Dancing Cubes

Cuban back on prime time TV where he belongs …

Apolo Anton Ohno stole the Dancing With the Stars trophy away from Dallas. And Mark Cuban may attempt to steal it back.

According to E! Online and the SI.com Web site (Sports Illustrated ), the Dallas Mavericks owner will compete in the fifth season of the ABC dancing competition. If so, he'll become the second competitor with strong Dallas ties to appear on the show, following Emmitt Smith's victory in Season 3. Mr. Cuban did not return an e-mail request for comment on Sunday.

Should he choose to compete on the show, it will mark his return to television and to ABC.

Mr. Cuban hosted 2004's The Benefactor, a reality show on which he pledged to give away $1 million. He also hosted The Mark Cuban Show , which aired locally on Channel 21.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban won't be off his feet for long if some reports are true.
If Mr. Cuban proves to be quite a dancer, he may run into scheduling conflicts with his day job. Dancing With the Stars debuts Sept. 24, and the show runs through November.

Meanwhile, The Cowboys pre-season continued with a spanking in Houston.

Quickly, here are the things I liked:

Sam Hurd
Jason Witten
Jacoby Jones

Things I didn’t like:

Roy Williams’ laughable attempt at tackling Ahman Green
Aaron Glenn being exposed at will by Andre Johnson
Special Teams
Offensive Line
Defensive Line
Pass Rush
Romo’s accuracy

Let’s just say it is a welcome “reality check” for the Cowboys.

Now, on to the review Revo …

The Cowboys' 28-16 loss to the Texans was a sobering "Thanks, I needed that!" slap right across the chops.

But did they really? Did we?

That's the quick and easy rationale, of course. This, I must have heard five times before noon Sunday, was just what the Cowboys needed. The prevailing theory was that after skating through two easy preseason victories over Indianapolis and Denver, Saturday's loss is something they can learn from. Now they know what they need to work on.

"Yep," I answered. "Everything."

Hey, guys, reality has a bite to it. Yes, this Cowboys team has a chance to be pretty good. What the Texans happily proved Saturday night is that it's not there yet.

Maybe the optimists are right. Maybe this loss will do what Phillips said he didn't get right Saturday. After all, it was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for the season opener, almost a real game, and the Cowboys failed miserably in just about every facet of the game, and against a team that might have just experienced the highlight of its 2007 season.

Perhaps now the players will stop listening to the talk-show chipmunks prattle on about championship games and Super Bowls and whether they should go ahead and make reservations for the first weekend in February in Phoenix.

What it told me is that the Cowboys better hope that cornerback Terence Newman is a fast healer.

The Texans made Aaron Glenn and the Cowboys' young cornerback hopefuls look absolutely lost.

Cornerback was already a tenuous situation, troublesome enough that Cowboys officials already had considered the possibility they might have to make a trade to improve the depth at that position.

Now, with Newman nursing what's been diagnosed as an acute plantar fascia injury, the situation has gone from troublesome to dire. That's the kind of injury that can nag a player all season.

"I think we're going to have Newman, but obviously there's some concerns there," executive vice president and player personnel director Stephen Jones said Sunday. "It's an area that internally we've felt like could be an issue for us if we didn't have some guys step up.

And here is JJT to offer us some wisdom …

Perhaps all this foolish chatter about the Cowboys playing in the Super Bowl will cease after the raggedy performance they turned in Saturday night.

They couldn't run or stop the run. And the special teams were awful. Actually, they looked more like Dave Campo's Cowboys than a team that's supposed to be among the NFL's best.

It's clear the Cowboys have much work to do after Houston beat them, 28-16, at Reliant Stadium.

These Cowboys are good. Real good.

But they're not nearly good enough to overcome the litany of mistakes they made against Houston. The troubling part of Saturday's defeat is that Dallas turned in its worst performance of the preseason when coach Wade Phillips wanted to see its best.

"This one game doesn't make our season and it shouldn't make theirs," Terrell Owens said. "We're still 0-0."

The starters on both sides played at least three quarters because this game was supposed to be the dress rehearsal – the one that most simulates a regular-season game. The Cowboys' top players won't play much in the final preseason game.

At least Phillips won't have to worry about getting his players' attention this week.
It should be a brutal film session when you consider Dallas gave up a 91-yard punt return for a touchdown, missed an extra point, allowed a 46-yard run, committed three penalties in a span of five plays to wreck another drive and allowed a 64-yard touchdown drive in the final two minutes of the first half.

Maybe the players spent the week listening to fans and talking heads on sports radio babble about the possibility of the Cowboys playing for a championship in February.

Ridiculous.

Yes, the Cowboys are among the contenders in the NFC, but it's certainly too early to label them one of the favorites.

Quickly, let’s review how newspaper guys feel about sportsradio outwardly, even though inwardly, they consistently try to get jobs on the radio…

Revo: “Perhaps now the players will stop listening to the talk-show chipmunks prattle on about championship games and Super Bowls and whether they should go ahead and make reservations for the first weekend in February in Phoenix.”

Hmm. Chipmunks. I don’t think that is a compliment.

Taylor: “Maybe the players spent the week listening to fans and talking heads on sports radio babble about the possibility of the Cowboys playing for a championship in February.”

Babble is surely not a compliment.

C’mon almighty writers, let’s not fall back and the “Sports Radio is really dumb and we writers are really smart” idiocy. I am quite certain you can make your point without claiming one group of media is so much smarter than another. The truth is, all the media is made up of ninnies. And, Only TV is an inferior medium.

Vick’s big morning …

Monday, in a federal courthouse in Richmond, Va., Michael Vick will appear before a U.S. district judge and admit he was guilty of deceit, of depravity, of a multimillionaire's arrogance and of a superstar's ignorance.

The question is, will his peers in the NFL as well as those players in the college and high school football pipeline, learn from his spectacular mistakes? Can Vick unintentionally do good by providing such a detailed blueprint of what can happen when you do bad?

It wasn't long ago that Michael Vick was on top of the world.

Vick is more than a cautionary tale; he's a textbook example of why athletes, even the richest and most celebrated ones, are exactly one galactically stupid decision away from ruin. And yet, they keep making the same errors in judgment, as if they can buy enough Kevlar to make them bulletproof from their own stupidity.

Vick used Atlanta Falcons money, or Nike money, or Coca-Cola money, or EA Sports money, (hey, everybody loved Mike back then) to bankroll a gambling operation so repugnant that you need a barf bag to watch the footage of what happens when pit bulls are turned into canine gladiators. Even more repugnant is what Vick and the rest of his torture squad did to the dogs that underperformed in the sadistic training sessions. That's when Vick and two others who have entered pleas drowned, hanged or electrocuted the animals. Of course, in the clever, sterile and nuanced language of the plea agreement, Vick's lawyers refer to the killings by the disgraced quarterback and his accomplices as, "the collective efforts."

Anyway, thanks to the collective efforts of federal prosecutors, the three co-defendants who turned on him, and a Vick legal team that realized their client was toast, Vick made his deal with the government. A month ago he stood in the same Richmond courthouse and lied about his innocence, and then, knowing he was lying, had the audacity to ask for our patience and the chance to clear his "good name." He was an accomplished liar, having denied any wrongdoing to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell about three months earlier.

This Report: Manning’s naughty words broadcasted through stadium …Anyone find video/audio of this?

Referee Terry McAulay accidentally left his microphone turned on Saturday and that allowed 51,101 RCA Dome fans to hear Peyton Manning shouting some choice words which cannot be repeated. Those words weren’t intended for the officials, though; they were for the Colts’ offensive linemen.

All the kinks haven’t been worked out on offense yet for the Super Bowl-champion Colts, but it’s tough to complain with the 37-10 victory over the Detroit Lions.

The third preseason game is supposed to be when the first-team offense really starts to look sharp. And there was plenty of brilliance on display as Reggie Wayne, Marvin Harrison and Dallas Clark shredded the Lions’ secondary in one half of play. Once again, it’s clear there is no better receiving duo in the NFL than Harrison and Wayne, and that Clark is a top-tier tight end.

“We did see some good things and that’s what we wanted,” Colts coach Tony Dungy said. “We wanted a good performance. The only thing that was a little disappointing was we kept misfiring on offense.”

No question, if those misfires continue into the regular season, acceptance will turn into aggravation. There were dropped passes, fumbles, missed blocking assignments and penalties. Namely, there were too many times when Manning was left either flat on his back with a defender hovering over him, with a red-cheeked angry expression on his face or forced to read the riot act to his teammates. Or, all of the above.

But it’s unfair to expect the most intricate details to be totally sharp at this point, even if this game was against the lowly Lions.

So why were the Colts’ linemen so apt to hold? Why were they so jumpy that they got false starts? And why were Detroit’s defensive linemen able to break through the line so easily that they almost intercepted handoffs intended for running backs Joseph Addai?

Of course, we can start with the obvious. Longtime left tackle Tarik Glenn retired just weeks ago and rookie Tony Ugoh still looks green. The timing with center Jeff Saturday, right tackle Ryan Diem and right guard Rick DeMulling was off.

“Minus my two holding calls, everything was good. That set us back a little yards, including four bit,” said Saturday, whose team had 11 penalties for 85 for 30 yards by the offensive line. “But I’m really excited overall with the way guys are playing.”
Besides it takes time to jell and get the timing back with Manning involved.

“It’s all repetitions and experience,” Diem said. “You kind of get in a rhythm with Peyton’s cadence and it’s not always the same. That was one of the problems tonight; we just didn’t mesh up right. I wiggled and got called (for a false start) but we moved the ball very efficiently (for the most part).”

Travis Henry impresses us with 9 kids from 9 women! …

Travis Henry just got tackled by a $3,000-a-month child support judgment.
Sure, the Denver Broncos running back has a $25 million contract and a base monthly salary approaching $50,000, but that kind of bill can still crimp your style when you're accustomed to expensive cars and fancy jewelry — and lots of other child support payments.

Henry, 28, has fathered nine children by nine women in at least four Southern states and has been ordered by various judges to provide child support for seven of them, according to court records involving one child living in DeKalb County.
DeKalb Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger this week ordered Henry to provide $3,000 a month for the Lithonia boy he fathered out of wedlock three years ago with Jameshia Beacham, now 29.

Henry isn't the most thrifty guy, according to court records, so the judge wants to ensure payment by establishing an unusual $250,000 trust that Henry must fund by next spring.

Seeliger wrote that the football player displayed "bad judgment in his spending habits," dropping $100,000 for a car and $146,000 for jewelry. Meanwhile, Henry fell behind on support payments for his child with Beacham that were mandated by a previous order. Threatened with jail, he borrowed $9,800 from his former team, the Tennessee Titans, to pay the bill, according to court records.

The trust ensures Beacham will get timely payment if the pro player falls behind on his installments again. Yet the trust could be a sticking point for Henry, who could appeal.

His lawyer, Shiel Edlin, said that to his knowledge the trust would be without precedent in Georgia. A quarter-million dollars is a lot of money, even for Henry, Edlin said. "He has some concerns and he's weighing his options."

Doesn’t it make you wonder what the record is?



Tattoo of the week.

Please head Here to see Denilson introduced to the public today at noon at the FC Dallas website...



Did you see this on Ebay? …it can be yours for under $2300!!!

ALSO, ON THE BACK OF THE CARD UNDER NORM HITZGES' NAME IS: KIND WIT, INTELLECT AND PHENOMENAL MEMORY HAVE MADE THIS RADIO SPORTSCASTER A POPULAR DALLAS-FORT WORTH MEDIA PERSONALITY. WITH A NAUTUAL SENSE OF HUMOR AND SINCERE CHARM, HITZGES FIELDS THE ANSWERS TO EVEN OFFBEAT QUESTIONS AND HAS INTERVIEWED SPORTS FIGURES FROM AROUND THE WORLD. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS JOURNALISM GRADUATE HAS TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF HIS TRAVELS TO ADD TO HIS UNUSUAL COLLECTION OF SPORTS MEMORABILIA. HE EVEN OWNS A "SCHOTTZIE" CAP, A BASEBALL CAP WITH AN IMAGE REPRESENTING THE PET ST. BERNARD OF CINCINNATI REDS OWNER MARGE SCHOTT.

Swapping Stories: The Canseco trade …Rangers dealt Sierra, Witt, Russell for A's slugger in 1992

This is a genius comparison between Star Wars and the NFL …

And now some email from P1’s about various causes:

Dearest BADD Radio,

After hearing your interview with "Boston" Rob describing his new reality show. I went to the open casting, since I live near Stonebriar Mall where it was held. I met with the casting director, and had my cursory interview. Since then, the open castings have finished and they have asked me to submit a youtube video as part of the "2nd Round of Casting". They imply it is a select group, but who really knows. Supposedly web traffic to the video, ratings, and comments posted factor into their casting decision, in some small way.

So, if you would like to take a look and help a P1 out, I would appreciate that. If not, I understand. I'm sure you gets lots of requests like this…plus I'm sure that those porn sites probably won’t survive the 5 minutes it takes to divert your attention to my video.
So, set your expectations low, and enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nujQ2MUzCxI

Your boyhood friend and idol,
Michael Maxwell

---

Hey Bob,

P1 stuck in Houston here. I need your help if you can. I'm participating in a prostate cancer fundraiser. Could you please put a link to my donation page on your blog.

Athletes for a Cure: 2007 CrossFit Fight Gone Bad

Link

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

HEY NOW!

Chris McC

Kige puts the Rangers 30 into perspective



Favre moonwalk – Language warning