ESPN’s new 12-year, nearly $500 million deal to carry Wimbledon (all of Wimbledon, including the semi-finals and finals that were stuck on NBC) was caused by one simple thing — Simona Halep’s breast reduction. NBC Universal President Steve Burke was heard to remark “what is this, this is bullsh**” before throwing down his remote and resting his head in his hands for 40 minutes. “I just wanted to see her play, I don’t even know who this is.”

No, it was because NBC can’t get off their own jock about tape delay, and the All England Club wants their sporting events aired live. That’s all it took. NBC was so dedicated to taping things, then showing them slightly later that they lost one of their biggest and most storied sporting events, at least in terms of sports people don’t really watch. They tried to do it with the Olympics, and now they’ve done it with tennis. In a funny aside, the All England Club felt a live presentation would allow them a “single narrative”.

“We felt it was important to have a single narrative across the two weeks,” Ian Ritchie, the club’s chief executive, said on a conference call Tuesday. He added, “We felt very positively that we wanted to put it into one arena.”

I’m guessing the previous narrative, “these tennis players really want to win at tennis”, wasn’t getting through clearly enough on tape.

“Live is pre-eminent,” Ritchie said. “Live is the nature of the game now on sports around the world, not just for tennis, but for other ones.” He added, “I’m sure there is a place for tape delay and highlights, but the sports viewer wants to see things live.”

Ritchie said that he had had conversations in the past with NBC about changing its tape-delay policy, but gave no details.

“You understand from my comments that live is important,” he said.

An NBC spokesman declined to comment on Ritchie’s remarks.

Either that or he made a comment, and we have to wait five minutes to hear it.

I expected Ritchie to add a “did you see what I did there” or a “do you realize live” before he stopped talking, but here we are with the totality of Wimbledon on ESPN and chances of controversial wind-driven upskirts up 2000%. Sadly chances of Simona Halep nip slips are way, way down.

[via NY Times, with a h/t to Matt Ufford]

Novak Djokovic won his first Wimbledon title over the weekend, defeating noted anti-sleeve zealot Rafael Nadal. Immediately after winning the decisive point, he collapsed to ground and began a bonkers celebration that included him actually and for seriously eating some of the grass from Centre Court (video at Yahoo). Quoteth the Serb:

“I felt like an animal. I wanted to see how it tastes. It tastes good. It just came. I don’t know. It came spontaneously really. I didn’t plan to do it. You know, I didn’t know what to do for my excitement and joy.”

This brings me to an important point: thank God Novak Djokovic felt like a docile, grazing animal after his victory. What if he had felt like some sort of carnivore and leaped into the stands on the hunt for human flesh? Because, seriously, that quote could have been an attempted justification for that too, perhaps as part of an insanity plea. “Oh your honor, I just wanted to see how it tastes. I swear I didn’t plan it out.” Whatever, Dahmer.

I guess what I’m getting at is this: let’s just hope he doesn’t turn out to be an omnivore, or the U.S. Open could end up being a bloodbath.

Yesterday, 19-year old Simona Halep breezed through her first-round match against Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski at Wimbledon. Why is this an important thing to share with people on the Internet? For the reason you didn’t start reading this paragraph until you’d stared at the picture for five minutes. Simona got popular a couple of years ago on the reactionary part of the Internet that flips out (in both the good and bad ways, which are open to interpretation) about 17-year olds with humongous boobs, and her success this year is due to losing them; Halep got a massive breast reduction, and it seems to be making her awesome at tennis.

By way of The Daily Mail:

Halep was first noticed on her way to becoming junior champion at the French Open in 2008. In a bid to boost her game, she spent much of the following year recovering from the surgery, which took her cup size down from 34DD to a more modest 34C.

At the time she explained her decision to fans, saying: ‘It’s the weight that troubles me. My ability to react quickly, my breasts make me uncomfortable when I play.

‘I don’t like them in my everyday life, either. I would have gone for surgery even if I hadn’t been a sportswoman.’

I’m going to play the “women are people too” card and say I’m happy for her, even if the loss of such magnificent breasts is sh:tty to the awful, judgmental part of our brain that can only praise women for their beauty or condemn them for looking like steroid monsters. I think those are the only two reactions I’ve ever heard about women’s tennis outside of Ron Swanson: Player X is hot, or Player Y is on drugs and looks like a man and has a penis and could rip off yours. In this example, we’ll say Player X is Martina Hingis, and Player Y is any tennis player with her picture on Fark.

We wish Halep a successful Wimbledon, and now are heads can go back to looking back and forth instead of just straight ahead and slightly down.

While you were getting hammered, indulging in delicious barbecue, and doing other American things, the Wimbledon final was getting played out across the pond. 2nd ranked Rafael Nadal beat 12th ranked Tomas Berdych 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 to seal the victory. I have no idea what those numbers mean. Could they be the number of homoerotic grunts each player made each set, perhaps? Probably not, but I have absoloutly no interest in knowing.

And when it ended, Nadal marked his victory with a celebratory somersault. That endless energy, and so many superb strokes, allowed the No. 2-seeded Nadal to outclass No. 12 Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 Sunday for his second Wimbledon trophy and eighth Grand Slam title overall.

Sunday’s contest was hardly a classic. More like a coronation — or, at the very least, confirmation that Nadal is elbowing his way into any conversation about the best players in tennis history. His eight titles at major tournaments pushes him past John McEnroe and ties Nadal with quite a heady group that includes Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl. –ESPN

Another of those players in the conversation for best player in tennis history is Roger Federer. But, his time in England was disappointing. The 16-time grand slam champion fell to number three in the ATP rankings. That will give Roger some food for thought while he’s diving into his Scrooge McDuck-esque money locker. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to be irritated with Andy Roddick now, especially after his effort in the final at Wimbledon where he nearly beat Roger Federer. But depending on who you ask, Roddick should have beaten the 15-time major tournament winner. At the very least, it would have made for a better ad.

One of Roddick’s sponsors (you can see it on the ad; I won’t mention them in the text because of my endorsement deal with adidas) curiously bought a full-page ad on the back of the New York Times sport section to congratulate Crocodile Andy and thank him “for his performance at Wimbledon.” No, they really called him Crocodile Andy. And they thanked him. Thanked him for losing! Oooh, burn!

I thought it was almost sad that Roddick apologized to Pete Sampras after allowing Federer to break Sampras’ career majors record through him. I’m inclined to think that not his job to defend the nation’s tennis legacy. But when ESPN and his sponsors try to sell him as an ambassador of the game, maybe it should be. And this is a rather poor effort in accomplishing that end.

|via Darren Rovell|

I really don’t have a big problem with famous people mouthing off in public once in a while. I’ve said this before, there are certain social plateaus that people can hit where they’re allowed to treat people in a way that some of us might find inappropriate. But people that possess a level of passion and arrogance need to be treasured, even if one of those people happens to be Russell Crowe. From the Daily Mail, who still likes driving on the left side of the street:

Crowe could be seen pointing to where he wanted to move for a better view of the thrilling five-setter which saw Federer triumph over Roddick in the final set, but it seems the officer was clearly having none of it.

The Australian could be seen debating the matter, but soon after meekly returned to his original seat having conceded defeat.

I’m torn on this. Tennis is one of those sports where you know going in that you can’t so much as pee on a mound of cotton while the ball’s in play. Everybody has to be quiet so they can concentrate or whatever. And I guess you can’t change seats during play. That said, everybody that goes to watch tennis in person knows this going in, and so you’re stuck living under that repressive tennis regime. But I don’t understand what would have been so bad about sitting behind Ralph Lauren. Sitting in front of him, on the other hand…that I could understand.