So now that Charles Barkley is no longer drinking and driving after his infamous DUI incident, it seems he's taken to drinking and filming live television. Why else would someone say "numbnuts" on the air and then not-so-subtly call his producer a pussy? Not that I'm complaining - Barkley is an epic jackass but entertaining as hell.

During a stoppage in play due to an injury, MLB Network's Matt Vasgersian developed a serious case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. Not sure if he was just trying to be funny or if he was serious (or both), but for a white guy to say some random black dude looks like a famous black athlete (say Donovan McNabb) probably isn't a good idea.

Vasgersian responded via Kissing Suzy Kolber and at least owned up to his actions while defending himself against any racial allegations:

“I am an idiot .. Save the racial stuff which is just flat out wrong, almost all of what has been posted on my regrettably horrific timing is spot on .. It was a bad decision made on live tv and i can absolutely understand how that make an announcer sound insensitive. Bad on the spot judgment. Nobody feels worse about it than I do guys.”

Let's hope this is the end of it, as it's perfectly understandable for someone who speaks constantly on live television to make the occasional inappropriate slip-of-the-tongue. I'm sure this incident will spur at least one reporter to call up Donovan McNabb and ask him what Terrell Owens thinks about Vasgersian's comments.

Versus' reporter Lindsay Soto took advantage of a stoppage in play during the Sharks/Ducks playoff game Tuesday night to talk with Anaheim's Rob Niedermayer. She was wearing a low-cut blouse and upon leaning over to move the mic closer to Rob, gave him quite a show. Some would say her quick move to cover-up the goods was a bit prudish, but I say Lindsay is a consummate professional who knows that if you stick a great set of breasts in the face of any guy the responses to all of your questions will be, "Ummm... yeah... uh-huh... sure I'm listening to you."

[ via With Leather ]

With the NFL draft finally getting underway this Saturday, get ready for ESPN to subject us to Mel Kiper Jr. with his pre-and-post-draft analysis 24/7 for the next week or so. I think we can all agree that more often than not the NFL draft is basically a big crap-shoot, but someone has to do intense over-analysis. Naturally, that makes Mel Kiper Jr. a pretty easy target for mockery, as the above video does with his take on rating college girls.

There are few things more annoying in the world of sports than journalists standing up on their soap boxes to moralize at the very same heathen athletes they cover. This week's theme, in the aftermath of the Masters, has been how Tiger Woods is a bad guy because he's not all smiles and giggles during interviews and occasionally uses some foul language on the golf course.

There are several columns in this vein I could choose from, but the one I found most irritating was Ron Galloway's piece for The Huffington Post, ludicrously titled, Why Tiger Woods is Bad for Golf. Here's a few quotes from the article just to give you an idea:

As I watched the tournament later on TV, Tiger would openly mouth obscenities when he hit a bad shot. You might chalk it up to a bad day, but he has made a habit of this during his career, as well as tossing clubs around on occasion. It's expected behavior for him now. If the FCC fined Tiger for every time he blathered the F-word on national TV he'd probably have $25 million in penalties racked up by now.

Many people, including most fawning TV commentators, celebrate this as "passion" or "competitive drive," as if the rest of the PGA tour do not possess these qualities. The reality is that it that Tiger's "intensity" is simply the d-bag behavior of a coddled bully. This narcissism first evidenced itself a decade ago when he imperiously hung Fuzzy Zoeller out to dry for misinterpreted comments that offended Tiger's sensibilities. If you google "Fuzzy Zoeller," 10% of the responses reference this incident. All Tiger had to do was shrug it off. He chose not to, nearly destroying Zoeller's career.

So just to be clear, it's bad to curse, but making racially offensive comments is perfectly acceptable. Yes, Zoeller's comments were slightly misinterpreted, but he still shouldn't have made them and that's on him. It's absurd to suggest Tiger - barely old enough to order an alcoholic beverage at the time - was a jerk for how he didn't just come out and say what Zoeller said was okay. What a diva! Nevermind that Tiger did in fact make an effort to play down the situation, even though I'm sure on some level Zoeller's comments bothered him.

It's become altogether too easy (and boring) to rip on the World Wide Leader, so I was pleased to learn that ESPN is actually in the process of launching a new product that will basically be the Wikipedia of sports.

Curious where Shaquille O'Neal went to college? How many seasons Mickey Mantle played? ESPN wants to break the Google-to-Wikipedia flow chart that so many sports fans turn to for those kinds of answers.

So, it's set to launch ESPNDB.com (the DB stands for database) -- a site it hopes will serve as a sports encyclopedia-archive- statistical compendium. On one level, the goal is simply an ESPN-opedia -- although the content would be thoroughly fact-checked and would come from professionals. (Like Wikipedia, however, there will be some user-generated aspects.)

ESPNDB will debut sometime in the next few days in what is being termed a "pre-beta" stage. The venture has been in development for more than a year, and its operation falls under ESPN's digital media group.

The rise of a two-click solution for finding sports information online -- via a search on Google and then a click-through to Wikipedia -- cannot be understated as an impetus for ESPNDB.

"It was a significant factor," says Jim Noel, the vice president who oversees ESPNDB. "Wikipedia has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years ... and we believe that we can offer a better, more definitive, more credible resource for finding facts and figures and information than anybody else."

While ESPNDB's number of pages might someday be uncountable, initially it will focus simply on the coming NFL Draft. Still, even with that somewhat limited scope, there will be more than 500 pages, including profiles of 400 potential draftees.

While ESPNDB has two editorial staffers of its own, some of its content will come from ESPN's Stats & Information group. That unit is constantly generating a deluge of profiles, statistical packages and other data for multiple ESPN platforms. But much of its output ends up on the "cutting-room-floor," which could eventually be parked on ESPNDB.

After the draft, ESPNDB plans to build a similar reference hub for the NBA Finals in June. ESPNDB may be able to gain a leg up on Wikipedia and other reference sites with video it can offer culled from ESPN's vast library. (MediaPost)

This sounds like it could be pretty amazing if they don't screw it up, particularly if they decide to include a user-friendly data search option for all of the major sports. Because sometimes you just need to know how left-handed batters on American League teams fared during night games in June of 1972. All joking aside, this could be the best thing ESPN has done in years.

At the age of 73, it's hardly a surprise that John Madden has decided to call it quits and stop announcing NFL games for NBC. In a press release he explains why he came to this decision:

"It’s time. I’m 73 years old. My 50th wedding anniversary is this fall. I have two great sons and their families and my five grandchildren are at an age now when they know when I’m home and, more importantly, when I’m not..."

“It’s been such a great ride… the NFL has been my life for more than 40 years, it has been my passion – it still is. I appreciate all of the people who are and were such an important part of the most enjoyable, most fun anyone could have… that great life with the teams, the players, the coaches, the owners, the League… my broadcasting partners Pat and Al… the production people and the fans…is still great… it’s still fun and that’s what it makes it hard and that’s why it took me a few months to make a decision."

While it's no secret that Madden's game analysis had declined dramatically in recent years ("If, uh, if uh, the quaterback throws the ball, and uh, and uh, the reciever catches it in the, in the, in the endzone, then that's gonna be, that, that, that's gonna be, that right there, that's gonna be, that, that, that right there, that, that's gonna be a touchdown."), I'll still miss him purely for nostalgic purposes.