In case you were out living a life of leisure, here’s what you missed in sports on Monday.
- With his team poised to kick a game-winning field goal, Chargers QB Philip Rivers fumbled a snap that allowed the Chiefs to recover and send the game into overtime, where they won 23-20. Both teams are now 4-3, but boast a perfect 7-0 record in terms of being vaguely depressing.
- West Virginia has filed a civil lawsuit against the Big East, seeking to void the conference’s enforced 27-month waiting period before the school joins the Big 12. West Virginia students gathered to echo the administration’s chagrin, chanting, “six years is too long to wait!”
- CC Sabathia and the Yankees have agreed to a new package that pays the lefty starter $122 million over five years. When reached for comment, West Virginia students thought it was absurd for any athlete to make more than $50 million per year.
- After 33 years, Tony La Russa has retired from baseball. In his time, La Russa amassed 2,728 victories and three World Series titles. But his greatest accomplishment, according to Lance Berkman, was getting the chance to coach the greatest baseball player of all time: Lance Berkman.
- USC coach Lane Kiffin was fined $10,000 for publicly questioning Pac-12 referees following the team’s triple-overtime loss to Stanford. At one point, Kiffin even suggested that his 2-year-old son was more capable of calculating penalty yards than the officials. Just to be safe, the conference also fined Kiffin’s son 82 juice boxes and suspended him from the comfort of his mother’s arms for three months.
- Despite a rough performance against the Detroit Lions, Tim Tebow is still Denver’s starting quarterback. “You don’t change saviors midstream,” said Broncos coach John Fox.
- Miami Heat owner Micky Arison has been fined $500,000 by the NBA for a series of tweets that seemed to question the tactics of his fellow owners. When asked how he felt about Clippers owner Donald Sterling, for example, Arison simply tweeted “lol.” Oddly enough, that’s also what Sterling’s wife tweets whenever the two become intimate.
- Players union president Derek Fisher sent a letter to players strongly denying implications made in a column that his relationship with commissioner David Stern is affecting his loyalty. Fisher undermined his own point, however, by continually referring to the commissioner as “my widdle Sternsy-Wernsy.”
- The Red Sox have interviewed Pete Mackanin for the team’s manager position. Halfway through the meeting, though, owner John Henry reached across the table, pulled off Mackanin’s fake mustache, and realized he’d been talking to John Lackey the entire time.
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