This Week In Sports Tomfoolery: Let’s T.W.I.S.T. Again (July 27-July 3)

If you’ve read my terrible joke of a headline and still chose to glance over the article, I’d like to take a moment to thank you. With the World Cup wrapping up and the football season still about 2 months away, this is the painfully slow portion of the year for sports fans, I feel your pain. Here’s your quick hits from the world of sports:

NBA

There’s some talk that the 3 big free agents in this years class (Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, and some dude named Lebron), the ones half the teams in the NBA have been preparing to get for the last 2-3 seasons, may all end up in Miami. This free agent class is perhaps one of the best of all time, and if Miami can indeed fit those 3 under their salary cap, they’ve locked up title contention for the foreseeable future. As much as I’d like to see this, I think there’s a better chance Bosh and LeBron end up in Chicago with someone like Carlos Boozer ending up in Miami with Wade. I’m still holding out hope though that at least LeBron and Wade end up together somewhere. And the latest rumor has Wade interested in Chicago!

NFL

Brett Favre has been throwing to the local high school receivers again since late May (which is becoming a yearly tradition in this ‘will he or won’t he?’ saga), and he went and had the surgery he’d need if he wanted to continue playing… let’s face it people, the man is coming back. He might be the first NFL player ever to die of old age on the football field.

MMA

• Strikeforce released their Middleweight champ, Jake Shields, this week. Shields was at the end of his contract and it was pretty obvious that he was more interested in joining the UFC to take on Anderson Silva, and have a chance at really taking his career to the next level, than to stay in Strikeforce and remain anonymous to mainstream fans.
• Brock Lesnar defied all the odds and returned from his year long layoff  to defend his belt, by a submission victory no less. Interim champion Shane Carwin had Lesnar on the brink of a TKO in the first but punched himself out and didn’t have anything left in the tank to fight off the submission hold in the second.

World Cup

We’re down to the last four teams: Netherlands, Uruguay, Germany, and Spain. The next games will be played on Tuesday and Wednesday. Here’s the bracket showing the progress thus far.

College Baseball

The final College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium wrapped up this week and South Carolina came out on top of UCLA taking the first two games of the best of 3 series. After losing in the opening round, South Carolina played through the loser’s bracket and made it all the way back to the top to win their first ever national title.

College Football

Well, anyone who was capable of thinking for themselves knew how this Big Texas 10 (formerly the Big 12) conference would work out, and now we have our first example. New Texas Tech Head Coach Tommy Tuberville is reprimanded for an interview in which he questioned the future of the conference and said there is “too much disparity between all the teams” in the Big 12 in how money is distributed.. The conference issued the reprimand Friday, saying Tuberville violated a conference standard that prohibits public criticism of members. Good luck guys, you made your bed with Texas for the last 14 years, now you get to sleep in it.

Nebraska Football

I am really surprised at how many recruits Nebraska is getting so early in this class. The season is still about 2 months away and they’ve got a whopping 13 verbal commits. And most of them are rated fairly high compared to the type of recruit they usually get. This week brought the #2 kicker in the nation into the class.