Well, all of our complaining and cursing did it… just kidding. The NFL owners and Roger Goodell did it – they got the referees to agree to a new deal and come back to work for Thursday Night Football. It had nothing to do with ESPN announcers going nuts on Monday Night Football (something the network, of course, boldly proclaimed was the reason for the new deal) or TJ Lang’s Tweets blowing up or even the NFL offices receiving 70,000 phone calls from livid fans in the hours after the Seattle Seahawks may have been handed a win they didn’t deserve.

Nope, it was those brave owners and the hard-working commissioner who stuck it out and did what was in the best interest of their sport. They made sure that the refs didn’t get the few million dollars they were asking for from the league’s $10 billion in annual revenue. And even if the refs didn’t agree, those replacement fellas weren’t bad at all. Either way, make sure you thank your team’s owner when you see him or her. Just don’t touch him, you pathetic, lowly scum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back when I was in college and running the student newspaper, the UCF football team went on a hilariously humiliating 17-game losing streak that included a breathtaking 0-11 season. Game attendance was in the toilet and the crowds were nothing more than drunken messes of frat boys and homeless people trying to get free food. Needless to say, a win was a luxury at that point.

So it wasn’t all that surprising that when UCF defeated Marshall to break the losing streak that fans decided to rush the field and tear down the goalposts. I was on the sidelines as fans were pressing up against the rails. Friends yelled to me to ask if they’d get Tazed for going on the field, and the cops I spoke with laughed and said no because they were outmanned and not in the mood to get trampled. When the game clock expired, fans started leaping over the rails.

I watched as body after body was slung over the bars, and I witnessed three different guys snap their legs on the concrete as they dropped like sacks of soil. It was both terrifying and hilarious, but since that day I’ve never understood why people rush the field. And on Saturday it happened three times. In one game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the NFL and NCAA football are back in action (BACKTION!) we understand that sports can get a little confusing, so we’re bringing back this old running feature in which we help you decide what to watch each night. This way, you won’t miss anything important, whether it be an incredibly tight and exciting American League East race or an incredibly tight and exciting Oregon Ducks cheerleader.

Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants – 8:30 PM ET on NBC

The NFL comes to us one night earlier than usual – thanks, Obama – as one of the league’s fiercest rivalries takes the main stage. Can Eli Manning and the defending Super Bowl Champion Giants keep momentum in their favor with a win over Tony Romo and the Cowboys’ banged up receivers? Probably. But you can discuss the game in style with our cooler cousin Christmas Ape over at the KSK Live Blog, which is undergoing a sexy makeover this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

L.A. Sparks rookie Jantel Lavender was the #5 overall pick in the 2011 WNBA Draft, and now she gets to be famous for something — according to TMZ, the 6-foot-4 athlete sent her ex-boyfriend Adam Ashley into hiding by pulling a knife and threatening to kill him. At first you might be all, “Wow, this lady must be crazy”, but the more you read about it, the more you realize her ex is either trying to get money out of somebody I’m pretty sure doesn’t have a lot of money, or he’s Ralph Wiggum from “The Simpsons”.

He’s gone “into hiding” since the altercation happened on July 5, and has been filing hilarious court papers with the L.A. County Superior Court, assumedly from his bunker just outside of Los Angeles.

In the docs, Ashley also says Lavender “grabbed my head and slammed it into the wall. She grabbed my neck and was choking me.”

Ashley claims it wasn’t the first time Lavender got violent with him — alleging she also tried to choke him during a fight in June. During that altercation, Ashley claims, “While I was grabbing for her hands she kneed me in the growing [SIC] area. My private area was throbbing from the pain.”

“Kneed me in the growing area” is amazing, but “private area” is what’s making me laugh. He should tell his lawyer that she no-no’d him in his Danger Zone.

The way our terrible world works, “WNBA player” has got to be right behind “quiet Arabic neighbor in white neighborhood” on the list of people America is just going to presume is guilty. Not only a woman, not only an African-American woman, but an African-American woman playing a sport routinely played by men. Notice the difference between the header image I picked and the one TMZ is using. I’d be shocked if the first twenty minutes of her trial isn’t just the judge going “lol i can’t believe you had a boyfriend, i thought you played in the wnba!!11″

Unless you’re still locked away in your fallout shelter, you already know that yesterday’s 5.9 earthquake in Virginia wasn’t very much to worry about. Sure, us hurricane-loving, proper-time-zone-having East Coast simple folk only know tremors as a delightful Kevin Bacon film about giant worms. So you left coasters will have to forgive us when an earthquake actually strikes our neck of the States and we act a little shocked. And laugh all you want, but just wait until I send some Floridians out your way to register as California voters. Who will be laughing then?

As usual, some professional athletes took to their Twitter accounts to express their hysteria and/or indifference at yesterday’s earthquake, which reportedly reached New York and Pennsylvania. Sadly, our favorite usual suspects like Chad Ochocinco, Jose Canseco, and the Iron Sheik were mum on the quake. But some new faces – mostly athletes from the Washington D.C. area – stepped up and added their own interesting commentary on the matters. Thankfully, none of them blamed it on gay marriage.

Read the rest of this entry »