Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Terrorism scaring away tourists to Europe

- What does the UFC sale say about live sports rights TV bubble?

- Nice story about golf's disabled superfan and the friendships he's made among some of the elite golfers and caddies

- Sign the petition - demand that Gary Johnson be included in the Presidential debates

- How will getting acquired be Verizon impact Yahoo Sports?

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Heh heh

- Spherical flames and other cool physical science that differs on the International Space Station

- This could make me drink more Yuengling

- Shots fired

- Heh heh - Jeeves and a Man Called The Donald

- Songs of Summer from the past 100-years

- Things named Tarantula Hawk Hornets are the stuff of nightmares

Miami Scandal

Something bothered me from the moment I first read the reporting on Nevin Shapiro and the U of Miami scandal. The Yahoo! article talks about Shapiro paying for an abortion on behalf of a player:

In one instance, Shapiro described taking a player to the Pink Pony strip club and paying for a dancer to engage in sex with the athlete. In the ensuing weeks, Shapiro said the dancer called one of his security providers and informed him that the player had gotten her pregnant during the incident. Shapiro said he gave the dancer $500 to have an abortion performed, without notifying the player of the incident.

“I was doing him a favor,” the booster said. “That idiot might have wanted to keep [the baby].”

Due to the sensitivity of the allegation, Yahoo! Sports has chosen not to name the player allegedly involved.

The logic here immediately bothered me. A prostitute tells Shapiro that she's pregnant in the "ensuing weeks" and Shapiro just takes it for granted that the baby belonged to the player? My BS meter went off at this. The baby - if there ever was a pregnancy - could have belonged to whoever was screwing the "dancer". Don't try to tell me that she only had sex with just that one guy. Don't try to tell me that she knew she was pregnant and that the baby belonged to the player after just a couple of weeks passing. Don't tell me that Shapiro just gave her $500 without insuring the procedure was actually performed. Don't tell me that Yahoo! printed this most inflammatory and scurrilous of accusations without more evidence than Shapiro's word that it happened.

Almost every retelling of the U of Miami scandal includes the flabbergasted phrase "HE EVEN PAID FOR AN ABORTION". Well what if Shapiro didn't pay for an abortion but instead was simply scammed out of $500 by a whore? If this accusation falls apart what about the rest of the story? I think when all is said and done there may be more smoke to this story than fire.