2011 September at BetLM

Jason Campbell Leads the League in Roughing the Passer Penalties

Michael Vick raised the ques­tion this week about whether ref­er­ees pro­tect cer­tain quar­ter­backs more than oth­ers. It turns out that the quar­ter­back who draws rough­ing the passer penal­ties most fre­quently is not a superstar. Raiders quar­ter­back Jason Camp­bell has drawn rough­ing the passer penal­ties at a higher rate than any other quar­ter­back in the NFL since the start of the 2010 sea­son, accord­ing to for­mer head of offi­ci­at­ing Mike Pereira, who posted the data at FOXSports.com. Yes, Al Davis, the offi­cials are pro­tect­ing your quar­ter­back... 

Can Newman Still Win It All?

The 2011 Chase for the Cup is only two races old and already Denny Ham­lin is effec­tively out of the Cham­pi­onship bat­tle. Ham­lin is 66 points behind Tony Stew­art with eight races to go. It is not impos­si­ble but it is extremely unlikely that Ham­lin will be able to contend. Ryan New­man in eleventh is just 34 points off the lead. I think New­man is still close enough to have a shot but he will need to put some top fin­ishes on the board and eat into that deficit over the next three races or so to put him­self in position. Is 34 points too much to over­come or does Ryan still... 

Exiled Sampson Admits Mistakes, Rues Bad Timing of Offenses

Kelvin Samp­son was mocked, ridiculed and later ban­ished from the NCAA for five years. Not for hand­ing a bag of money to a recruit, aca­d­e­mic fraud or even lying to the NCAA. His sen­tence — which was deliv­ered about three years ago — was for mak­ing ille­gal phone calls. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Sure, Samp­son was a repeat offender who had com­mit­ted the ini­tial act while at Okla­homa and then did some­thing sim­i­lar at Indiana. Just imag­ine if it hap­pened now, in the world where agents and run­ners are run­ning so ram­pant that some experts believe... 

Wounded Wildcat Parrom Back on Campus After Shooting

TUCSON, Ariz. — Ari­zona bas­ket­ball player Kevin Par­rom is back on cam­pus in Tuc­son after being wounded in a shoot­ing while vis­it­ing fam­ily in New York City. Coach Sean Miller issued a state­ment say­ing Par­rom, a 6-foot-6 junior swing­man, returned Mon­day night. He is to return to classes and begin reha­bil­i­ta­tion this week. Par­rom received gun­shot wounds to his right knee and left hand in what police called a dis­pute at a res­i­dence in the Bronx about 1 a.m. on Saturday. Miller says the uni­ver­sity will pro­vide “com­pre­hen­sive sup­port”... 

David Stern Threatens NBA Season as Negotiating Tactic

Every­thing David Stern says right now to the media is spin. Every­thing is designed to put pres­sure on the NBA play­ers and get a deal the own­ers like. (It’s the same for Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher, save they are try­ing to pres­sure the owners.) But he stepped up the rhetoric after Wednesday’s nego­ti­at­ing ses­sion. Fol­low­ing two days of talks that have seen enough progress to war­rant larger talks on Fri­day fea­tur­ing own­ers and play­ers nego­ti­at­ing com­mit­tees, Stern decided to throw down the gaunt­let (a quote reported sev­eral places includ­ing... 

Eight Guys Likely Waived Under New CBA Amnesty Clause

Next time you’re pos­i­tive you know who is going to get cut with the com­ing NBA amnesty clause, remem­ber this: In 2005 it was nick­named the Allan Hous­ton clause after the wildly over­paid Knicks guard. Except the Knicks didn’t cut him. We don’t know who will get cut this time around, but we have heard an amnesty clause that allows a team to wipe a player off the offi­cial pay­roll (lux­ury tax and salary cap) is almost a cer­tainty in the new labor deal. It’s a one time shot. Remem­ber — the play­ers will still get paid. The amnesty will wipe a player’s salary off... 

Hakim Warrick Eyes a Bounce-Back Year for Himself and the Suns

Every NBA team has lofty aspi­ra­tions by the time train­ing camp rolls around, and it seems that even the league’s hold­ing pat­tern couldn’t quell the pre­sea­son opti­mism of a par­tic­u­lar spokesman for a land­locked team. The Phoenix Suns aren’t in the best of shape. They haven’t had a chance to make any sig­nif­i­cant addi­tions to their ros­ter, and are left with the same crew that ranked 25th in defen­sive effi­ciency last sea­son. There’s a rea­son, after all, why trad­ing Steve Nash and blow­ing up the ros­ter is a topic wor­thy of dis­cus­sion; with­out... 

Player Numbers Will Be Added to Helmets to Help Identify NHLers

Base­ball play­ers don’t require their ath­letes to have their num­ber on their hel­met when they step into the batter’s box. Bas­ket­ball doesn’t require play­ers to tat­too their num­ber on their fore­head; they don’t need num­bers on their head­bands either. The NFL doesn’t require their teams to put player num­bers on the front of helmets—although some teams rock the num­bers as a fash­ion state­ment (we’re look­ing at you Pitts­burgh Steel­ers and New York Foot­ball Giants). But the NHL doesn’t care about any of that noise. They’re set­ting their own... 

Ailing Djokovic Pulls Out of China Open

BEIJING —Top-ranked Novak Djokovic has pulled out of the China Openbecause of a back injury. Tour­na­ment orga­niz­ers said the defend­ing cham­pion with­drew because thelat­est med­ical checks show the injury he sus­tained while win­ning the U.S. Openhas not yet healed. The tour­na­ment in Bei­jing starts on Mon­day. It is not yet clear whether the24-year-old Serb will also skip the Shang­hai Mas­ters that starts in two weeks. Djokovic has said the par­tial rup­ture of a back mus­cle that forced him toquit his Davis Cup semi­fi­nal match against Argentina’s Juan Mar­tin... 

Kevin Youkilis Placed on 60-Day DL, Done for Season

Update: Boston made it offi­cial, plac­ing Youk­ilis on the 60-day dis­abled list to open up a ros­ter for Clay Buch­holz prior to Wednesday’s game. Kevin Youk­ilis hasn’t offi­cially been ruled out for the play­offs if the Red Sox end up win­ning the Wild Card, but man­ager Terry Fran­cona indi­cated today that he’s not expect­ing to have him back in the lineup before 2012. “The writ­ing is kind of on the wall,” Fran­cona told Brian MacPher­son of the Prov­i­dence Jour­nal. “I don’t think you’re going to see him play again. I wish he would, and he’s tried...