Archive for March, 2007:
Funkmaster Flex Sets Off “Car Wars” In New Reality Series
Funkmaster Flex has just joined forces with Castrol Syntec for a new Reality TV series, “Castrol Syntec Car Wars.”
Produced by RedMoxie/Joy George Films, the show will feature four car show contestants as they face off in a six-week competition to customize their rides.
“We’ve had a great experience with Flex and are looking forward to continuing our relationship with him and supporting our new show ‘Castrol Syntec Car Wars,’” Melanie Losey, Castrol Syntec brand manager, said in a statement. “Flex’s enthusiasm and love for cars is inspiring and we’re excited to have our highest performing motor oil brand, Castrol Syntec, alongside him.”
“Castrol Syntec Car Wars” is slated to premiere April 1 on ESPN.
In related news, Flex’s annual Car Show Tour is scheduled for seven nationwide dates starting this summer.
Funkmaster Flex Car Show dates:
May 6 Louisville, Kentucky (Kentucky Derby)
June 23 Edison, NJ
July 21 Hartford, CT
August 4 & 5th Ocean City, Maryland
August 12 Pomona, California
August 18 and 19 Myrtle Beach, SC
September 15 and 16 Atlanta, Georgia (NOPI)
Black Eyed Peas’ Taboo suspected of DUI
INDUSTRY, Calif. — Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after a collision, police said.
The 31-year-old hip-hop singer, whose real name is Jaime Luis Gomez, was taken into custody Tuesday morning after a collision in Industry, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles, said Los Angeles sheriff’s Lt. Mark Relyea.
Gomez was released that evening with a citation for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, possession of a prescribed medication without a prescription and driving under the influence, Relyea said.
No court date was disclosed.
The Grammy-winning Black Eyed Peas also include Fergie, will.i.am and apl.de.ap.
Petrino getting roster in focus. Vick 65% Completion Percentage, Jimmy Williams at corner, return of Finneran
New Falcons coach Bobby Petrino says second-year defensive back Jimmy Williams will enter the team’s first minicamp in April as the starting right cornerback. That strengthens the possibility that Atlanta could choose a safety — LSU’s LaRon Landry is the most highly regarded — with the No. 8 overall selection in the April 28-29 NFL draft.
At Wednesday’s league meetings, Petrino offered more insight into the team’s personnel decisions, including the fact that Chauncey Davis is the likely replacement at defensive end for Patrick Kerney, and that Petrino hopes to limit the number of times quarterback Michael Vick runs with the ball.
Here’s a look at how some players and positions will be affected:
- Jimmy Williams: Very little thought has been given to moving the Falcons’ top pick last season to safety, Petrino said. Having scouted Williams in college and watched film of him in limited action last season, Petrino determined early that Williams, down to 207 pounds from 215 as a rookie, would play right corner, opposite former Virginia Tech teammate DeAngelo Hall.
“We’re excited about him,” Petrino said. “He’s been working hard. He’s got a lot of energy. It will be fun to get to know him and see exactly how he operates at corner. We drafted him as a corner and we need a corner, and that’s what he’s played. He didn’t get a lot of opportunities last year. I try to take last year and put it aside and evaluate from this point on.”
With the draft a month away, the decision to play Williams at corner could be a sign that the Falcons are targeting Landry or Florida safety Reggie Nelson with the top pick. Incumbent free safety Chris Crocker was solid against the run last season, his first with the Falcons, but a liability in deep coverage and could be replaced.
What becomes of last season’s starting right cornerback, Jason Webster, remains to be seen. Petrino saying there was a need for a right cornerback could signal his eventual release before the season.
- Michael Vick: “What I would like to change about Michael is his first instinct, when he decides to take the game over and go win it by running the ball,” Petrino said of Vick, who became the NFL’s first 1,000-yard rushing quarterback last season.
“I would like to have him say, ‘OK, I’m going to take the game over, we’ve got to win this, but I’m going to utilize my receivers, my running back, my tight end,’ and build that trust within everybody so he understands we’re going to get it done but we’re going to utilize the players around him,” Petrino said. “He’s still going to have the ability to take off and go. We’d like that to be his third instinct instead of his first.”
Petrino said he’s established a goal of Vick completing 65 percent of his passes. Vick has never completed more than 56.4 percent. Last season, he completed 52.6 percent.
- Chauncey Davis: Davis has started 18 games in his first two seasons, so serving as Kerney’s replacement at defensive end would not be a surprise. Davis is solid against the run but is still evolving as a pass rusher.
This doesn’t mean the Falcons won’t draft a defensive end. They could opt for Arkansas’ Jamaal Anderson with the first pick, or use one of their two second-round picks on a defensive end, with Georgia’s Charles Johnson a possibility if he slips that far.
- Brian Finneran: The veteran wide receiver, who missed all of last season after tearing knee ligaments, is on track to be ready for training camp, but there is still some uncertainty about his health, Petrino said.
Petrino thinks the receivers, with the addition of veteran Joe Horn, have the capability to do well but must prove themselves.
“We’re waiting to see,” Petrino said. “They’re committed and excited that we’re going to spend a lot of time practicing the passing game and going through the progression that I believe in, and that’s learning the game together; everybody putting all the parts together.”
This could still be a position addressed in the draft.
- Daniel Fells: Backup tight end Daniel Fells made the Falcons roster as an undrafted free agent last season, and early evaluations are positive. Petrino said he is looking forward to seeing Fells in action, particularly in sets where an H-back is utilized.
The optimism around Fells (6-4, 252) might not be a good sign for veteran Eric Beverly, 33, who was used exclusively as a blocking tight end.
Grady Jackson not closing door on Falcons. Wants to play for Falcons despite lawsuit.
Despite filing a lawsuit against the Falcons, including three team officials, defensive tackle Grady Jackson said he hopes to remain with the team.
“I’d love to play in Atlanta,” Jackson said by telephone from Jackson, Miss., Wednesday. “I like playing there. Atlanta is good. I had fun playing with the Atlanta Falcons, and hopefully I can continue being an Atlanta
Jackson was a free agent coming off a $10 million contract with Green Bay when he visited the Falcons and took a physical last March, according the complaint.
Jackson alleges that a medical exam by the team’s doctor, Scott Gillogly, was reported to team trainer Ron Medlin and that the team’s director of player personnel, Les Snead, released erroneous information to some media outlets that Jackson had failed his March 24 physical. Gillogly, Medlin and Snead are named in the lawsuit.
The Falcons later signed Jackson in August to an incentive-laden three-year contract. He received a bonus of $300,000 and played for the league veteran minimum of $710,000 last season. Jackson is scheduled to make base salaries of $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008.
Falcons general manager Rich McKay was in Arizona for the NFL owners meetings and refused to comment on the lawsuit. The Falcons contended in a prepared statement Tuesday that Jackson just wants to re-negotiate his contract.
The lawsuit contends that Jackson was given an Echo Scan, a heart stress test, using a machine not made for a person of his size, and therefore the results were not reliable. The Falcons list Jackson as 6 feet 2, 345 pounds on their Web site.
Jackson has been a no-show for the team’s voluntary offseason workouts. As a player under contract, he would be required to attend the upcoming mandatory minicamp in April.
“I’m working out in Atlanta, but I won’t be going to the facilities,” Jackson said.
If the information about a “failed” physical had not been released, Jackson contends, he could have signed a bigger contract.
The lawsuit alleges that reports of Jackson’s failed physical were released to a reporter from KFFL.com, an Internet site that covers the league, and to the Sporting News magazine, and it was repeated and further published by the national media.
The lawsuit alleges that the information was released in order to enhance the Falcons’ leverage in negotiating a contract with Jackson, “to chill any interest by other NFL teams in signing Plaintiff Jackson and to reduce and impede … Jackson’s marketability in the free-agent market so that … the Falcons would later be able to sign … Jackson for considerably less money than his true market value.”
Jackson also says the Falcons might have limited his playing time and kept him from reaching a $500,000 bonus that required him to play nearly 60 percent of the snaps.
“If a player is performing up to his capabilities then you can’t say he’s not valuable or can’t play a lot of snaps,” Jackson said. “Everybody is using seven or eight defensive lineman now. Nobody plays the whole game. That I’m old, that’s a bunch of B.S. If you still got it, you’ve still got it.”
In Wednesday’s interview, Jackson did not accuse the Falcons of cutting his playing time to keep him from the bonus.
“I kind of feel like it, but it’s hard to say,” he said.
Jackson, 34, played in all 16 games last season and helped improve the Falcons’ run defense. He made no qualms about not being pleased with his contract.
“I look at it like this, I played the whole season, and it’s not about age,” Jackson said. “I still do what I do. I’m still playing great ball, and I feel like it’s [not] about age.”
Dennis Felton given two-year extension
Athens — Georgia basketball coach Dennis Felton on Wednesday got two years added to his contract and $200,000 added to his pay. Now comes the hard part: Proving he’s worth it.
The pay raise and contract extension — good through June of 2011 — were approved by the executive committee of the Georgia Athletic Association board of directors late Wednesday afternoon on the recommendation of athletics director Damon Evans and UGA President Michael Adams. In return, they hope to see the program continue to make the improvement it did this past season, when the Bulldogs (19-14) won four more games than the previous year and advanced to the second round of the NIT.
“Obviously the contract extension is saying that we have confidence in our basketball coach,” Evans said Wednesday evening. “We’ve made a lot of improvement the last couple of years and we think it will continue.”
Felton and Evans met on Friday and spent most of the time evaluating the team’s performance and discussing the prospects for the future. Eventually, they got around to his contract.
“It was real simple,” Felton said. “We got together, he told me this is what he’d like to do and I said, ‘that’s great.’”
The contract extension was necessary because Felton had only two years remaining on his original six-year agreement. It’s nearly impossible to recruit in the rugged SEC unless you can assure prospects you’ll be at a school their entire careers. And even with the $50,000-a-year raise, Felton’s compensation package (now $760,000 a year) still ranks in the bottom half of SEC coaches.
The gestures are a show of faith that Georgia’s athletic hierarchy believes Felton will get the program turned around. To date, Felton is 58-62 in four seasons and 22-42 in SEC regular-season play.
In addition to winning four more games (three more in SEC play), the Bulldogs made improvement in virtually every statistical category. They improved in points (75.1), shooting (.462), rebounding (37.9) and defended better (.438) than the previous season.
Georgia expects to return four starters — including leading scorers Takais Brown and Mike Mercer and point guard Sundiata Gaines, who led in everything else — and nine lettermen.
To that it will add four highly-touted freshman: 6-foot-9 forward Jeremy Price of Decatur, 6-foot-8 forward Chris Barnes of College Park, 6-foot-7 wing Jeremy Jacobs of Hargrave Military Academy and 6-foot-1 guard Zac Swansey of Dunwoody.
Also, the Bulldogs will open a new $30 million practice and training facility this summer.
Felton said he doesn’t feel any additional pressure in light of the richer deal.
“I really don’t feel there can be any more pressure than there already is,” he said with a laugh.
Slow NFL’s rush to legislate morality
As the beacon shining atop the sporting hill, the NFL is so successful that it is going beyond merely being an object of admiration to a purveyor of social leadership.
It is about attempt to legislate morality, a feat that has perplexed church and state for a millennium or two.
But hey, neither church nor state ever held an event worthy of 5K a ticket.
Perhaps you have read that new NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, apparently shocked at a recent outbreak of human nature among NFL employees, is planning a new series of punishments designed to curb the anti-social taint that appears to be the one stain on the NFL’s all-white suit.
“I don’t like it,” he told reporters at the annual league meetings this week in Phoenix. “It’s a bad reflection on the NFL. I don’t believe it’s representative of our players. There’s a few tainting the rest.”
True enough. It has been hard to explain how showering strippers with $80,000 in one-dollar bills, a simple act of heartwarming charity by the Tennessee Titans’ Pacman Jones that should have been featured on one of those United Way commercials, instead devolved into threats, fights and the gunshot wounding of three people in Las Vegas.
If such generosity can be twisted so perversely, clearly the NFL needs to go about changing its part of the world.
So Goodell, in conjunction with the players union as well as outside experts, will announce before the draft next month a new, more draconian disciplinary policy for players who get in trouble away from the field.
It remains unclear why we have less tolerance for the actions of immature pro athletes than we do of august members of Congress, British royals or the Catholic priesthood. Just the other day, Prince Harry was seen coming out of a pub drunk at 2 a.m., taking a swing at a photographer and stumbling into the gutter. Is anyone talking about suspending his prince-hood for a year without salary?
Anyway, few specifics have emerged from the NFL plottings except that punishments for misdeeds will be harsher and quicker. Goodell suggested two things that represent a departure: The league may punish a player before legal action has concluded, and teams may be sanctioned as well.
“We’ve got to get to (players) as quickly as possible,” he said.
“We’ll deal with repeat offenders very harshly. … At some point we need to be able to react before the legal process plays out.
“We’re going to hold our clubs more accountable. If they’re not doing everything they can, we’ll take it into consideration.”
This is groundbreaking, although perhaps in the way in which land mines are groundbreaking.
Without getting involved in an arcane discussion about points of law, the issue of punishment for violations of civil law before the rendering of civil judgments can be explained with two words familiar to many sports fans: Duke lacrosse.
The rush to judgment in that case, involving allegations of sexual assault at a party hosted by players, should serve as a cautionary tale. Even the ultra-bright Dookie administrators fell victim to the urge to look good and be politically correct, handing out sanctions before facts were clear.
As with Duke or any university, the NFL is automatically an involved party in each incident involving player misbehavior. The institutions are not disinterested agencies pursuing only justice; they’re money-making private businesses consumed with damage control to avoid loss of revenue.
They will protect image well ahead of an individual. But as was seen at Duke, the cops and prosecutors aren’t always right.
That said, when former University of Washington and Chicago Bears lineman Tank Johnson is discovered to have a larger arsenal in his home than Hezbollah, the United Nations has every reason to threaten sanctions followed by armed intervention if he fails to turn over the weapons. However perilous, there can be no compromises when it comes to the spread of liberty and democracy.
See, it’s never easy being the morals cop. Sometimes the facts are plain, sometimes they’re complicated. Successful as it has been, I’m not sure the NFL is as omniscient as it fancies itself (please see the exhibit marked Super Bowl XL, your honors).
Nevertheless, Goodell is on to something when he suggests the teams be held accountable as well. It isn’t clear how that would work, but a simple ascending order of fines seems superfluous. If fines don’t stop player misbehavior, they certainly won’t alter even more fabulously wealthy teams.
Since team culture and the locker room are where pressure is best applied, use those points to hit where all live: the salary cap.
Create a point system for violations. Exceed the limit, and a team loses 10 percent of its salary cap for next season. A sliding scale would increase the punishment for subsequent violations.
For example, the 2007 cap is $109 million. If the threshold were criminal convictions or overwhelming evidence that exceeded a maximum of, say, three points, the Cincinnati Bengals, flirting with nine potential convictions over the past two seasons, would be down to at least $98.1 million, and falling fast.
That kind of cut would represent a large competitive disadvantage, not a death penalty but a serious blow in a parity-suffused league. It would force owners and managers to think harder about a risky acquisition, force teammates to pressure one another into conforming, and reduce a little the league politics of judging accountability.
Nothing the NFL comes up with will change human nature. Perhaps the only hope is to postpone it a little until, as with the Seahawks’ Jerramy Stevens, the player is dumb enough to be a free agent when he decides to score more points on his breath-alcohol test than in a playoff game.
Then again, where morality fails, perhaps technology can provide an answer.
Attach an audio device to each player that responds to the sound of, “Let’s give a big Gentlemen’s Club welcome at stage three to Wendy Whoppers” with a 50,000-volt electrical shock. Unconscious until the emergency medical technicians can slide his gurney into the ambulance, the player is gone before the fight starts and the cops and media arrive.
It would be an $80,000 blow to charity. Somebody has to pay.
Falcons to host Colts on Thanksgiving Night
The Falcons will participate in the national tradition of Thanksgiving football as they will host the defending Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts on Nov. 22 at 8:15 p.m. ET in the Georgia Dome.Ă‚Â The game, which will be televised by the NFL Network, will be the third of three games that day as Green Bay will travel to traditional host Detroit at 12:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the N.Y. Jets will go to Dallas for a 4:15 p.m. ET showdown on CBS.
“We are excited to be part of the Thanksgiving Day tradition,” said Falcons President and GM Rich McKay, who is attending the NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Ariz. “Anytime you can play a game on national television, its great for our organization and the city of Atlanta.”
Atlanta will become the second new city in as many years to host a Thanksgiving Night game as Kansas City hosted the 2006 nighttime version.
It will be the second Thanksgiving Day game for the Falcons in three years. Atlanta went on the road to Detroit and beat the Lions, 27-7 on Nov. 24, 2005.
The Thanksgiving Day schedule was among eight national TV games announced by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The remainder of the 2007 regular season schedule will be announced by the league sometime in April.
Yolanda Adams coming to Praise 97.5 with Larry Jones
Yolanda Adams, the renowned gospel singer, is going to be the syndicated morning host at Praise 97.5 starting Thursday with Larry Jones. She’s been airing her show at a gospel station in Houston for the past few months.
Derek Harper, who is acting program director at Praise, said “we’ll have plenty of access to her. She’ll be in Atlanta quite often.”
Adams will take over for Sonya Hamm, who has been the morning host the past couple of years. She moves to middays while Mike Mitchell moves to afternoons. Connie Flint, who had been on in late afternoons, is on personal leave.
This move gives Praise a shot of celebrity along the lines of Steve Harvey at Grown Folks 102.5. Praise was a huge success out of the gate in 2001 and has been a top 10 performer since but has seen a few wobbles in the ratings of late.
Speaking of Harvey, he is comiing to Atlanta the week of April 17 and 20 and will do a live remote April 20 at a Home Depot off Cascade Road.
Harper also said the breakup between Radio One syndication and Michael Eric Dyson was “amicable.” He said Dyson, who recently left radio and Grown Folks 102.5, is pursuing TV opportunities. He said Radio One (which owns 102.5 and Praise) is seeking a new syndication replacement for that 10 to 1 p.m. slot that Dyson left behind. His station will take whatever syndicated product Radio One gives Grown Folks. Though Harper is frequently approached for a local show in that slot, he said that is not forthcoming in the near future.
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