FanHouse Pittsburgh

INDIANAPOLIS -- On his tippy toes, he might be 5-10, very easy to lose in the enormity of a football stadium where faces look like matrix dots and crowd noise drifts to the ozone. But no one strikes a larger pose in the Midwest today than Tom Izzo, public defender of the Big Ten's battered self-esteem. If trends and hipness start on both coasts in America, college basketball in the heartland also has been taking on an irrelevant, plodding look, to the point I stopped watching.

And I live in Chicago.

Meet Katrina Hancock. Aside from having a potentially unfortunate last name (tee-hee!), she is also a reporter for NBC's Detroit affiliate WDIV. Hancock was assigned to cover the Penguins and Wings Stanley Cup Final but at some point she became the interviewee and not the interviewer. KDKA, a Pittsburgh station interviewed her and, well, I don't want to spoil the YouTube. What I will say is that it's a lesson in instantaneous career suicide.



The money quote: "She was the only Detroit journalist to say that Pittsburgh has better fans than Detroit."

Really? The only one? You don't say! I guess the rest of them liked their jobs too much. Seriously, did she want to get fired? If she did, I can commend her for doing it in such a creative way. Otherwise, well, WHAT THE HECK WAS SHE THINKING?

What Hancock said might not have been the best quote of the whole piece, though. The Pittsburgh anchor, Paul Martino, finished his piece by saying "and I had to promise Katrina that we wouldn't be sending that interview back to Detroit." Somehow I imagine it took a Herculean effort on his part to not burst out laughing in the middle of that sentence. You had to figure that he was smart enough to know (unlike Hancock) that even though he wouldn't send it back to Detroit personally, in a digital world things like this do, in fact, get back to Detroit.

Whoops. I guess it is very different when you're on the other side of the microphone.

h/t Awful Announcing and Puck Daddy

The last time Georges Laraque took a stand on NHLers playing hockey in Europe, he became the Mitt Romney of hockey pugilists: Flip-flopping when circumstances warranted a change in opinion. It was during the lockout, a time when Laraque vehemently opposed NHL players taking jobs away from Europeans in overseas leagues. That was, of course, until Laraque decided to sign with AIK of Stockholm in the Swedish Elite League. "Whether I agree or not, I'm not the most talented player in the NHL and I don't want to lose the whole year of hockey. That's not good for me," he told the Edmonton Sun.

With his Pittsburgh Penguins preparing to ship out to Stockholm for a double-header against Ottawa to open next season, Laraque has again opined about the NHL in Europe, making it clear to Rob Rossi of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he believes the League is wasting its time:

"Spending money to go play in Europe is not doing anything for the NHL in the United States," Laraque said. "We're talking about wanting a bigger market for hockey in the U.S. What are we going to accomplish by going to Europe? What are we doing? The league needs to do better work to make the game popular in the U.S."

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Yes, it was the final game of a road trip that saw them swing through Western Canada and then to the opposite side of the Keystone State. No, they did not have Marc-Andre Fleury between the pipes, shielding his sterling 2.90 GAA and .902 save percentage from the carnage. But let's toss whatever limited and rather inconsequential excuses aside like they were Mark Recchi bobble-heads, and acknowledge the truth: The Philadelphia Flyers beat the snot, the stuffing and the hell out of the Pittsburgh Penguins last night.

The 8-2 loss on national television -- OK, on VERSUS -- saw a hat trick for Joffrey Lupul, whose six-point night was the first for the Flyers since Eric Lindros posted a six pack in one of his rare non-concussion games back in 1997. R.J. Umberger completed a second Philly hat trick late in the third period, marking the first time since Tim Kerr and Dave Poulin in 1986 that a pair of Flyers drained the crowd of its headgear.

But perhaps the most shocking development in last night's game: The Philadelphia Flyers were on the ice, yet it was Pittsburgh coach Michel Therrien and his players that came off as the most undisciplined, thuggish team in the NHL last night.

(Coming Up Next: Last Night's Losers, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, Life as a New York Rangers Fan, Games You Need To Watch Tonight, A Handy Guide To Fake Trades and a "Special" Christmas Carol For the Hartford Whalers.)

No, I'm not talking about his slow feet or his running style that White Sox color analyst Darrin Jackson described as "He looks like he's running in a straight jacket. Just fighting himself."

On Thursday of last week, Casey flew home to Pittsburgh for the Tigers off day. Upon returning back to Detroit, he received a surprise.

Sean Casey flew home to Pittsburgh for the off day last Thursday, only to return to Detroit City Airport and find his car up on cinder blocks, with the windows smashed and all four tires gone.

He can now officially call himself a Detroitan. Detroiter? Detroitite? What the hell do people from Detroit call themselves?

There's no mention of what was taken from Casey's car besides the tires, but if the windows are gone I think it's safe to say his stereo and anything else he left in the car is gone too.

As for who broke into the car, nobody has a clue as it was just a random act, but I'm gonna go ahead and say Jerome Bettis is a suspect. He's from Detroit you know.

For about two years now, Mark Cuban has indicated his desire to buy one of two National League Central teams, his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs. Up until now, it has seemingly been mostly bluster on Cuban's part. It's well known in Pittsburgh that despite the state of baseball operations at PNC Park, the Pirates are actually a rather good business model and the current owners have no intentions of selling whatsoever.

He then moved his focus to the Cubs because, well I don't know. Probably something to do with the semi-creepy John Henry becoming a folk hero in Boston after Sox won the 2004 Series. That all seemed like idle speculation until the Tribune Company began exploring their options in recent months. Now Radar Online brings us this:

Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban is more serious about buying a major league baseball team than he's been letting on. The tech entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner is set to offer $625 million to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., according to a source familiar with the matter. "Mark is desperate to buy the Cubs," says the source. "He wants this so bad."

Cuban would be a great baseball owner. He's a good basketball owner not because of his money, but because he thinks differently than most of the other owners in the league. The Cubs spent a ton of money this off-season without much of a plan and still succeeded in making themselves a lot better (if only because they couldn't make themselves worse). Cuban is essentially the perfect "Moneyball" owner, outside the box thinking and lots of money. If this happens, that noise you hear will be the remaining serious Pirate fans jumping off of the Roberto Clemente Bridge like lemmings.

Via Deadspin.