The Monday Show Prep

For those who still complain about women’s sports, Monday night’s national championship game in college hoops probably won’t be the best example of the sport’s inferiority. The last-second Notre Dame victory had it all for sports fans, drama, athleticism, the constant strive to be the best and it contained a highlight moment sports fans clamor for. It’s your loss if you missed it.

A last-second three-pointer by Arike Okunbolay lifted the Fighting Irish to the national championship in the women’s college basketball championship. It’s the school’s second national title in women’s basketball and their first since 2001.

Tonight, the men take center stage with Villanova taking on Michigan for the championship in San Antonio. Villanova is coming off a 95-79 beatdown over Kansas last weekend while Michigan upended the Cinderella story of Loyola Chicago 69-57. Gametime for the national championship is set for 5:20 pm local time.  

An Open Letter To ESPN... The App

For the record, I really enjoy my "Breaking News" app from ESPN.

And I'm sure that if I go into the settings for my app, I can presumably find contained therein, an opportunity to control what constitutes as "breaking news" or just more hype from the machinery known as the mother ship of sports coverage.

That being said, a goal scored by a soccer player in an otherwise routine MLS game does not -- in any way -- reach the definition or even the standard of "breaking news". 

An international player now competing for the L.A. Galaxy, Zlatan Ibrahimović scored twice in the final 15 minutes -- including the game winner seconds into stoppage time -- to complete a comeback for the ages and turn a 3-0 deficit into a 4-3 LA Galaxy win against crosstown rivals LAFC.

That's a cool story, and one that I'm sure fans of the Galaxy enjoyed immensely, but it falls far from the standard of what generally is considered "breaking news".

In an attempt to once again push the narrative that I must be missing out on something if I'm not glued to my television for coverage of a sport that is so far under the national radar, I'm again reminded that the term "breaking news" has been replaced -- far too more often than not -- by the unwritten phrase, "let's sell this as best we can no matter how unimportant it truly is."

Breaking news updates used to mean something. The term applied to something we needed to know, something we needed to be made aware of, something that had some larger or still to be determined greater significance than a soccer highlight.

This is not breaking news. A goal in a soccer game doesn't cut it, so please stop trying to shove it down my throat.

Marinovich Arrested Again

Former NFL and USC quarterback Todd Marinovich, who spent most of the past 18 months in the desert for drug addiction rehabilitation, is back in jail after being arrested in Orange County last week. 

Marinovich, who got local attention in September  by playing for the desert's developmental football team, the SoCal Coyotes, was arrested March 19 and released after posting bail, according to Orange County jail records. He was arrested again March 23 and remains in custody at the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana -- the same city where he was a high school football star at Mater Dei.

According to the Desert Sun, no further details on why he was arrested were available, but Marinovich was in the middle of a two-year probation sentence handed last March after his notorious August 2016 arrest where he was found naked wandering in a stranger's backyard in Irvine with a paper bag full of drugs and syringes and his wallet. (Photo below: Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)

Marinovich starred at quarterback for two years at USC, leading the Trojans to a Rose Bowl win over Michigan in 1990 after being named the UPI and Sporting News college freshman of the year for the 1989 season.

He was drafted in the first round (No. 24) by the Los Angeles Raiders. But he flamed out in the pros, mostly because of his drug addiction. He played in a total of eight games over two years, completing 104 of 205 passes for 1,345 yards, 8 TDs, 9 INTs.

No, Anthony Davis Really Didn't Shave His Unibrow

The Unibrow has returned after a brief disappearance on Saturday night.

Anthony Davis posted a video of himself apparently shaving the middle portion of his iconically connected eyebrows.

However, according to NBA.com on Sunday, Davis revealed that the video was an April Fool's Day prank and the unibrow remains.

Davis' prank comes in the midst of a frenetic playoff push in the Western Conference, where his Pelicans currently hold a two-game lead for the eighth and final playoff spot. Davis has kept New Orleans afloat despite the season-ending Achilles injury to fellow All-Star DeMarcus Cousins. The former No. 1 overall pick is averaging 28.1 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.5 blocks and 1.5 steals per contest.

All I can say is thank goodness. I don't know what I would have done with this development.


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