Dennis Rodman has endorsed Donald Trump for president. On Friday, the five-time NBA champion tweeted that the Donald “has been a great friend for many years.”
"We don’t need another politician, we need a businessman like Mr. Trump! Trump 2016,” he added.
Trump responded on Twitter, writing, “Thank you @DennisRodman. It’s time to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain! I hope you are doing well!”
Belgium may seek compensation over the €4.5m (£3.2m) spent on its unsuccessful 2018 World Cup bid if Fifa’s decision to award the finals to Russia is found to be fraudulent.
“If fraud is proven, it is obvious to me that we will seek compensation,” the Belgian Football Federation chairman, François de Keersmaecker, told Het Nieuwsblad. The country made a joint bid with the Netherlands that cost €9m.The article doesn't mention if Netherlands has decided also to sue.
So, let's get this straight: A not-very-good team beat a world-class team, 3-1. That does happen sometimes; when it happens, it generally indicates either great coaching or a magnificent performance by the not-very-good team (and calls for congrats to them), or a crap performance by the world-class team.
- The USA, well, they just aren’t that good
- Australia has developed into a world-class team
Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner said during a TV address that he would reveal information about institutional corruption in the soccer body. Warner alleged that he provided documents outlining links between FIFA, its funding, and the 2010 election in Warner’s native Trinidad and Tobago. According to Warner, Blatter is implicated in the transactions.
Warner is one of the 14 people recently charged by the U.S. Justice Department for accepted bribes and kickbacks estimated at upwards of $150m over a 24-year period. The former vice president, who faces extradition to the United States, denies the charges against him.
Another top FIFA official who had been previously charged with corruption, Chuck Blazer, has also outlined bribe-taking. According to a newly released transcript of a 2013 plea deal, Blazer admitted that he and other FIFA officials accepted money in exchange for supporting South Africa as the 2010 World Cup hosts. South African officials have denied the allegations.
The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, partnering with the State of Qatar, “committed to utilizing its research and development for sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar, the Middle East, and other arid and water-stressed regions throughout the world,” according to the Clinton Foundation website.
The cost of the two-year project is not listed on the Clinton Foundation website, but the Qatar 2022 committee gave the foundation between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014 and the State of Qatar gave between $1 million and $5 million in previous, unspecified years.Of course, it’s no surprise at this point to find the Clintons mixed up anywhere sleazy money is to be made.
The ball fields at Delano-Hitch Park were covered in snow when Jim Wilson launched a campaign to keep them in use. As president of the City of Newburgh Little League, he had seen participation numbers plummet to the point where the league was in danger of folding. Now, he and the league’s board of directors were calling parents one by one, asking if their children would play this spring.To the extent that kids don't play the sport anymore, its future is in jeopardy.Oh, and I should mention that the two games I went to last year, I left early, because they were so slow and long and boring.
The researchers used data from a 2009 Sports Illustrated survey on fan devotion, looking mostly at the survey question, "Which school is your biggest conference rival?" Researchers noted how successful schools generate feelings of rivalry from many schools, such as the University of Southern California within its conference. They concluded Boise State was the most hated team in 2009.
Within a conference, the most intense two-way rivalry was between Central Michigan and Western Michigan, according to researchers. Next was the rivalry between Arizona and Arizona State.
"This does not mean that feelings are stronger in Michigan than they are in Arizona," Deck said in a statement. "It only means that the fan base's feelings about each other are more aligned. In other words, Central Michigan fans' dislike is concentrated on Western Michigan and vice versa, slightly more so than the mutual feelings of dislike between Arizona and Arizona State, because those fans also dislike USC."Go Devils!
Arizona athletic Greg Byrne confirmed to the Star that there have been discussions about bringing a bowl game back to Tucson, but said it’s far from a done deal.
“We are aware of conversations,” Byrne told the Star. “Nothing has been decided, but we obviously want to try to promote Tucson and the state of Arizona as much as we possibly can.”Tucson had a bowl for ten years or so late in the last century. It started out as the Copper Bowl, and then went under a variety of aliases before moving to Phoenix, where it's treated as the disreputable cousin of the Fiesta Bowl and continues to change its name periodically (I have no idea what it currently calls itself).
” … if the [non-profit/tax-exempt] organization regularly carries on trade or business activities that are unrelated to its exempt purpose, the income from those activities is subject to federal income taxation at the same rates applicable to for-profit corporations.”That would seem to cover collegiate sports.
But the business behind one of America's most slow-going, expensive and old-fashioned pastimes has rapidly begun to fall apart. TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, the world's biggest maker of golf clubs and clothes, saw sales nosedive 28 percent last year, its parent company Adidas said Thursday.
"A decline in the number of active players ... caused immense problems in the entire industry, and as a market leader, this hit us particularly hard," Adidas chief executive Herbert Hainer said on a call with analysts.
It's been years since the increasingly unpopular sport of golf plunked into the rough, and the industry now is realizing that it may not be able to ever get out. All the qualities that once made it so elite and exclusive are, analysts say, now playing against it.
The game -- with its drivers, clubs, shoes and tee times -- is expensive both to prepare for and to play. It's difficult, dissuading amateurs from giving it a swing, and time-consuming, limiting how much fans can play. [...]
Even Jack Nicklaus, perhaps the greatest golfer in history, makes a strong argument for why new players aren't flocking to golf.
"I'd like to play a game that can take place in three hours," Nicklaus told CNN in January. "I'd quite like to play a game that I can get some reasonable gratification out of very quickly -- and something that is not going to cost me an arm and a leg."The number of young people (18-30) playing golf has dropped 35% in the past ten years. Fewer women and minorities are playing as well, and those who play are playing less often.
That drop-off has hit America's greens and links hard. More golf courses closed than opened in 2013 for the eighth straight year, according to the National Golf Foundation. And the number of course closures has sped up, averaging 137 closings every year since 2011, data from golf-industry researcher Pellucid show.That's the sport from a participation standpoint. As for fans watching the game – well, that's more bad news, with the problem there being that fans seem to be interested only in Tiger Woods not in the game itself, and Tiger looks like he's nearing the end of the line.
Consider these words about Woods from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who spoke with reporters the day before the tournament began at Torrey Pines:
“Candidly, I think when [Woods] tees it up this week, everybody in the world is going to want to see how he’s going to play, because here you have a guy who was so incredibly good for such a long time and he’s struggling out there. [Even] if he’s not winning golf tournaments, people still want to see Tiger Woods play golf. As long as he’s playing, he’s still going to have the same impact.’’
Finchem’s words were equal parts arrogant, insensitive and truthful.
Woods’ presence in the game has made Finchem, the players on the PGA Tour and everyone else surrounding the game countless millions of dollars and opened up endless opportunities for many.
For nearly 20 years, Woods has been a crutch — for Finchem, for TV, for those of us in the news media, for equipment manufacturers and everyone else involved in the game. That crutch is splintering and weakening.
With Woods’ age (39), increasing list of surgeries, swing changes, new coaches and health-related tournament withdrawals, we are fast approaching a time when we need to come to this realization: If we like golf, we had better get used to taking interest in the PGA Tour pros out there who are not named Tiger Woods.I wonder how long people will continue to watch Tiger Woods suck. The PGA and the TV people who are deeply invested of course hope that this strange fascination will continue indefinitely, but I suspect fans will tire of it fairly soon.
The average baseball is only used for a few pitches in the U.S. Major Leagues, but for the Costa Ricans who make them each ball is the result of hours of painstaking stitching by hand.
For 10 hours a day, workers at the world's only factory authorized to supply Major League Baseball, in the town of Turrialba in central Costa Rica, sit at desks yanking strands of waxy red fiber to form each baseball's 108 stitches.Apparently, efforts have been made to automate the stitching process, but the results have been deemed unsatisfactory.
