FanHouse Sports 2.0

Former Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler was an NFL MVP and a Super Bowl winner, and any biography of him should focus, first and foremost, on his football career.

But any biography of him also needs to acknowledge that drinking and driving has been a major feature of his post-NFL life. He was convicted of drunk driving in 1995 and again in 2001, and his most recent DUI arrest has led him to take a leave of absence from his radio job.

So it's strange that someone keeps editing Stabler's drunk driving record out of his Wikipedia entry. First the information about Stabler's arrests and convictions will go up, and then it will get deleted. The absence of information about his drunk driving arrests has now been a subject of discussion at Wikipedia. One Wikipedia user writes:

I'm not sure why these aren't mentioned in the article, at least in some form...it can be done in an encyclopedic manner...why is there protection going on?

Good question. If someone who likes Stabler is trying to do Stabler a favor by whitewashing his record, here's a suggestion: Do Stabler a bigger favor by convincing him to stop risking his own life and the lives of everyone else on the roads.

At YouTube, you can watch these highlights from Saturday night's Dustin Hazelett vs. Josh Burkman fight:

Finding UFC fights on YouTube is something of a crapshoot. Sometimes highlight videos, like the one above, are posted by UFC. Sometimes full fights are illegally uploaded. Sometimes there's nothing.

But UFC.com has done something pretty cool: It posted the entire Hazelett-Burkman fight online. I just watched it, and it's a high-quality video with none of the bugs and glitches that often come with online video. If you haven't seen the fight, it's highly recommended.

Obviously, UFC is never going to post pay-per-view main events for free online, but posting undercard fights as a promotional vehicle makes a lot of sense. UFC is way ahead of the other sports leagues when it comes to online video.

Miami Herald writer Armando Salguero posted an item on the team's NFL blog last week saying that Dolphins kicker Jay Feely's big mouth was getting him in trouble with the team. It was typical off-season NFL fare, and nothing exceptional.

But Feely took exception to it, by posting a comment on the Herald's web site. The comment began, "armando, This is jay feely." And it also included this criticism:

I think you presented a much more controversial view of the situation than I did when you interviewed me. Never did I say they told me to 'shut up' as you wrote in your article. You asked me if they asked me to not do as much media work and I said 'yes, and I was willing to do that." I also told you my approach has been to work as hard as I could, to be the best kicker I could be, and that I believed the best kicker would win the job.

Feely has confirmed it really was him who posted the comment, and I think it's great. Feely might be the next Chris Cooley.

Hat tip: Sports by Brooks.

I've always thought that other sports leagues could learn a thing or two from the way UFC uses YouTube to promote itself. UFC has a popular YouTube channel, and it now appears to be attempting to expand its YouTube presence, posting several promotional videos in the last couple of days. Here's one hyping the Rampage Jackson-Forrest Griffin UFC 86 fight:

After the jump, watch another new UFC YouTube, of Jackson's first-round knockout slam of Ricardo Arona in 2004.

American soccer doesn't draw much in the way of TV eyeballs, but when there's a highlight like this one, it becomes a sensation on YouTube:

That was David Beckham from about 70 yards out against the Kansas City Wizards Saturday. That clip is the most-viewed video on YouTube in the last 24 hours, and the goal has been viewed about 2 million times.

Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog reports that the Washington Redskins are looking to hire a blogger. This is good news for Redskins fans, for bloggers, for blog readers -- for everyone who likes football and likes going online to get information about football.

The reason it's good news isn't so much that the Redskins want to host a blog at Redskins.com -- there's nothing inherently good about blogs -- but that according to Steinberg, the team is committed to the idea of bringing in a writer who actually covers the team more or less the way an independent blogger would, not just to re-print press releases and talk about what a genius Jim Zorn is.

Steinberg's colleague Jason La Canfora reported that Steinberg himself was a candidate for the job, and although that ain't happening, the mere fact that the team is reaching out to someone with that kind of journalistic background is impressive. This is a smart move for the Redskins.

If you search YouTube for "Preakness infield," you'll find all sorts of videos like this one, in which a guy pukes his guts out while a girl mocks him:

The Preakness infield has virtually nothing to do with horse racing and much to do with binge drinking and the flashing of breasts. Everything about it runs contrary to the aristocratic "Sport of Kings" image that the powers that be in horse racing try to project.

And that's fine, if that's what the consenting adults who go to the Preakness infield are looking for. But as Andrew Ratner of the Baltimore Sun writes (in a column in which he quotes me), the age of cell phone cameras and blogs and YouTube has changed the Preakness infield because it can no longer be forgotten with a couple of aspirin the next morning. You might do things in the Preakness infield that you wouldn't do in front of your co-workers, only to have your co-workers see you doing those things online.

Strangely, though, I don't think there's any evidence at all that the behavior of the people in the Preakness infield has changed. I guess that afternoon of fun is worth it.

The Cincinnati Bengals blog stripehype.com reports today that the Bengals have threatened its parent company, the fansided.com blog network, with a lawsuit over what the team says is improper use of copyrighted images.

Says the blogger at stripehype:

we've been asking for access for months as a media outlet to be able to interview players, take our own photos, etc. We've been turned down, stating that the Bengals "do not issue credentials to non-traditional media."

It has always seemed to me that pro sports teams should embrace fan bloggers, as, in general, blogs written by fans offer more favorable commentary about their teams than traditional media outlets do. But apparently the Bengals disagree.

Note: I e-mailed the Bengals' spokesman to seek a comment on this; he did not reply.

You may have seen Deadspin's media approval ratings, where blog readers pass judgment on on the members of the mainstream media. They're an opportunity for those who prefer to get their sports news and opinion in the blogosphere to have their say about those who provide the sports news and opinion on TV and in print.

And in a stroke of genius, Ballhype has taken those approval ratings and condensed them into one handy Media Approval Leaderboard. The Leaderboard is a great thumbnail of the way blog readers view the members of the mainstream sports media, and it was interesting to see who comes in dead last, with an approval rating of 10%: CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer.

Why Packer? Deadspin commenter Signal to Noise summarized what many in the blogosphere think, and this is the portion of his comment I can reprint:

Packer commentates on a sport that I can only assume he hates, based on what he says during games.

Packer does, indeed, offer up a healthy dose of criticism and complaints during his college basketball commentary, and that's not the way to win popularity contests. Fortunately for Packer, he'll never know he's disliked online, because he doesn't own a computer.

Here's Arizona Cardinals safety Adrian Wilson pulling off one of the most impressive athletic feats you'll ever see, taking a couple of steps and then jumping 66 inches vertically:

That jump has become the stuff of YouTube legend, and it was nominated in the sports category at the YouTube Awards. But it lost out to a video in which a skateboarder pops a lot of balloons. In my view, the skateboarding video is obviously inferior, although maybe that says more about me than it does about the videos in question. The skateboarding video is after the jump.