Ultimate Celebrity Alert

After canceling their 2009 season, the Arena Football League has shut down entirely and appears headed for bankruptcy. Earlier this week, the league office released a short statement indicated that it had ceased operations because owners were “unable to reach any consensus on restructuring the league over the past eight months.” The league had reached a new agreement with players earlier this year, but was unable to convince enough owners that they had a viable plan to return to profitability. The leagues statement continued that there are no other viable options available to the league right now.”

It may be a bit of a stretch to call Satoshi Ishii the Michael Phelps of Japan, but not by much. His victory in the heavyweight judo competition at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was easily the defining moment of the games for his countrymen and was considered by most media outlets the #1 highlight of the year in all of sports. Though Japan does well at the Olympics for a country of its size and has won gold medals in a number of sports, its important to keep in mind that until the late’70s judo was the countrys most popular sport. While its popularity in the intervening decades has been supplanted by imported team sports like soccer and baseball, judo still holds especially high prestige among the Japanese sports fans and general public.

After some tense moments during a ‘communication breakdown’, both Lamar Odom and the Los Angeles Lakers got what they really wanted all along. The Lakers retained the services of their valuable sixth man, and Odom will return to the team after an intense recruiting pitch from the Miami Heat.

Jim Carrey has been one of the most prominent comedy actors of this generation. With millions of fans around the world, his movies often sit atop the box office right after they’re released. During the course of the last 15 years, Carrey has starred in a host of movies, delivering endless laughs to his audiences.

Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Jake Delhomme is having a season he’d like to forget, and things got even worse on Sunday at home against the Buffalo Bills. Despite dominating the Bills on the stat sheet, Delhomme threw three interceptions that allowed Buffalo to take a 20-9 victory over the struggling Panthers. Delhomme threw for 325 yards, though without any touchdowns. His three picks pushed his total for the year to- which leads the NFL. The Panthers dropped to 2-4 while the Bills improved to 3-4.

It’s amazingly been over 90 years since it occurred, but the legendary’19 World Series scandal most definitely lives on with baseball historians and any enthusiasts of the game. With much controversy these days about Pete Rose and his possible place in Cooperstown, another figure with parallels to Rose is Shoeless Joe Jackson, who played for the’19 White Sox (also known as the “Black Sox”) for their role in throwing the’19 World Series against the Reds.

Most of my articles focus on the state of men’s tennis, but I’d like to talk about the women this time around. Many believe that it’s the biggest women’s sport in the world, and I would agree.

We have seven weeks of football behind us, and things are slowly beginning to take shape in each conference. While there’s no clear favorite in the AFC and the NFC, there are teams who’ve asserted themselves as forces to be reckoned with and definite contenders.

In the ‘real world’ time heals all wounds. In the fight game, money has the same curative effect. This was vividly illustrated with the recent announcement that Tito Ortiz has patched things up with Dana White and will return to the UFC. Tito left the promotion over a year ago after a highly publicized split with the UFC president. He never found a new promotional home that would give him the money and the high profile status that he craved.

South Carolinas Darlington Raceway is an egg shaped terror that has become known as the track too tough to tame. If thats true, David Pearson came pretty close”during his illustrious career, he posted 10 victories and 12 poles at Darlington. These are both records for one of NASCARs most unforgiving tracks. Pearsons ability at Darlington bordered on the unreal, and he was able to follow the conventional wisdom about performing well there better than anyone. The old saying is that you need to race the track, not the other drivers, but thats a lot easier said than done. Pearson, however, made it look easy.