It's time for the madness (not the March Madness, but a completely different kind) to begin.
The return of the college football season will have many of us fired up, especially fans of those teams sitting on a big season.
For the record, the Top 4 teams in the current preseason poll.... Well, that doesn't even matter. I hate preseason polls. I despise Heisman alerts and I loathe looking ahead to the college football playoff potentials in the waning days of August.
We've got an official SEC outlook with an eye towards this weekend's LSU vs. BYU clash coming up this morning with I Heart Radio's Wade Smith coming up this morning.
According to ESPN, after Cleveland's physical examination of Isaiah Thomas' injured hip raised concern about the timeline for his return this season, Cavaliers officials are planning to seek an additional trade asset before finalizing a deal to send four-time All-Star guard Kyrie Irving to the Boston Celtics, league sources said.
Without revisions to the original trade agreement, the Cavaliers could threaten to veto the trade, league sources said.
Shenanigans abound.... We'll discuss this with Believe the Hype NBA's Jamieson Welsh this morning on the show.
According to multiple outlets, nearly 3 million people watched (for free) illegally obtained video streams last Saturday night of the pay-per-view boxing match between Floyd Mayweather, Jr., and Conor McGregor.
Live streaming services, such as Instagram, Periscope and YouTube, which allow users to simply point a device with a camera in front of a television screen and share the event to followers, are becoming more and more commonplace. And while such broadcasting is illegal and can be shut down by any number of methods, it's also easy for illegal providers to pop up almost instantly during big events.
According to one report, Showtime, which presented the fight, said the event "attracted large scale efforts to illegally stream" the telecast. During the fight, Showtime and partners "successfully blocked and removed the highest number of unauthorized streams for any event in the company's history," the company said in a statement.
I'd like to think that this is a problem easily solved, but as technology advances, so will the determination of people to find ways to bend the rules.
How did you watch Saturday night's fight?
Shock.
Outrage.
What was more shocking about the quick release of Art Briles by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, was the original announcement of his hiring in the first place.
According to reports, it turns out Briles won't be coaching in the Canadian Football League after all.
Baylor fired Briles last year after the university's investigation of its handling of allegations of sexual assaults by students, including football players. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats had hired him earlier Monday as assistant head coach for offense under head coach June Jones.
Jones, the former Hawai'i and SMU coach, was named the Tiger-Cats' head coach on Thursday after the team announced Kent Austin was stepping down after an 0-8 start to the season. Jones was promoted last week.
Briles, 61, has been out of coaching since May 2016, when Baylor officials suspended him with intent to terminate for his role in the school's sexual assault scandal. He later reached an undisclosed financial settlement with Baylor, where he coached from 2008 to 2015, posting a 65-37 record and winning a share of back-to-back Big 12 titles in 2013 and 2014.
Briles' hiring had drawn criticism from Canadian news outlets and on social media among people who identified themselves as Tiger-Cats fans.
The shock value to this story is quick, but there will undoubtedly be some. How did anyone think for a moment that this hiring was going to be seen as a positive, given all the attention the Baylor story received?
I understand second chances, and I understand the narrative of a man deserves the opportunity to work. But that doesn't mean those opportunities won't come without some risk of public scorn or scrutiny.
Join me this morning across America at 9am ET on the I Heart Radio app for FIRST SPORTS. Also locally on the radio dial at AM1340/93.9FM!