In summary, the stress of his fake girlfriend dying helped him have a stellar season, but the stress of the combine got to him and that explains his slow 40 time? 

Former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o has refused to blame his poor performance during the BCS national title game on the stress resulting from the knowledge that, inevitably, the story of his fake dead girlfriend would be exposed.

On Monday, Te’o blamed his poor performance during the 40-yard dash on the overall stress of the Scouting Combine.

“I was running near a 4.6, a 4.5,” Te’o told NFL Network after officially clocking a 4.82-second 40-yard dash. “Today was just a long, long day.”

Te’o called the Combine a “very exhausting process,” explaining that he got to bed late and got up early, with roughly four hours of sleep per night.

via the Washington Post:

Daniel Snyder owns the Washington Redskins, but even he couldn’t change the team’s name without a complicated, and possibly lengthy, process that might include winning approval from both the NFL and some of its many sponsors, according to experts on the way the nation’s most prosperous sports league conducts its affairs.

The financial stakes in such a move by one of pro football’s most valuable franchises would be considerable for the 32 NFL owners, who have a revenue-sharing agreement that covers much of the more than $9 billion the league generates annually.

“The unique dynamic of professional sports is that teams essentially give up some of their rights as far as names and trademarks to the league as part of the joint venture,” said Gabriel Feldman, director of the sports law program at Tulane University. “While an individual team owner makes business decisions primarily affecting the one team, there are also decisions made by the league and the other owners that tend to affect the league as a whole.”

The Redskins have made it clear that they have no intention of changing the team’s name or logo, despite recent criticism from Native Americans, the media and others that both are racially offensive and should be abandoned. The Redskins have said they don’t mean to offend anyone and are proud of the team’s history and traditions.

But the fierce debate has glossed over both the financial implications of a name change and the procedural issues that would be involved. All of those considerations would be significant, people familiar with the situation and outside legal and business experts said.

According to two people with knowledge of the NFL’s policies on such matters, the league exerts great control over the use of trademarked team names, logos and colors.

One of those people, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said he presumes the NFL would take the position that team names are set by the league constitution and any name change would require league approval.

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the final Monday of Febr-r-ruary a bit more bearable:

• The Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin cites a source revealing that MLB has sketched out “tentative guidelines for a potential move to San Jose [for the A's].”
• Al Yellon of Bleed Cubbie Blue goes into the wayback machine to discover a Bartman-esque play from perhaps the most memorable regular-season game from 1984.
• Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe chatted with Pedro Martinez and discovered that few pitches got away from the future Hall of Fame pitcher:

How many players did Pedro hit on purpose? “Probably 90 percent of them. But it was always retaliation for my teammates.”

Even Karim Garcia [in 2003?] “Not on purpose. It didn’t even hit him, it hit the bat. Lucky bastard.”

Gerald Williams? “Not on purpose. Gerald Williams? No. Karim Garcia? No. Some others, I don’t know. There are some that were in retaliation. Some of them to show them that some things I wouldn’t allow them to do. But a lot of them, you play around it. They understand it too. They know that they’re going to get hit for something that happened. If you disrespect a player, if you disrespect me.”

• Dave Cameron of Fangraphs offers a reminder that predictions and projections are very different creatures.
• Cameron’s colleague, Alex Remington, poses a sober question: Should MLB punish DUIs as harshly as it does PEDs?
• Trevor May is a top pitching prospect whom the Twins acquired in the offseason. According to Tom Powers of the Pioneer Press, May has an offbeat second career going:

By night, in the offseason, he is Mazr the deejay, standing in front of the microphones in the clubs of Seattle. Come baseball season, he is Trevor May, pitching prospect extraordinaire for the Minnesota Twins. He is a hard-throwing right-hander who walks to the mound with just one intention: strike out the hitter . . . .

It’s a hobby that emanated from offseason boredom.

“I play electronic music, house,” he said. “I’ve always really liked house. We get bored at the end of the season. I saw a little toy, a turntable thing. I mess around with it. In the offseason, you have so much free time. I got more and more into it, and I met some guys in Philly who taught me some stuff.”

• Bleacher Report’s Will Caroll explains what we may see from Stephen Strasburg in 2013 in terms of effectiveness, endurance, and injury risk.
• The pitching term “makeup” gets tossed about pretty liberally, so Bryan Grosnick of Beyond the Boxscore attempts to nail down what it really means and how it should be applied.

• Steve Garvey was diagnosed with prostate cancer last fall. In a statement, the former Dodger great says, “I decided on a radical prostectomy operation at UCLA, and through God’s grace it went well.”

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Via HuffPo:

California’s workers’ compensation system has awarded millions of dollars in benefits for job-related injuries to thousands of professional athletes, including many who played for out-of-state teams, according to a report.

Sports leagues and their insurers are working to stop the practice, which has paid an estimated $747 million to about 4,500 players since the early 1980s, according to the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/XLiSkD).

Some of the athletes played as little as one game in California.

Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis, a former Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, got a $199,000 settlement for injuries related to football. This came despite the fact Davis was on the roster of a Colorado team and played just nine times in the Golden State during an 88-game career, the newspaper said.

Here’s an idea: delete your social-media accounts:

Meet Rebecca Marino, a 22-year-old Canadian tennis player who has been ranked as high as 38th in the world in women’s professional tennis. Marino has a 150-107 record in her WTA career, with no wins and one runner-up back in 2011. This week, Marino announced that she would be retiring from professional tennis because she was struggling with all the online abuse she was getting from “fans” that berated her on social media.

Marino admitted during a conference call this week announcing her retirement that she has been battling depression for over six years and all the negative energy from the social media outlets just pushed her into a darker place instead of improving her outlook on life.

“Social media has also taken its toll on me,” Marino said, saying that she would receive numerous tweets that tell her to “go die” and “go burn in hell” and even scold her for costing her money if people had bet on her during certain matches.

Basically Marino admitted that tennis wasn’t fun for her anymore, and there is no point to continue something, even at such a high level, if it isn’t fun.

 

Reuters:

A South African court granted bail on Friday to Oscar Pistorius, charged with the murder of his girlfriend, after his lawyers argued the “Blade Runner” was too famous to pose a flight risk.

The decision by Magistrate Desmond Nair drew cheers from the athlete’s family and supporters, although he appeared unmoved. Pistorius had broken down in tears earlier in the week-long hearing.

The court set bail at 1 million rand and postponed the case until June 4. Pistorius was ordered to hand over firearms and passports, avoid his home and all witnesses in the case, report to a police station twice a week and not to drink alcohol.

The decision followed a week of dramatic testimony about how the athlete shot dead Reeva Steenkamp at his luxury home near Pretoria in the early hours of February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Prosecutors said Pistorius, 26, committed premeditated murder when he fired four shots into a locked bathroom door, hitting his girlfriend cowering on the other side. Steenkamp, 29, suffered gunshot wounds to her head, hip and arm.

Pistorius’ defence team argued the killing was a tragic mistake, saying the athlete had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder. They said he was too famous to pose a flight risk and deserved bail to prepare for a case that has drawn worldwide attention.

The rest here.

We present from last night’s game, Nicklas Grossman’s goal appropriately set to the “Harlem Shake.”

ABC News/Yahoo!:

“He was my partner, and as I said, we won,” Woods told reporters at a press conference after a practice round at the WGC-Accenture Matchplay Championship in Arizona.

“He hit the ball well, and he’s got an amazing touch. He can certainly chip and putt,” Woods said of Obama. “If he … spends more time playing the game of golf, I’m sure he can get to where he’s got pretty good stick” — golf-aficionados’ terminology for a talented game.

Just what we need, the president playing more golf.

From the New York Times:

In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports teams have sold them — to airlines and banks and companies that sell beer, soda, doughnuts, cars, telecommunications, razors and baseball bats. This led to memorable examples like Enron Field, the KFC Yum! Center and the University of Phoenix Stadium.

On Tuesday, that trend took another strange turn when Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, firmed a deal to rename its football building GEO Group Stadium. Perhaps that pushed stadium naming to its zenith, if only because the GEO Group is a private prison corporation.

For this partnership, there is no obvious precedent.

The university’s president described the deal as “wonderful” and the company as “well run” and by a notable alumnus. But it also left some unsettled, including those who study the business of sports and track the privatization of the prison industry. To those critics, this was a jarring case of the lengths colleges and teams will go to produce revenue, of the way that everything seems to be for sale now in sports — and to anyone with enough cash.

“This is an example of great donor intent, terrible execution,” said Paul Swangard, the managing director at the University of Oregon Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. “Here’s a guy with strong ties to the university, who wants to make a difference, and is mixing his philanthropic interest with a marketing strategy that doesn’t make any sense.”

Mark Buehrle, recently acquired by the Toronto Blue Jays, won’t be moving his wife and two kids to the Canadian city because Ontario laws prevent him from bringing with him another member of his family: his dog.

Slater, Buehrle’s bulldog–American Staffordshire terrier mix, is outlawed in Ontario because the latter breed is of pit-bull lineage, deemed by the provincial government to justify a “reasoned apprehension of harm.” “He’s an awesome dog,” lamented Buehrle, who spent last season with the Miami Marlins. “That’s what’s a shame; just the way he looks is why we have to get separated.”

Rather than leave Slater with friends or a kennel and move his family north of the border, they will split time between their St. Louis and Florida homes, Buehrle said. His family will occasionally visit him in Toronto throughout the season as well. “It’s something we’re going to deal with,” said the 2005 World Series champion. “It’s going to be tough at the beginning, not seeing your kids, but people deal with it and we’ll make it work.”

Guerlain Chicherit performs a 360 degree backflip in a Mini in Tignes, France. Wow!

In time for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, FIFA has announced that goal-line technology will be used. Following the successful use of the technology at the Club World Cup in December in Japan, FIFA president Sepp Blatter effectually gave it his approval. It is to be said that this is an important change in Blatter’s perspective, as he has in the past expressed his unwillingness for goal-line technology in soccer. The two leading companies, among others invited to submit bids, are GoalRef and Hawk Eye.

No one can forget Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal in their 2010 World Cup quarterfinal match against Germany. England have not been victims only, but benefactors of such faulty decisions, as John Terry’s late clearance in England’s Euro 2012 match against Ukraine denied the East Europeans a goal.

From ABC News:

A South Africa magistrate has charged Olympian Oscar Pistorius with a Schedule 6 offense, meaning that the alleged murder of his girlfriend was preplanned or premeditated.

Pistorius, a double-amputee who gained worldwide fame for running on carbon-fiber blades, allegedly shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, four times at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 14. South African prosecutors laid out part of their case against the 26-year-old athlete at today’s bail hearing.

“[Pistorius] shot and killed an innocent woman,” Gerrie Nel, the senior state prosecutor, said in court, adding that there is “no possible explanation to support” the notion that Pistorius thought Steenkamp was an intruder.

Look for the “‘Roid Rage” defense:

Steroid abuse may have been linked to everything from liver failure to impotence and back acne to baldness — but it’s far-fetched to suggest ‘roid rage led “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius to kill his model girlfriend last week.

South Africa police who searched the Olympian’s home after Reeva Steenkamp’s death reportedly found a stash of steroids, and investigators have theorized the drugs may have made Pistorius more aggressive before Steenkamp was slain at his home on Thursday. Investigators have reportedly even asked for Pistorius’ blood to be tested for the muscle-building drugs.

Steroids experts, however, say that theory doesn’t have much muscle.

“No question, anabolic steroids at certain dosages can increase aggressiveness in a miniscule number of people,” said Norman Fost, the director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “But there is no evidence that steroids make you use a gun on someone.”Read more:

Citing high U.S. taxes, Manny Pacquiao would prefer his next fight be in China:

Manny Pacquiao’s chief adviser insisted Monday that the Filipino superstar’s preference is for his next bout – a fifth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez – to take place away from Las Vegas, with the off-shore Chinese gambling resort of Macau emerging as the “favorite.”

Michael Koncz told Yahoo! Sports that the 39.6 percent tax rate Pacquiao would face if he were to fight again in the U.S. makes a fall bout in Las Vegas “a no go.”

Promoter Bob Arum is hopeful of arranging a fifth match between Pacquiao and Marquez in the fall, potentially on Sept. 14. Arum’s preference is for the fight to be at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which is his company’s home base.

But Arum and Koncz say Pacquiao is balking at the additional money he’d lose to the government if the fight were held in Las Vegas. Arum said Pacquiao would not have to pay taxes if the fight takes place in casinos in either Singapore or Macau.

While Michelle vacations in Colorado with the kids, the president hit the course with Tiger Woods yesterday:

President Barack Obama teed it up with Tiger Woods on Sunday.

The White House confirmed that the President and the world’s most famous golfer played a round at a secluded, exclusive yacht and golf club on Florida’s Treasure Coast.

Once the sport’s dominant player before his career was sidetracked by scandal, Woods joined Obama at the Floridian, where Obama is spending the long Presidents Day weekend. The two had met before, but Sunday was the first time they played together.

The White House, which has promised to be the most open and transparent in history, has prohibited any media coverage of Obama’s golf outing.

The foursome also included Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who owns the Floridian and baseball’s Houston Astros, and outgoing U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Crane and Kirk also were part of Obama’s foursome on Saturday, the White House said.

I wonder if the president and Tiger talked about the importance of fatherhood, you know, as they golfed hundreds of miles away from their kids.

This morning’s Reveille has been rained out. It will return next Monday.

Remember Oscar Pistorius?

He’s now been charged with murder::

Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee athlete who became famous as the ‘Blade Runner’ when he competed in the 2012 Olympic Games, has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend after model Reeva Steenkamp was shot inside his South African home.

Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the home, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said.

Hours later, after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers. He looked down as photographers snapped pictures, the hood on his gray workout jacket pulled up, covering most of his face. His court hearing was originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon but has been postponed until Friday to give forensic investigators time to carry out their work, said Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the prosecution.

Police said that there had “previously been incidents at the home of Mr. Oscar Pistorius.” Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court, but police spokesperson Brigadier Denise Beukes said that Pistorius was at his home at the time of the death of Steenkamp and “there is no other suspect involved.”

The rest here.

Developing:

Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend after model Reeva Steenkamp was shot inside the Olympic athlete’s home in South Africa.

Police said a 26-year-old male would appear in court later on Thursday. Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court but police spokesperson Brigadier Denise Beukes said that Pistorius was at his home after the death of Steenkamp and “there is no other suspect involved.”

You can always count on the International Olympic Committee to do the wrong thing.

IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games.

The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon — the event considered most at risk — and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 “core sports.”

The IOC board acted after reviewing the 26 sports on the current Olympic program. Eliminating one sport allows the International Olympic Committee to add a new sport to the program later this year.

Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.

“This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It’s not a case of what’s wrong with wrestling, it is what’s right with the 25 core sports.”

Really? Wrestling? It’s not only one of the original sports of the modern Olympics. It’s was featured in the ancient games in Greece. The rules are fairly straightforward, and the Olympics are considered the pinnacle event for the sport. Donald Rumsfeld summed up the arguments in favor of wrestling quite well in his recent letter to the IOC. If you’re wondering how wrestling was cut while unwatched sports such as the modern pentathlon survived, the answer is the usual chicanery that accompanies any decision by the IOC: “Modern pentathlon also benefited from the work of Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former IOC president who is a UIPM vice president and member of the IOC board.”

Wrestling will now compete with seven other sports (baseball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding, and wushu) that are competing for the same spot at the 2020 Olympics. This will complicate the path for squash, my earlier pick for inclusion at the 2020 Olympics. However, this vote was not final; the full International Olympic Committee can overturn this decision in September. In a best-case scenario, wrestling would be granted a reprieve in September, and one of the truly unnecessary sports (e.g., canoeing) would get the boot, making room for both squash and wrestling in the 2020 Olympics.