile. Plus, check out Billy Crystal’s old player throwing motions. Pitch-perfect. You know, assuming he doesn’t actually catch and throw like that.

[h/t to @KlayDogCorp]