Sixty Down, 16 to Go

The Dallas Mavericks started the season with a broken-down Doug Christie, flirted late with signing has-been Shawn Kemp and gave extended minutes all the way through to isn’t-yet Rawle Marshall. Key guard Devin Harris only played seven games after the All-Star break. Keith Van Horn was injured more often than…

No Stars Gazing

If you drive near the American Airlines Center you can’t miss the giant banners featuring the Dallas Stars’ Stanley Cup quest and star Mike Modano. But if you subscribe to Dish Network, you will miss the NHL’s Western Conference Finals, likely a showdown between your Stars and the rival Detroit…

American Idols

It’s a hot, wind-warped day at the Dallas Cup Youth Soccer Tournament in Frisco, and a team of 13-year-old boys has just administered a 6-0 ass-kicking. As they jubilantly leave Pizza Hut Park, the group of players and their supporters happens upon a gaggle of barely legal girls. Fit, flirty…

Billy and the Jets

Coming soon to the Dallas Cowboys’ roster…Joe Namath? Granted, with the way ol’ Broadway Joe is struh-guh-liiiing these days, it’s a bit far-fetched. But considering coach Bill Parcells’ fascination with has-beens who once played in New York, all a player needs to wear a star on his helmet is some…

Be Proud, Then Rowdy and Loud

Why? Because thanks to your votes and the celebrity votes (who knew Billy the Kidd had good taste in music?) on TexasGigs.com’s Mavs Playoff Song Contest, our pick PPT (which consist of local faves Pikahsso, Picnic and Tahiti) won with their infectiously rawkus tune “We’re Rowdy, Proud and Loud.” Listen…

Deep Thoughts

A little Valley Ranch birdie chirped to me this morning that, in addition to former All-Pro safety Charlie Waters, the Dallas Cowboys will interview former deep snapper and SMU alum Dale Hellestrae to be their new radio analyst. With Babe Laufenberg’s voluntary departure, the Cowboys need an entertaining voice who’s…

Punching His Ticket

Two years ago, when Dale Hansen renegotiated his contract at KTCK-AM (1310, The Ticket), he was shocked by the offer. “In all honesty,” Hansen says now, “it was way too high.” Hansen, the longtime WFAA-Channel 8 sports anchor with the giant ego and the big brain, took a portion of…

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

The Texas Rangers have played 13 games. It’s the equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys having just gone into overtime in their season opener. So should those of us who care about the local baseball team be as miserable after the 5-8 start, especially before the just-concluded trip to Oakland, as…

Saddle Up

Lone Star Park opened its 10th season of racing last night, but judging by the horse racing coverage in The Dallas Morning News, a rat peed on cotton somewhere in Grand Prairie. Ten years, folks—at a time when horse racing is struggling to survive as a spectator sport in various…

America’s (Broadcast) Team

With the re-signing of legendary play-by-play voice Brad Sham and sideline reporter Kristi Scales, we all assumed the return of Dallas Cowboys’ radio color commentator Babe Laufenberg was a slam dunk. We were wrong. Next season the Cowboys will have a new radio home on KTCK-AM (1310, The Ticket) and…

Hapless on the Hilltop

OK, so let’s hear it. It’s been a week since SMU fired basketball coach Jimmy Tubbs and promised the reasons went far beyond the wrist-slap NCAA violations of buying players hamburgers and lending them cups of laundry detergent. If there’s more to the story–and there’d better be–it’s time for outgoing…

Heaven Help Us

Like he does before every start, Rangers pitcher R.A. Dickey attended chapel last Thursday asking for God’s guidance on the mound. Presumably praying just as hard, Detroit Tigers catcher Ivan Rodriguez made a quick sign of the cross before digging in to take his third-inning cuts at Dickey’s faith-based knuckleball…

Iraqi Invasion

Went out to the Dallas Cup youth soccer tournament at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco Tuesday afternoon and bumped into an amazing team of 12- and 13-year-olds. They were extremely skillful on the field. Polite and bubbly during interviews. And, oh, did I mention they hail from Baghdad? The Iraqi…

NASCAR: A Yankee Pastime

On Sunday The Dallas Morning News ran a piece reiterating the myth that NASCAR was once a regional–specifically southeastern–sport that has suddenly expanded into the major urban markets. Strangely, even NASCAR officials adhere to this and other myths (such as the disregard for non-southern drivers). Long-time fans are not so…

Playmaker Payday

A little Bristol, Connecticut, birdie tells me former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin has re-signed with ESPN. The contract, which will be announced later this week, is for four years and pays the Playmaker about $1.5 million per year to continue his role on the network as NFL analyst-Terrell Owens…

MVPeaking

The Dallas Mavericks won’t win the NBA’s Southwest Division championship. But last Friday night in San Antonio they earned something more precious: confidence. With a 92-86 victory over the Spurs, the Mavs proved they can win playoff-intensity road games against the league’s defending champion. And that will be important a…

On Being Rowdy, Loud, and/or Proud

There has to be a lot of hooplah going around about the Dallas Mavericks upcoming playoffs run, because I can promise you that if there was only minimal hooplah, I wouldn’t have any idea it was even basketball season. (Heart you, Mark!) Anyway, what would hooplah be without viral videos?…

Holy Crap, They Killed Kenny!

Or, at least, you better. Texas Rangers fans, your old friend Kenny Rogers returns to the south park known as Ameriquest Field this weekend as a Detroit Tiger. Rogers, last seen in these parts attacking Fox 4 cameraman Larry Rodriguez for no good reason, takes the mound Sunday afternoon. And…

America’s Schedule

Plan your holidays around something different this year–like, say, football. The NFL just released its 2006 schedules, and your Dallas Cowboys close the season with home games against the Philadelphia Eagles on Christmas night and the Detroit Lions on New Year’s Eve afternoon. The Cowboys and new receiver Terrell Owens…

Fast Track

He ain’t the biggest waste of talent in NFL history. But he is the fastest. At this point in his afterlife, Alexander Wright was supposed to be kicking back and cashing in on a star-studded career adorned with Super Bowl rings and supersonic highlights. The NFL’s fastest player in the…

Jack Klugman Smokes Pot??

No, actually, it’s your other favorite Quincy. As in Quincy Carter, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who led the team to the playoffs in 2003 only to be surprisingly and mysteriously cut six days into 2004 training camp. As with most transactions not involving Terrell Owens, Cowboys management remained tight-lipped…

He Knows Nothing. NOTHING.

From Frankfurt, Germany, courtesy the Associated Press, comes this news: “The man who discovered Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki has been charged with tax evasion.” That’d be one Holger Geschwindner, Nowitzki’s one-time personal coach, who’s in trouble with German officials for allegedly biting off a piece of Dirk’s Dallas Mavericks…