From the Bleachers

A retort to Rick Blaine who, ahead of the Notre Dame v Navy game, says Europe is not interested in Football

It is merely a couple of sleeps until kick off between Notre Dame and Navy in the college football game in Dublin this coming weekend. All around Ireland and indeed Europe the anticipation is building. Naturally, as we say here in Ireland, ‘There’s always one!’ meaning, there is always someone who is unhappy with the situation, despite everyone else looking forward to, in this case, the big game. Step forward Mr Rick Blaine, a writer for Yahoo, who penned this angry article proclaiming that the game is only going ahead as a ‘merchandising’ exercise.

To further anger the Notre Dame faithful, Blaine has also suggested the Fighting Irish could be in for an upset against Navy

The L.A. Dodgers represent great World Series value at 12/1

In case you were hidden under a rock, buried deep in episodes of The Kardashians or blinded by endless naked Prince Harry pictures, you should probably know that sometime between Friday and Saturday the Red Sox and the L.A. Dodgers pulled off probably the biggest single trade in MLB history. The Dodgers gave up a group of prospects (including the wonderfully named Rubby De La Rosa) whilst in return Boston shipped off Adrian Gonalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and (don’t forget!) Nick Punto. A simply stunning trade in its sheer magnitude, particularly the incredible $260 odd million dollars of salary The Red Sox West Dodgers are committing to by taking on those high priced veterans.

Boston’s media and fan-base are literally reeling from the shock, the former have nothing to write about anymore, and the latter simply stunned this is happening. Perhaps conditioned by weeks, nay, months of negative Front Office bashing by The Knights Of The Keyboard (as Teddy Ballgame sardonically called Boston’s sports media), Red Sox fans were under the impression the Front Office at Fenway Park had no clue how to run a Major League ball-club. As it turns out, their timing was absolutely impeccable and they have managed to not only drop those $260 million in wages, they have also changed the club-house attitude completely. There is still some work to do, obviously, however right now the future looks definitely brighter and clearer for the Red Sox. The fans are delighted by and large, the media, well, they are a little stunned.

Red Sox players again under attack, this time for not attending Johnny Pesky's funeral

In this lost Red Sox 2012 season, the anger and frustration continues to rise. As you probably already know, the latest drama is around the funeral of the late great Johnny Pesky, which was on Monday morning. There were four Red Sox players amongst the estimated hundred Sox front office and coaching staffs present at the funeral. That same night, Josh Beckett held his annual (since 2006) fundraising event in a bowling hall, and basically most of the Red Sox players attended.

Those are the raw details, and in the last 24 hours there has been a deluge of material of varying degrees of vitriol lambasting the Red Sox players for not attending the Johnny Pesky funeral, and yet attending the Beckett Bowl.

There is no point in tackling either the mud being slung the way of the Sox players, or trying to defend ‘their actions’ Perhaps the most level headed thing to do is understand a few simple facts. First of all, the Sox got in on Monday morning at 4 am from a road trip. Second of all, the Beckett fundraiser is for a Boston kids hospital and has raised over a million dollars for same.

Nike LeBron X shoe will cost $300 while 15% of the USA is below the poverty line

New York Jets backup QuarterbackTim Tebow's Christ pose for GQ magazine causes a stir

We live in a World where it would appear to be far easier to slam dunk home an angry, knee-jerk reaction than make an intelligent, calm, considered opinion on any given topic. The New York Jets backup Quarterback, otherwise known as Tim Tebow, is taking plenty of flak for appearing to be recreating Jesus on the cross in a recent GC magazine article. The pointless, angry kerfuffle brings to mind another inane conservative reaction to 'the liberal media' that occurred a month ago

As the latest Batman movie was released, neo-conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh noted the super villain Bane, remembered that Mitt Romney once ran a corporation called 'Baine' and couldn't help rushing to the following reaction;

"Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bain [sic]?"

Two top French soccer players face trial and possible jail for soliciting underage escort

Let’s take a walk on the murky side.  Close your eyes for a second and imagine the greatest ever underage prostitution scandal hit American professional sports today. Imagine, if you will,  LeBron James and Tim Tebow being linked with an underage ‘escort’ in a scandal as explosive as any Michael Bay ‘movie’. That doomsday scenario, LeBron and Tebow being caught, cough, with their pants down, is basically playing itself out in France as we speak, with two of the greatest stars of French soccer filling in for King James and the Jets backup Quarterback. Franck Ribéry and Karim Benzema are both French national team heroes, and both play for gigantic clubs, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid respectively. France is tearing itself apart from the inside with what to do with this situation.

Prostitution is basically legal in France, so the fact Ribéry and Benzema solicited one isn’t a big deal (apart of course from the moral issues), however the fact that when they did so, the girl in question was under 18, is a massive issue. The name on everyone's lips is Zahia Dehar, now 20. Dehar has told police that Benzema was first, and that the nefarious deed took place in 2008, when she was only 16 (and Benzema was 20). Interestingly Dehar still speaks relatively highly of Benzema, who’s lawyers maintain he is "innocent" and would explain himself in court.

Derek Jeter shows his class with moving eulogy to Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky

Three Irish boxers in action on a potentially historic Olympic Friday

Everyone loves a Friday, and this one has the potential to be extra special in Ireland. With five medals already guaranteed, this is already the most successful Irish Olympic team since as far back as 1956, and today is a massive day in this particular Irish Olympic quest.

Following hot on the heels of Katie Taylor’s magnificent Gold medal triumph yesterday, there are not one, not two, but three Irish men boxing in Olympic semi-finals today.

Olympic Gold medalist Katie Taylor brushes aside the nonsense to bring the prize home

Ireland’s Olympic gold medalist Katie Taylor didn’t just have to dodge opponents left and right jabs all week long in London. She also had to contend with a veritable deluge of potentially distracting rubbish. Taylor took the gold medal this afternoon, the first ever in women’s boxing, by beating Russian opponent Sofya Ochigava. During the lead up to the gold medal bout the Russian girl was guilty of some pretty disgraceful disparaging comments to the media. Sadly, that wasn’t the only disappointing distraction as some of her compatriots in the Russian media added gasoline to the fire with equally stupid comments, and a couple of British journalists made the head scratching ‘mistake’ of calling Taylor ‘British’.

However, all week long the thing that has impressed the most of all about Taylor has been her laser sharp focus pre-match and throughout every round of every fight. Nothing changed today as Taylor cast aside all distractions and put her experience, style and technique to work and came out, quite literally, on top of the world.

The Daily Telegraph thinks Irish Olympic hero Katie Taylor is British

The loudest cheer of the Olympics thus far: Leave it to the Irish!

You might be sitting there on your sofa or your rocking chair or your bean bag thinking to yourself, 'What has been the loudest cheer of this 2012 Olympics thus far?' You might also find yourself a little shocked at the answer. Michael Phelps and his eight thousand medals? No. Usain Bolt making the rest of us look like mere mortals? Nope. Any number of British medals? No. The single loudest cheer of the 2012 Olympics thus far has been for a quiet, unassuming Irish girl called Katie Taylor.

Ireland's premiere Gold medal hope, Taylor, is also the class of women's boxing at the moment, and her magnificent fight with Britain Natasha Jonas was loud. Very loud. Much like the wildly disappointing European Championships, the sports loving Irish turned up in their thousands, decidedly out shouting their English hosts in the stadium.

Here's the science.

Bring back one of the ‘Idiots’ - Derek Lowe would be a great fit in Boston (again)

No, ‘idiot’ is not a low level stoop into the dark art of trolling. If you recall, the merry bunch otherwise known as the 2004 Red Sox were self-declared idiots. Kevin Millar, Johnny Damon and our story’s hero, Derek Lowe, were three of the biggest (again, self-professed) idiots. Lowe wasn’t just ‘an idiot’, he pitched admirably for the Red Sox for 8 seasons, including a World Series ring, a plethora of wins and indeed saves, countless funny moments for us Red Sox fans to enjoy and, of course, pitching a no hitter into the bargain.

Lowe came to Boston in one of the most lopsided trades in MLB history back in 1997. The Red Sox got Lowe and Jason Varitek for ‘closer’ Heathcliff Slocumb. I say ‘closer’, as for those of you old enough to remember, poor old Heathcliff was really more of a ‘potential door opener’ than ‘closer’, blowing saves like it was going out of fashion. Let’s just say Seattle got the raw end of that deal.

Why all the fuss around Lowe these last 24 hours? Well, the Cleveland Indians have basically released him, or to use the technical term, they have designated him for assignment. He is still somewhat under their control, they can trade him for up to 10 days from when they let him go, however the feeling is he will be allowed drift off as a free agent to whoever wants him.

Don't lose sight of the Olympic forest because of the nationalistic trees

The Olympic games got off to a great start, with a blazing, throbbing opening ceremony full of colour and intrigue, including a rambunctious entrance by a myriad of athletes of the World. It was so much fun watching the beaming, glowing stars pour into the stadium in colourful garb, a real celebration of the best and brightest from around the World. Sadly, for me anyway, that appears to be where the goodwill pretty much stopped. Right now, this doesn’t really feel like an Olympic Games. Instead, we appear to be going through dozens of individual, stand-alone events where athletes from one country try to accumulate medals against unseen, unreported rivals. Perhaps I am far off the correct path, however my innocent understanding was that the Olympics is supposed to be a celebration of mankind.

Instead we have the BBC screaming with delight as a British athlete finishes second in the cycling, completely and utterly ignoring the Dutch winner, even going so far as to only interview the silver medalist. What about the Dutch girl? Didn’t she deserve a look-in?! Colour me confused.

Instead we have Irish television actually taking the British insularism and expanding on it exponentially. I suppose Irish TV has some excuse in that Ireland is a tiny nation and any victory for an Irish athlete truly is newsworthy, however, RTE may as well call their Olympics coverage ‘’The hunt for any kind of medal for an Irish athlete along with some other random sports that we will spend 5 minutes on at 11:30 pm on RTE2’’.