It was only a matter of time. Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens, teammates in Cincinnati who refer to themselves as Batman and Robin, are joining forces for their own weekly national NFL talk show on Versus. It’s called “The T. Ocho Show.” Think a “Pardon the Interruption” format but, as Ochocinco told FanHouse recently, “…a lot more raw.”

“The T. Ocho Show” premieres Oct. 12 on Versus, but the network will air sneak-peak segments for five weeks before, starting Tuesday, Sept. 7 on “The Daily Line.” In the meantime, Ochocinco sat down with FanHouse’s Ryan Wilson for a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from Roger Goodell, social vs. mainstream media, Chad’s various off-field entrepreneurial endeavors, and, of course, T.O.

Enjoy. And don’t forget: get a glimpse of “The T. Ocho Show” on Versus tonight and each week until the premiere on Oct. 12.

Tiger Woods was named by Corey Pavin as one of the four “captain’s choices” for the 2010 Ryder Cup on Tuesday morning.

Stewart Cink, Zach Johnson and Rickie Fowler (the first rookie to ever make the Ryder Cup team) joined Woods as well, and all four men seemed particularly excited about the opportunity.

“It’s really exciting for me, obviously, to be included on the team,” Cink said. “I think this makes my third time getting picked (as a captain’s choice) which is getting close to a record. Which means I must not be that good at qualifying.”

Woods, however, hasn’t exactly had that trouble — he’s typically the first guy locked into the Ryder Cup, but obviously this season was different. Pavin refused, however, to acknowledge that he’d been thinking about Tiger’s inability to qualify on his own. Continue Reading »

A bum clutch didn’t trip up Brad Keselowski. Neither did racing in close proximity with nemesis Carl Edwards.

Keselowski managed to make it through pit stops despite mechanical problems, then grabbed the lead on a restart with eight laps to go and pulled away to win the NASCAR Nationwide race at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday.

“The clutch issue was something I was really nervous about,” said Keselowski, a Michigan native who also won last year’s Nationwide race here. “I didn’t know if that was going to cost us the race. I tried to be cool about that, but it’s easy to get upset.”

Edwards finished second, barely edging out a charging Kyle Busch.

Edwards and Keselowski raced side-to-side for a large portion of the race without incident. Both drivers are on probation for a high-profile confrontation at Gateway International Raceway last month.

“It’s like both of us are probably thinking the same thing, don’t be the guy that messes this up,” Edwards said. “But he raced me very cleanly, I thought we raced very well together, and that’s the kind of racing that I’m sure both of us want to be doing.”

Meanwhile, it was another rough day at the racetrack for Danica Patrick, who went down a lap to the leaders early on and struggled to a 27th-place finish.

Patrick said her car was extremely loose early on — “I hope I don’t crash,” she remembered thinking — but the team got a handle on the car’s handling late in the race.

“If we could have started the race the way we finished it, it would have been a very different story,” Patrick said. “It’s all right. It’s all part of it.”

Justin Allgaier was fourth, followed by Paul Menard.

Driver Robert Richardson Jr. was transported to a hospital after a crash. A team spokesman said Richardson, who hit his head, had a CAT scan that was negative. He also injured his left leg.

It was the fourth Nationwide victory of the season and 10th of his career for Keselowski, who holds a dominant 347-point lead in the series standings.

Keselowski won despite clutch issues that gave him problems during pit stops – and during an attempt at a post-race victory burnout.

“It was an issue on the burnout,” Keselowski joked. “I think that was the most frustrating part.”

Edwards was hoping he could “steal” a victory, but acknowledged the best car won the race.

“Brad was able to just launch out front on that last run,” Edwards said. “It was just a battle for second then, and it was a pretty good battle. I had a pretty good time racing there that last lap.”

It was the second race for NASCAR’s next-generation Nationwide car, which made its debut at Daytona.

“I think it raced well,” Edwards said. “I think the safety improvements are good. The only thing I would wish for is just less downforce, more horsepower.”

Keselowski said Edwards congratulated him in victory lane and downplayed the rivalry.

“Sometimes, cars just run into each other,” Keselowski said. “There was the recipe for the same cake today, and it just didn’t get baked.”

Keselowski dominated the first half of the race, at one point holding a lead of more than 11 seconds. But his clutch acted up on a pit stop near the race’s halfway point, causing him to lose the lead to Menard.

Edwards took the lead on lap 77, with Keselowski on his tail as Menard slipped to third. After some close racing through slower traffic, Keselowski then went back to the lead with 40 laps to go.

Kevin Harvick pitted from third place with 24 laps to go, leaving Keselowski and Edwards in the top two spots before they made their own final stops. Edwards pitted with 22 to go, and Keselowski one lap later.

Still battling clutch problems, Keselowski had trouble getting out of his pits but managed to make it back on the track with only a minimal delay.

Edwards held the lead after the final round of pit stops, as Harvick slid out of contention with a large piece of debris stuck in the front end of his car. He finished 10th.

Meanwhile, Patrick wasn’t competitive.

After going a lap down early, Patrick made a green-flag pit stop on lap 32 so her crew could make major suspension adjustments in an attempt to fix the car’s handling. Patrick then made a mistake coming off pit road, going above the “blend” line as she re-entered the racetrack, and had to serve a pass-through penalty on pit road.

In six Nationwide series starts this season, Patrick’s best finish is 24th at Chicagoland last month.

“They’ve all had their challenges, but I really felt like we were getting it at the end [of the race],” she said.

High school baseball teams in California will have to follow new safety standards for the metal bats they use under rules released Wednesday, in the wake of accidents that brought national attention to the issue of the bats’ safety.

The aluminum bats will be tested to limit the speed of the balls they hit and may include a tamper-proof decal that would change color if the bat was modified to improve performance. While in production, the new bats will be broken in to ensure that their performance — the speed balls travel and the amount they bounce — could not be improved over time with wear.

Schools will be required to use the new bats in January if they are available.

The changes came after 16-year-old pitcher Gunnar Sandberg of Marin County suffered a major head injury when he was hit in the head last March by a line drive off a metal bat.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Wednesday that he will withdraw his proposed two-year moratorium on non-wooden bats for high school baseball teams.

His bill, AB7, sought to ban both aluminum and composite bats until new safety standards were adopted. Huffman said he postponed the bill for months as he worked on safety changes with the California Interscholastic Federation, which sets statewide rules for high school sports.

The new rules released Wednesday will give California a jump start on implementing national standards for aluminum bats, which take effect in 2012.

The CIF announced in July that the composite bats that some high school teams use will also have to meet new national standards. The CIF also will encourage member high schools to require protective headgear for players.

“Safety has always been the top priority, and continues to be the top priority, of the CIF,” said Marie Ishida, executive director of CIF.

Sandberg, who was in a coma for weeks following the accident, said Wednesday that he plans to resume playing baseball this season.

“Even though this new protective gear might not look like just wearing a regular hat, I would say that it’s definitely worth it, after what I’ve been through, and after what other kids have been through,” he said.

Huffman said many other young people have also suffered similar head injuries.

“Not all have recovered. Some young people have been killed from this very same type of incident: a line drive driven by a performance-enhancing metal bat,” he said.

Ishida recommended that those who plan to buy new bats should wait until bats that meet the new standards are available.

Tom Cove, president and chief executive officer of the Maryland-based Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, said companies are rushing to develop new products to meet the standards.

“There will be bats available, but not enough to sell to the whole market by the beginning of next year,” Cove said.

Cove said the changes would make the new metal bats more “wood-like” and take away some of the benefits of composite bats. He said manufacturers do not yet have the technology to create the tamper-proof decals, and he is working with the standard makers to refine that rule.

King James hath spoken and he sounds angry.

After several weeks of backlash from fans, media, his former owner and other NBA past greats, LeBron James suggested he is ready to zip his critics up.

His message came via Twitter.

“Don’t think for one minute that I haven’t been keeping mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone,” he wrote on his Twitter account.

Last month, James announced on a one-hour special on ESPN that he would be leaving his home state of Ohio for Miami’s South Beach to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
Continue Reading »

New Balance Do toning shoes really work? – Sally, New York, N.Y.

Toning shoes, which are all the rage these days, are a style of shoe with a curvy-convex sole reminiscent of your granny’s orthopedic footwear. Sketchers was the first mainstream shoe company to come out with a shoe in this category and to claim walking in them helps improve posture, ease back pain, sculpt the thighs and build a booty that Beyonce would envy, all without entering a gym or brushing past a dumbbell.

MBT was the first unstable shoe on the market and there has been a range of studies on their effects on body mechanics, although much of the research does not focus on muscle strengthening. Other companies (Reebok Easy Tone, Fit Flop, etc.) have followed along in MBT’s footsteps to cash in the trend. Now New Balance has entered the ring with The Rock & Tone and True Balance.
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Lebron James will return to Cleveland in December to face his former team for the first time as a member of the new-look Miami Heat, according to the regular season schedule released by the NBA on Tuesday.

James, who created an instant powerhouse when he decided in July to join fellow All Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, will play in Cleveland on December 2.

The two-time reigning NBA Most Valuable Player could be in for a rude homecoming as several people burned replica number 23 James jerseys in Cleveland moments after a televised announcement where he said he would play for Miami.

Bosh will also face his former team when Miami play the Toronto Raptors on February 16.

The Los Angeles Lakers will host the Boston Celtics on January 30 in a rematch of the 2010 NBA Finals, which the Lakers won in seven games. They will meet again in Boston on February 10.

Miami’s visit to the Celtics on the opening day of the 2010-11 NBA season was announced last week when the league unveiled portions of the schedule.

SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) – Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova squndered four match points before outlasting Polish fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska 6-4, 6-7 (7/9), 6-3 on Sunday to win the WTA San Diego Open.

“This just made me stronger. It didn’t kill me,” Kuznetsova said. “I didn’t kill myself in the third set.”

Kuznetsova captured her 13th career title at the 700,000-dollar hardcourt event, a tuneup for the US Open, and it was the first crown for the 21st-ranked veteran since she beat Radwanska in the Beijing final last October.

The two-time Grand Slam champion botched four match points in the second-set tie-breaker after squandering leads of 4-0 and 6-3, double-faulting twice on match point to open the door for 10th-ranked Radwanska to force a third set.

“I think I did choke for the very first time in my life,” Kuznetsova said. “I never had this choke before. I don’t know why it happened. Here I couldn’t make a ball. My knees were shaking.”

It was the first final for both players since 10 months ago in China.

Kuznetsova, who won three titles in 2009, will jump back into the WTA’s top 20 with the title after reaching only one prior quarter-final this year. She had not tumbled outside the top 20 since February of 2004.

Radwanska will advance to ninth but that was little consolation.

“It’s always disappointing when it’s a long, very tough match,” Radwanska said. “I think it’s much easier to lose 6-1, 6-1 and have no chance. But if it’s a match like this, it hurts.”

If you’re sick of all the LeBron James coverage, well, you’re out of luck. Because we have more!

This time around though, LeBron’s not having his jersey burned or being screamed at in Comic Sans. Instead, he’s just the subject of some old-fashioned booing at the hands of Knicks fans while he attended Carmelo Anthony‘s wedding in New York City.

(Aside: for those that don’t know, booing is what American sports fans used to do before Wikipedia defacement.)

“[LeBron] James was greeted by a round of loud boos from angry New Yorkers outside the wedding in Cipriani 42nd Street when he arrived with his girlfriend Savannah Brinson, myFOXny.com reported” Continue Reading »

ORLANDO, Fla. — Magic coach Stan Van Gundy, like a lot of the old-school basketball minds around the NBA, just chuckled Wednesday at the absurdity of a LeBron James television show, poking fun at the top free agents who held the rest of the league hostage to promote themselves shamelessly through this process.

Van Gundy, who once coached in Miami and remains a close friend of Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, also predicted that James would stay in Cleveland, scoffing at the speculation that he would join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in South Florida.

Wade and Bosh announced earlier in the day that they both have agreed to sign with the Heat in Miami. James will make his announcement Thursday with an hour-long television special.

“If he went anywhere but Cleveland, I’d be shocked,” Van Gundy said before the Orlando Summer League action began Wednesday. “But I’d be doubly shocked if he went to Miami.”

Van Gundy did speak in admiration for the team that the Heat are now putting together after convincing Bosh to leave Toronto and join Wade in Miami. Continue Reading »