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When the Seattle Seahawks face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday, more than a hundred million Americans will tune in to root for one side or the other, or maybe just to watch the commercials. Prognosticators have any number of ways of handicapping the matchup: Maybe defense wins championships, maybe it’s all about the run game or special teams, or maybe one superstar can take over a game. But from a political perspective, history argues the Seahawks have the advantage. That’s because their fan base looks much more like the American electorate than the Patriots’ fan...

Active NFL players weren’t the only ones making headlines this week. Tim Tebow, existing on the seedy outskirts of the sport as a host for the SEC Network, wrestled himself an invite to a celebrity golf tournament in Phoenix in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.The good news: Tim Tebow won. The bad news: It was a golf tournament, not an NFL game. The worse news: It wasn’t even a real golf tournament. It was the Phoenix Open Celebrity par-3 tournament, which is sort of a step up from Putt-Putt. Sort of.He played the Phoenix Open Pro-Am with...

While everyone is gearing up to see the New England Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, the real highlight of this Sunday will be watching puppies play in Puppy Bowl XI, airing Feb. 1 at 3 p.m. on Animal Planet. For the first time in Puppy Bowl history, there will be two distinct teams. That is, instead of puppies simply running rampant, jumping and nipping at each other. Team Ruff and Team Fluff will go snout-to-snout to battle for the "Lumbarki" trophy, according to Animal Planet's website, while one or more dogs will be crowned...

Would you leave a multi-billion dollar business up to chance? What if all of that time, emotion, and money has been wasted on a lie? What if the action on the field isn’t what it appears to be? What if you, and millions others like you, have been duped – outright lied to – by those franchises you hold so dear to your heart, all in the name of making an easy buck? Well, my friend, it has happened. And although your name might not be “Mark,” you have certainly become one to those running the carnival known as professional...

Exploiting loopholes in the rulebook helped launch Seattle's budding dynasty There's a team in Super Bowl XLIX that, for years, has created a major competitive advantage by blatantly disregarding NFL rules. I'm talking about the Seattle Seahawks, of course. Focused on 24 PSIs of missing hot air and hype in New England, we've all missed an actual rules revolution going on in Seattle that, with one more win on Sunday in Arizona, could fundamentally change the NFL -- forever. Over the past three years the Seahawks have done something no one in the white-socks-and-black-shoes, stuck-in-the-1950s NFL ever dreamed possible, or...

OK!!! It's time to start an official (semi) Freerepublic superbowl prediction thread! My prediction... 27-17 Seattle!!

Maybe the smoking gun isn’t in a bathroom at Gillette Stadium. Maybe it’s in the laptop of a civil engineer in Washington, D.C. One of the strangest twists in the already strange saga of deflate-gate is the sudden star turn of a man who runs a gambling website when he’s not doing his day job. Warren Sharp is a 36-year-old dad who loves numbers and algorithms, and decided to apply some statistics to the Patriots when he heard about the football deflation investigation. What he found sent ripples through the sports world and got a few other statisticians pretty upset....

We would like to take this opportunity to separate fact from fiction: There was never a Muslim prayer – or a prayer of any specific religion at the Stock Show this year. Because the Stock Show is an annual community event that attracts many visitors from around the world, country and state each year, last spring, we established a faith-based committee consisting of a wide range of local clergy. We based our decision on and selected our participants from the Mayor’s Faith Cabinet Directory. We invited each participant to provide a one-minute prayer to include the safety of the contestants,...

PHOENIX — The New England Patriots owner and Seattle Seahawks cornerback were trading insults while the NFL was reportedly reviewing video of a Patriots employee going into the bathroom with a bag of footballs. Just when you thought Super Bowl Media Day couldn’t get any more bizarre... Thanks to DeflateGate, though, there seems to be no limit to this theater of the absurd, which took yet another twist as the Patriots and Seahawks met a mass of reporters at the U.S. Airways Center on Tuesday. The backdrop was a report that the NFL had video of a Patriots locker room...

The folks up at our sister station WBLM in Portland have created their own DeflateGate anthem. We wanted to share it with you and honor our New England Patriots.

Just fill the ball with warm humid indoor air, then when it temperature-equalizes with the 25°F cooler outdoor air on your AFC Championship playing field some of the water vapor in the ball will condense into water, leaving less air in the ball, solving the great mystery: how did the footballs used by the Championship winning New England Patriots show 12.5 psi of inflation pressure in the official pre-game check but only 10.5 psi when checked at halftime? There is also a decrease in pressure due to the cooling of the molecules that remain gaseous. Those air molecules are not...

BOSTON (CBS) — You may have noticed that Tom Brady didn’t look himself at Tuesday’s Media Day. No, it wasn’t his bed head. And it wasn’t from a lack of sleep thanks to an early morning fire alarm at the team’s hotel. As he prepares for the biggest game of the season, the Patriots quarterback is battling a cold. And if you thought he looked rough on Tuesday, he looked a bit worse on Wednesday as he addressed the media at the team hotel in Chandler, Arizona. “It’s been lingering,” Brady told reporters as he held court for nearly 45...

Can Teddy Bear the Porcupine accurately predict the winner of the Super Bowl for the FOURTH year in a row? Don't ever underestimate the power of po'pine prognostication! See who he picks to win Super Bowl XLIX (2015). Copyright 2015, Zooniversity LLC. Online sites are welcome to link to this address or embed with Google ads intact (no ad blocking). FILE COPYING IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WITHO

Some day college football players will learn not everything needs to be shared to the public. Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones found that out, as you may have heard by now, but things turned out OK for him. Maybe Penn State sophomore safety Bryant Harper will learn a lesson after being publicly scorned by his head coach on Twitter. On Monday, Harper took to Twitter to boast about a B he received on a recent anatomy exam. "B on my first anatomy exam and I didn't study I'll take it" Penn State head coach James Franklin, known to be fluent...

On first glance you might miss it. But what race officials in Houston spotted in a photographer’s finish line-area picture of a horse race has led to the jockey facing felony charges.

There is no joy in Wrigleyville. Mighty Ernie has checked out. At 83. Cub fans aren't the only ones in baseball's world who think that, for Ernie Banks, it's still too young to go. Winning with class is easy compared to losing with grace, good humor, and the inner peace of knowing you did the best you could with what you had. But then there was Banks. The prototype of the power-hitting shortstop whose knees turned him into a first baseman who could still hit but had to prove himself every spring, anyway, his sunny nature couldn't be killed by...

On the uniform's front, Warriors is spelled out in Mandarin with the sleeve featuring a goat, the animal the Chinese attribute to this upcoming year. The jersey also features red and yellow piping. Red is the color associated with good luck, while yellow is connected to wealth and happiness. "The meaning of a warrior certainly translates into the Chinese culture well as they are very familiar with what being a warrior means," said the team's president and chief operating officer Rick Welts. "I think they'd be hard pressed to make a similar connection to the Lakers." The team plans on...

A sports bar is a great place to watch the big game. But if you’re buying a TV for your Super Bowl party at home, Consumer Reports has complete buying advice. Its testers say a screen that’s at least 50 inches or larger is a good size for a crowd. Testers in Consumer Reports’ labs size up hundreds of TVs every year. Also important is a set that delivers a wide viewing angle. When you’re watching a big game with a crowd of friends, not everyone is going to get that great seat front and center. One of the concerns...

Deflategate has taken another twist. FOX Sports has learned that the NFL has zeroed in on a New England Patriots locker-room attendant in connection with the scandal of improperly inflated footballs used in the AFC championship game against Indianapolis. The person of interest was already interviewed by the league. The NFL is trying to determine whether any wrongdoing by this individual occurred, sources tell FOX Sports. There is surveillance video showing the attendant taking the footballs from the official's locker room into another room at Gillette Stadium before bringing them out to the field, sources tell FOX Sports.

But what has the NFL really found? As one league source has explained it to PFT, the football intercepted by Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson was roughly two pounds under the 12.5 PSI minimum. The other 10 balls that reportedly were two pounds under may have been, as the source explained it, closer to one pound below 12.5 PSI.

Saturday Night Live got its hands on Bill Belichick’s and Tom Brady’s balls Saturday night, spoofing the prickly pair with a mock press conference that transitioned into a raucous scene from “A Few Good Men.”

UFC on Fox 14 Gustaffson vs. Johnson

http://patskrieg.com/2015/01/23/31-reasons-to-get-off-your-high-horse-nfl/

Deflate-gate: Patriots Coach Says 'Climatic Conditions' May Have Under-Inflated Balls Jan 24, 2015 By DEAN SCHABNER More From Dean » New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick today said "climatic conditions" may have been to blame for the footballs that were under-inflated Sunday for the AFC Championship game, and said the team had not tried to tamper with them. He said the team "followed the rules to the letter," denying any intentional wrongdoing by the Patriots. "At no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage," Belichick said.

In the year of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy, they've somehow managed to trump serious cases of domestic abuse by blowing a silly, inane, moronic controversy over the inflation of game balls into a national story that gets more sublime and ridiculous by the day. The league didn't take their time and do due diligence on what really mattered in the Ray Rice case, and delivered a hasty judgment that Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted was ill-conceived. Now, they're taking their sweet time to decide who may have taken too much air out of the balls, a violation that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk&x-yt-cl=84503534&x-yt-ts=1421914688

ESPN AUDIO has revamped its weekend lineup. Among the changes are eight new shows, including the expansion of an existing podcast to a weekly radio show and the launch of a new show presented by the female-centric espnW website. The new shows include "espnW PRESENTS: SPAIN AND PRIM" (noon-2p (ET) SATURDAYS) with SARAH SPAIN and PRIM SIRIPAPA ..................................................... espnW Editor-in-Chief ALISON OVERHOLT said, “SPAIN AND PRIM is yet another extension of espnW’s increasingly successful cross-platform expansion, and one we began fostering with ESPN RADIO last year with our first show focused on domestic violence and the NFL’s reaction. SARAH and...

The Seattle Seahawks lead the NFL in suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs since Pete Carroll became coach in 2010, research by ESPN Stats & Information shows.

Cable TV is about to get more expensive for millions of consumers because of a bidding war between networks and the country’s most powerful sports leagues. Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and scores of rural cable providers are tacking on sports surcharges each month, the direct result of higher fees they are paying to ESPN and other sports networks to carry their channels. Beginning Feb. 5, DirecTV will raise fees by 5.7 percent. The rise in cable prices is likely to test the patience of customers, who may already be tempted to cut their cords in exchange for streaming options that...

The name on the card that night in May seemed to draw as much anxiety as it did excitement. Johnny Manziel, Quarterback, Texas A&M. The former Heisman Trophy winner had been passed over 21 times, prompting a text from Manziel to then-Browns quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains that he wanted to "wreck this league" in Cleveland. The words were actually more R-rated, but the implication was clear. Twitter erupted at the selection. A Cleveland radio host cheered and screamed openly on air. Manziel gave his "money" sign as he walked onstage to greet Roger Goodell. By season's end, cheering had turned...

...One can clearly see the Patriots, visually, are off the chart. There is no other team even close to being near to their rate of 187 offensive plays per fumble lost. The league average is 105 plays per fumble lost. Most teams are within 21 plays of that number. I spoke with a data scientist whom I know from work on NFLproject.com and sent him the data. He said: Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk Danish archer Lars Andersen might be the most accomplished archer of our time. Not because of any awards or medals, but purely because of what he has accomplished by studying ancient texts and paintings. Andersen posted a video on Friday attempting to disprove the Hollywood myth of archery. Not only that, he explains how the art of archery is lost on today's archers because a majority of them stand still and aim at their target rather than be able to run, shoot, and hit their targets while also being able to shoot rapidly. Andersen says that the ultimate feat...

Yesterday, I visited my mom and we watched a popular talk show. In the middle of the show, a breaking news update flashed on the screen. Suddenly the show was interrupted. My mind began to race. Did something happen to our President? Was there another terrorist attack? Did a school shooting occur? Soon my fears were erased. Patriots QB Tom Brady was in a press conference, denying claims he knew about deflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game. This was the breaking news that interrupted a scheduled program. I’ll admit I’m not a football fan. I also barely watch TV....

Under his oversized ski cap, Tom Brady could not hide from the fact he was convicting himself in the court of public opinion. The quarterback of the New England Patriots admitted that footballs pumped up to 12.5 pounds per square inch are "a perfect fit for me," yet swore he did not notice a difference in the AFC Championship Game when most of the balls had significantly less pressure. Brady's story Thursday was harder to believe than the story of the 199th pick in the NFL draft becoming one of the greatest players of all time... "I would never do...

All youth football games would be required to have a doctor present to monitor possible concussions as part of legislation considered Friday by the New York City Council. The hearing focused on the safety of young players who are even more vulnerable to brain injuries than their counterparts in high school, college and professional leagues. “It’s too common that kids are taught that getting your bell rung is OK and you need to play through it,” said Councilman Corey Johnson, a Democrat from Manhattan. “Repeated concussions can cause lifelong health injuries especially when the brain does not have time to...

<p>“I did not believe what Tom had to say,” former quarterback and ESPN analyst Mark Brunell said. “Those balls were deflated. Someone had to do it and I don’t believe there’s an equipment manager in the NFL that would on his own initiative deflate a ball without the starting quarterback’s approval. I just didn’t believe what Tom Brady had to say.”</p>

Patriots defenders constantly make the point that deflated balls were not a big deal last Sunday, because the Pats won so convincingly over Indy. Maybe. But what about the Ravens game a week earlier? That one WAS close - 35-31. Does anyone really think the Pats weren't pulling their under-inflation tricks then, that it just started last week? Other teams raised the issue back in November, so it's reasonable to assume it's been going on since at least then.

Is Tom Brady telling the truth? Is he lying? Can both scenarios be possible? Is it remotely plausible that some unnamed, unknown, mystery equipment manager altered the footballs without Brady's knowledge and approval … or did 11 of the Patriots' footballs, but not one of the Colts, nor apparently 12 more backup footballs from the Patriots, lose pressure naturally?

For more than a decade, Tom Brady has established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time, one of the sport’s most popular and respected players. On Wednesday, Brady may have jeopardized his credibility for good. Like Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Brady denied having anything to do with footballs being deflated in the AFC Championship Game and denied knowing it had occurred until the next day, but to the quarterback’s former peers, the NFL’s golden boy lost some of the luster he had earned in his 15-year career. “I did not believe what Tom had to say,” former quarterback...

What is missing in the 'DeflateGate' NFL analysis? Simple. How the Colts, once succumbing to a 14-0 deficit, had to THEN shift from running the ball 40% of the time to running it only less than 17% the rest of the first half upon falling behind by those scores. It was, after all, "Deflady Brady's" deep pass down the left side of the field to S. Vereen (30 yards) to the Indy 17-yard line that set up the second Patriot score. One wonders what might have happened on that pass in the driving rain had the "underinflation" not been at...

Jeff Gordon announced that 2015 will be the last year for him to run in NASCAR full time. He hasn't ruled out individual events after 2015 but has not announced any plans. He remains an equity owner in Hendricks Motorsports and will remain active in NASCAR as an equity owner and supporting his foundation. The fact that Chase Elliott is expected to move into the Hendricks Motorsports Cup stable in 2016 probably had a to do with the announcement.

Indianapolis Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson, who says he didn’t snitch on the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, told NFL Media’s Jeff Darlington that Brady was using a Colts football at the end of the first half Sunday night. Jackson spoke to an official, who said they couldn’t locate a usable football, during a TV timeout when the Patriots had the ball. Later in the first half, Jackson noticed that the Patriots were using Colts footballs.

Hope Solo has been caught up in lots of legal issues recently, including being charged with domestic violence before her case was dropped. On Monday morning, she was in the car when her husband Jerramy Stevens was arrested for DUI. She wasn't suspended for either of these things, presumably because she wasn't convicted of a crime and didn't violate any specific team rules.

Here's a list of the events for the weekend. Thursday - Top Prospects Game - 7 PM Top Prospects Game Friday - All Star Draft - 8 PM All Star Draft Saturday - All Star Skills Competition - 7 PM All Star Skills Competition Sunday - All Star Game - 5 PM All Star Game

Belichick addressed the controversy for the first time Thursday morning and made a number of strong and precise comments that, if he isn't telling the truth, can be fairly easily contradicted or even proven completely false. If that were to happen, his reputation would be finished. Instead he claimed ignorance, threw the controversy onto quarterback Tom Brady – who always should have been at the center of this – and willingly and purposefully put himself in a box. Belichick repeatedly mentioned he believes current and former players or staff members – or anyone else – will confirm what he said....

Bill Belichick said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated in Sunday’s game. By Matt PepinGlobe Staff January 22, 2015 Coach Bill Belichick said he did not know of any issue with the Patriots’ game balls in Sunday’s AFC Championship, and did not learn the league was investigating his team until Monday morning. He also said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated during the game. “I have no explanation for what happened,” he said. It was Belichick’s first appearance since news emerged that 11 of 12 footballs the Patriots used against the Colts...

Coach Bill Belichick said he did not know of any issue with the Patriots’ game balls in Sunday’s AFC Championship, and did not learn the league was investigating his team until Monday morning. He also said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated during the game.

Video.. only. Little rough on the language but spot on for Pats fans! https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84359240&v=_FAT_pRqo3w&x-yt-ts=1421782837#t=123

Playoffs - Super Bowl SUN, FEB 1 New England at Seattle 6:30 PM NBC U of Phoenix Stadium

Las Vegas, Nevada - One thing you you’re sure to find at every SHOT Show is something new. A new trigger, new barrel, or new gun to set the shooting world on fire. Or, in the case of the National Rifle Association, a new bike. Designed by the world class production crew over at Orange County Choppers, the NRA debuted an OCC-styled Pro Street bike with bullet-like appearance adorned in a matte gunmetal and black paint job on SHOT Show 2015’s opening day . Donated by Century Arms, the bike is adorned with the NRA seal, Century Arms emblem, and...