Alive and kicking

The Atlanta Falcons have signed 47-year-old kicker Morten Andersen. Andersen has been around football so long that he can remember when mastodon fighting was prevalent among the players.

The colors won’t clash with the prison jumpsuit

Texas freshman running back James Henry has been charged with two felony counts of obstruction and tampering with evidence, making him the sixth Longhorns player arrested since June. The Longhorns are rapidly turning into college football’s version of the Cincinnati Bengals. Must be something about the color orange.

The Worm turns

New York Knicks coach and president Isiah Thomas moved from cursing to courting a fellow executive now suing Thomas for sexual harassment, according to a former employee testifying at the trial. Defense attornies plan to counter-act the claims by calling Dennis Rodman to testify that Thomas made similar advances towards him when he was wearing a wedding dress.

America’s Ballistics Team

The Dallas Cowboys have signed suspended defensive tackle Tank Johnson to a two-year contract. “For a lot of reasons, he really just felt the Cowboys were the right fit,” said Johnson’s agent, Jerrold Colton. One of the reasons is Johnson can store large quantities of gun powder in a secret compartment Michael Irvin carved out of the Cowboys’ locker room to hide his cocaine.

The Big, mostly Bad Bruins

First the good news: the Boston Bruins beat the New York Islanders in their preseason debut, 3-1. The bad news is it was a rather chippy game for an exhibition and Islanders enforcer Kip Brennan took down hulking Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara in a fight. Not that I’m going out on a limb, because last season was pretty much the same deal, but I’m afraid the result of the brawl is more indicative of your 2007-08 Boston Bruins that the result of the game.

Just shut up before Rush Limbaugh weighs in

In an interview with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” Donovan McNabb said that black quarterbacks are more harshly criticized than their white counterparts. While there is no doubt, given the lack of African-Americans in the coaching and front office ranks, that the NFL still has a long way to go in racial progress, it’s hard not to take McNabb’s words with a grain of salt because A) he plays in Philadelphia, where everyone from Mike Schmidt to Santa Claus gets ripped, and B) he is easily the whiniest athlete in pro sports today.