Quick note from the PlayStation Blog: Dustin Pedroia, the 2008 AL MVP, will appear on the cover of MLB 09 The Show. David Wright, David Ortiz and Ryan Howard were the most recent cover athletes for The Show. Is this the guy you would've picked?

Not sure if "MaZe" is going to make his way to FirstCuts to post today because he's on his grind at the Jordan Brand press event for the new Jordan 2009, the sneaker will follow in place of the numbered series.



The picture above, and a few others, have been floating around the web for a bit. The shoe is set to hit stores on Feb. 14. To follow his real-time coverage of the event, check out his Twitter feed.

(H/T to Soleblvd for the photo.)

Busy day yesterday kept me from passing along this gem that I got in e-mail on Tuesday. 2K has a $10 off deal on some of their games, and included in the group are NBA 2K9 and NHL 2K9. (Also, for the non-sports lover, the critically acclaimed title Bioshock.) And just think, with that $10 you save, you can eat!

Click here to print your coupon.

On Wednesday night, ESPN swapped its NBA broadcast team with its college hoops team, sending Dick Vitale and Dan Shulman to Heat-Nuggets and Mike Tirico, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson to Davidson-Duke. Chris Littmann takes a look at the college half, and TSB's Bethlehem Shoals looks at the NBA nightcap.

Toward the end of Dickie V's brave, brave venture into NBA broadcasting, the man admitted that he didn't watch much of the pro game. So I'll come right out and say that, since I only care about the NCAA as it relates to the Association, mostly Vitale is that weird screaming dude on draft night who suffers from a serious lack of perspective and acumen. But it's not like I don't know the man, or his signature style, or the ways in which he's directly shaped the coverage and packaging of college basketball, if not the game itself. The question is, what does this have to do with the next level? Does it translate, or even make sense?

It's funny, I really thought it would feel good to rip Vitale's attempts at calling Heat-Nuggets. Even once it became like punching a blind man lost in the grocery store. The predictable catch phrases rang double hollow; eventually, he just started praising the general athleticism of the league. When he did make a point, it was always "remember when he did such and such in college," even if college was five or six years ago. There was some crow-eating on the subject of Dwight Howard, and a general sense of awe that a preps-to-pro pick like Howard or J.R. Smith, who had a tremendous night, could indeed pan out. In Smith's case, though, the fact that he'd initially committed to UNC somehow made things make sense for Vitale, if not vindicate him.

Actually, one of the sillier things he said all night -- that a special panel should determine which kids can jump from high school to the NBA, and every other student-athlete is stuck for three seasons -- was probably the most interesting, too. Except I'd suggest tracking guarantees, rather than getting Michael Jordan and Rod Thorn to form a tribunal of star-casting. Especially since Jordan's terrible at that stuff, and Thorn's drafting of Jordan was kind of a no-brainer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note before I get into tonight's recap and review. Give me your questions to ask Jason Katims, Friday Night Lights' executive producer, who I'll be speaking with on Thursday.

Anyway, I’ve tried to write these post toppers all season long in a manner that doesn’t spoil the story, but we’re so far along, I’ll just say it’s the penultimate episode of Season Three (and possibly the series), so just go past the jump for spoilers and reaction already! (And note that while I have seen the finale, this was written before I ever watched it.)

Read the rest of this entry »

eBay is full of hidden gems, particularly when it comes to sports-related items. David Arnott brings you the best oddities.

When I was in fifth grade, I had competing dreams. I wanted to be both the biggest rock star in the world, playing a stadium tour that went from Budokan to Wembley, and the best baseball player in the world, leading the San Francisco Giants to World Series championships as the cleanup hitter and ace closer. Unfortunately for me, both of those dreams have mostly died, but I can still show off my rock and roll soul by taking the field with a Bob Dylan model glove.

Even if you're not a Dylan fan, it's impossible to escape him. Scholars devote their whole professional lives arguing his meanings, but the main contribution he made to culture that survives in every genre of American music is the primacy of the authentic storyteller. Without Dylan, someone might have come along and made it okay for massively popular music to be serious art, but in this world, he was the one who did it.

In many ways, Dylan is to rock music what Buck O'Neil was to baseball. Thoughtful, intense, trailblazing, authentic. If you've read Joe Posnanski's book about O'Neil, The Soul of Baseball, you might see what I'm getting at. Perhaps it's best explained by noting that one of the things Dylan holds dear about music, the feeling of sound bouncing off a small club's walls, is right in line with Poznanski's description of O'Neil sitting behind the backstop, watching a game, and listening to claps and shouts, the crack of the bat -- what he called "baseball music".

We're looking for the best/worst of sports-related shirts from around the world to feature in this space. If you have a submission, send it to FirstCuts@sportingnews.com.

Some men aspire for the double-double, some for the triple-double, and then there's Club Trillion -- a trio of Ohio State benchwarmers -- who wants nothing more on their stat line than one minute of playing time and a string of zeros after that. No rebounds, no shot attempts, no assists, no steals, no blocks, no points, no free throw attempts. Nothing. Thus the Club Trillion moniker. A stat line that looks like this: 1000000000000. That's the dream for Kyle Madsen, Danny Peters, and Mark Titus.

Ya know, these are the sort of guys that fans should really support. It's easy to root for the stars, the big programs, the guys that throw down the triple-doubles. It's fun to be behind a winner. But these guys, the stiffs who pile up zeros in the stat line, are more like us -- the 90 percent of guys who hack through their rec league or pick-up games purely for fun. Forget the LeBron shirts. Pick up a Club Tril tee and rep the kind of player you might have been if you were a foot taller, didn't wear rec specs, and could hit a free throw.

Over the past couple of years, Nike has been experimenting with the hybrid footwear concept. The sneaker hybrid was officially introduced with Nike's "1Time Only" Pack which fused classic Nike Running sneakers to the new Air Max 360 sole. The "1Time Only" Pack served a great platform to introduce the 360 sole to a consumer that would not normally be interested in anything new from Nike.

Since then, the hybrid concept has become a large-scale initiative that has produced hybrids in several footwear categories. For the first time, Nike is set to go across the running and basketball categories to create a hybrid performance basketball sneaker from a performance running sneaker, named the Nike Hoop Structure. The Nike Air Hoop Structure is the Nike Air Structure Triax 91 running sneaker optimized for performance Basketball with additional padding at the tongue, a higher cut, and a reworked outsole. A lot of the design characteristics that make the Triax 91 a classic, still remain intact.

The Infrared Nike Air Hoop Structure features the classic Triax 91 Infrared colorway with its mix of Black, White, Blue and Infrared including the OG alternating color with Blue on one side of the sneaker and Infrared on the other. Part of the midsole/outsole retooling, the Infrared Nike Air Hoop Structure features a clear outsole piece like the recently released Air Flight Lite High.

Word has it that the Infrared Nike Air Hoop Structure pictured in this post may be scrapped, but, there is a White/Navy/Red colorway planned for July and a Black/Red colorway planned for September.