Friday morning, University of Kentucky coach John Calipari put to rest the rumors that he’s leaving the Wildcats for any number of NBA openings next season by tweeting that he’s staying to finish what he started – which, presumably means, he’s got a handful of future NBA Rookies of the Year left to usher out of college basketball.

Either that, or he meant that he still hasn’t finished the rest of “Friday Night Lights” Season 4.

Fans of the show will note that NBC’s Friday night drama aired its second episode of the season, in which Coach Eric Taylor holds a late-night practice in hopes of wooing back his team that had quit on him. The reverse is true at Kentucky, of course, as the rumors have been that the team has been charged with the wooing lately. But stick with me.

Coach Taylor’s ragtag bunch of misfits show up and humor another one of his lump-in-the-throat, uber-earnest motivational speeches in which he renews his faith in the team, the school and their ability to compete as one cohesive unit.

Here’s Taylor’s culminating message from Friday’s climactic speech (check out the 2:30-mark of the scene for additional flavor)

Who wants to finish this fight? Who will finish this fight with me? … The players all begin ceremoniously tossing their jerseys into a bonfire on the field. Let’s finish it. Let’s finish it. Let’s FINISH it. Let’s finish it. Let’s finish it.

About eight hours before this episode, Calipari basically made the same speech – albeit limited to 140 characters and without the curious ceremony of igniting school property.

If you’re a “FNL” fan, this is probably pretty cool. If you’re a Wildcats fan, it might be a tad alarming. Calipari, after all, is getting paid almost $4 million a season – you’d hope that he’d borrow his inspirational words of appeasement from a program that isn’t on the verge of being canceled.

That’s just bad jeux-jeux.

But Calipari posted that message Friday morning and the show aired at 8 pm EST – who’s ripping off who?

Firstly, the current season of “Friday Night Lights” aired on DirectTV last year. Secondly, as mentioned two inches above, Calipari makes enough loot that not splurging on the satellite service to watch the episodes early shouldn’t have even entered his brain. And thirdly, skipping the first run of this underrated drama would be unthinkable. Why? Well, the hot, hot, hot cast for starters. And for enders, where else would Calipari come up with his nuggets of inspiration, if not from Coach Taylor?

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In the past two weeks, the Bowl Championship Series has made a string of moves that are about as strange as that time your weird uncle Harold signed up for a MySpace account.

Last week, the BCS promoted Bill Hancock to the role of BCS executive director. His job is to be the face of college football’s much-maligned postseason system. And he’ll be the guy doing all those media interviews every time there’s a BCS controversy. He’ll also have to march in front of Congress every time the BCS gets called into a congressional panel.

Shortly after Hancock was promoted, he set up social networking sites for the BCS on Twitter and Facebook so fans can have access to the system. So far, this has made for some great entertainment, as football fans around the nation can direct their hate to the very source of so much postseason despair. Just take a look at what people are saying.

Finally, on Monday it was revealed that the BCS hired Ari Fleischer as a PR consultant to help pump even more sunshine on the system. Without getting all political here (we are a sports blog), it is interesting that the BCS went with a former political flack to help them absorb the hate. As Fleischer’s own website says: “No one faces tougher coverage than sports figures – except for Presidents and top government officials.”

Now, Fleischer wasn’t talking about college football postseason structures on his website, but you have to wonder if any U.S. president has ever faced such universal disdain as the BCS. It’d be great to see the Harris poll conduct an approval rating on that system. Even in the best of times, it’d be hard to imagine more than 15 percent of college football fans are in favor of it.

All of these moves come at an interesting time, because can you think of a year that’s had less BCS controversy? Since about early October, it’s been the Florida-Alabama winner versus Texas in the national championship game. So long as those teams win out, the deck is stacked in their favor.

Then again, just for giggles let’s look at what would happen if Texas lost. TCU and Cincinnati would both then be neck and neck to face the Florida-Alabama winner. Meanwhile, Boise State could also make a claim for a title shot after winning out for the second straight year.

Naturally, that sort of scenario could be solved with a playoff structure, but that must be why the BCS is taking such defensive measures. Since there’s little controversy now, maybe the BCS is just ramping up for years when it won’t be so cut and dry.

But we’re more interested in how Hancock’s role will evolve. Beyond being a stooge for the BCS, will he one day begin to act like the commissioners in the pro leagues? David Stern and Bud Selig tend to show their faces for the championship games, but they also are quick to speak out over big controversies as well. It’ll be interesting to see how visible Hancock makes his role. For some reason, we picture him sitting in various luxury boxes at big BCS games, laughing with his cronies about the continued lack of a playoff system.

Then again, maybe it’d be best if Hancock stayed behind the scenes. Judging how the BCS Twitter page is being received, we probably don’t need a walking, talking BCS promoter right now.

Early Tuesday morning, former NBA pariah Stephon Marbury found himself too giddy from a rousing night of dance lessons and stargazing to fall asleep. So what does he do? He pushes out a few tweets disparaging former teammate and Celtics captain Paul Pierce.

Makes sense. 

His actions, anyway,  not the content of his remarks. Marbury was a player, an all-star alongside some of the men he – after a night of really nailing those Jitterbug spins – feels compelled to rail against from time to time. And because of his approximation to these people, many of us can’t help but listen.

Seemingly at random, Marbury’s tweet-taunt (twaunt?) was that L.A.’s Kobe Bryant is a better player than Pierce. He also supposed that Pierce wouldn’t agree to this sentiment and – still unprovoked – sent out a second tweet claiming Pierce’s “style is played out.” Perhaps he was referring to his choice of suits, but I doubt it.

Marbury has never shied from running off at the mouth (or the tweet), but that he leveled such an unprovoked and, dare I say, obvious observation made it an oddly compelling one.

Maybe Starbury knows something we don’t. What if every hoops analyst, fan and basketball theorist somehow totally dropped the ball on this. I mean, in the last two years, both Bryant and Pierce do have the same number of rings, after all. What if Paul Pierce was, at one time, better than Bryant?

Turns out, Pierce kinda sorta was. The following graph compares the two players’ Win Shares throughout the decade. A win share is a statistic that complicatedly calculates how many wins a team owes to the individual player. If the Celtics win 60 games in a season and Pierce has a 13 win share, he is responsible for 13 of the Celtics’ 60 wins. Another way to think of it is if you removed Pierce and his 13 win shares, the Celtics would have only won 47 games that season.

Pierce / Bryant Win Share Chart (click to embiggen)

If Win Shares illustrate the impact an individual has had on a team, you’ll notice that Pierce only helped his team more than Bryant in one season (2004-05). You’ll remember that as the season Gary Payton and Karl Malone left the Lakers and Bryant wallowed on one of the worst Lakers teams of the last 20 years. His Lakers went 34-48. Bryant was responsible for 21.5 percent of his team’s wins. Pierce’s Celtics that year were 45-37. Pierce was responsible for 25.6 percent of them.

The downside of Win Shares is that Bryant was on some very good teams during the last decade and Pierce mostly wasn’t. Therefore wins came more easily to Bryant than Pierce. So let’s look at a more individual-heavy stat: the Player Efficiency Rating (PER).

PER, simply put, adds together a player’s positive contributions, subtracts his negative contributions and rates a player on a per-minute basis in the form of a number. The league average is 15.

Pierce / Bryant Player Efficiency Rating (Click to embiggen)

Pierce only tops Bryant once in PER and it’s during Pierce’s lockout-shortened rookie year. After that however, Bryant clearly never looks back.

So what happens when we combine WS and PER? First, we call it something catchy like “Whisper.” Whispers take into account both a player’s worth to their respective team and their overall performance in a game. Does Pierce ever come close?

Pierce / Bryant Win Share + Player Efficiency Rating (click to embiggen)

Besides the tie in the 50-game 1998-99 season, Pierce’s WSPER was only higher than Bryant’s once and even then it was pretty close.

As for Marbury? The suggestion that Pierce’s “played out” game can’t stand up to Bryant’s implies that at one point it could. But unless Marbury was specifically discussing Pierce’s Win Share or WSPER stats from 2004-05, I’m not sure he’s got a leg to stand on. They’re not in the same tier. Except for 2004-05. Pierce was a better player in that one season. He shot more efficiently, rebounded more, stole more, shot five fewer shots a game and played 16 more games than Bryant.

But that’s it. Bryant’s been better ever since. Comparatively, Pierce’s style has been “played out” for five seasons.

To be honest, I regret exerting this much energy into disproving a tweet that no one really believed anyway.

Imagine you had a dirty joke that you like telling in familiar company. This joke you’re imagining is filthy. Heinous. The kind of joke that demands you hunch your shoulders and lean in close to the people you tell it to. Handled properly, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with these jokes (although there might be something wrong with you for thinking they’re funny), but their relative harmlessness doesn’t mean you’d want to tell this joke over a bullhorn to a group of randomly gathered strangers either.

See? Celtic swingman Marquis Daniels doesn’t get that.

ESPN’s True Hoop blogger, Henry Abbott, posted about the following tweet written by Daniels:

[Sic'd] “Any body got a rednose pit dat u wana breed wit my Orlando raised brown eyed Doberman I have her tail n ears clipped…she’s a prize fighter.”

Abbott goes on to dispel the notion that Daniels is involved in any kind of dog fighting scheme. This isn’t a post about dog fighting. It’s a post about foolish statements being made on a grand scale. Or maybe this is just a post about social media being Grand Scale.

Abbott touches on the idea that athletes need to be more careful on media like Twitter or UStream, but he doesn’t explain why. After all, when the discussions started about Daniels’ tweet, he suddenly set his account to private. Problem solved.

Firstly, Daniels still has his followers, about 1,400 of them before he privatized his account. They all still have access to whatever he says. And if he says anything that the public might take any interest in, Daniels is just an e-mailed screen capture away from hot water all over again. But none of this is news. President Obama calling Kanye West a jackass off the record, only to have it tweeted back on the record – THAT’s news.

But back to that joke analogy from a minute ago … three minutes ago, you say? Well, you’re a slow reader, aren’t you? There are exercises you can do to improve your read speed. See me after the blog.

Most of us wouldn’t dare tell some blue joke in a mixed crowd of different types. There would be too many people to offend. Too much risk of hitting a nerve or sounding uglier than we care to.

Twitter is the bullhorn and when you’re in front of that bullhorn, speakers either understand its power or they crumble underneath it. Marquis Daniels isn’t a superstar, but he’s popular enough that 1,400 people care what he has to say. Lance Armstrong has over 2.014 million followers. That’s only 66,000 fewer readers than the Wall Street Journal.

Think about that. The WSJ is the second most circulated newspaper in the country. Armstrong’s tweets reach as many people as the major newspapers in Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Denver and Dallas combined. A newspaper’s circulation doesn’t track what particular information a person sees within that paper, what articles or sections they flip through or scour, etc. Armstrong’s 2 million followers sought his profile and subscribed to specifically his feed. What one person says in a newspaper may very well be overlooked by the paper’s subscribers. What Armstrong says in his tweets will not be overlooked by his followers.

Lamar Odom? 124,000 followers. That’s roughly the same circulation as New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press. Chad Ochocinco? 183,000. Similar to Little Rock’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Terrell Owens. 197,000 followers. He reaches over 2,000 more people than either the Columbus (OH) Dispatch or the South Florida Sun-Sentinal. Serena Williams? 1.136 million followers. That’s the New York Times plus the Oakland Tribune. Shaquille O’Neal? 2.297 million followers. That’s both USA Today and the Albuquerque Journal.

None of these athletes would blab their Twitter utterings to a reporter at any of these newspapers. Yet here a tweet, there a tweet, everywhere a tweet-tweet.

But don’t stop on our account. For sportswriters and fans alike, the athlete Twitter phenomenon is kinda awesome in the same way watching a drunk punch himself is kinda awesome. We’ll gawk as long as it lasts, but we’re fully aware that many of these situations end suddenly and unpleasantly.

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Photos courtesy of Flickr

Here’s a recap of the weirdest o

Monday Lions WR scratches himself up on his golf cart – hilarity and shame ensue.  Football
Tuesday Maxim Magazine brought the funny when they “hacked” into David Ortiz’s Gmail account. Baseball
Wednesday Why did ESPN ban Twitter? ‘Cause it’s unmarketable, dummy. Sports Broadcasting
Thursday No 9-year-old would ever be on the NBA’s radar … would he? Basketball
Friday Nothing is as funny or sad as this little league catcher watching the same kid hit five homers in one game. Baseball
Saturday Dorm Golf: The best way for engineering students to make mom proud, poly-sci students to make mom angry. Golf
Sunday At this point, will people even remember that Favre used to be good? Football
Eighth Day These sporting robots are almost as fast and efficient as Dwyane Wade.

Although it was not the first instance of Twitter in sports, then-Milwaukee Buck Charlie Villanueva sent out a tweet during halftime and caught all sorts of crazy publicity about how unprofessional the act was. Then Shaquille O’Neal did the same thing all sneaky style because a) he wanted to prove he could get away with it – because he’s an egoist and b) he wished he’d thought of it in the first place.

Then the people that get paid to analyze and illuminate sports analyzed this situation and illuminated the whole tweet development as a vaguely negative phenomenon.

Most of Twitter’s sports press either uses them as any other source or as something slowly sapping the blood from their veins. Many writers feel that athletes like Lance Armstrong suddenly have the power to put them out of business, instead of keeping them working in it.

Armstrong boycotted the journalists at this year’s Giro d’Italia, opting instead to send out progress updated tweets, leaving journalists no choice but to tuck their tails between their legs and quote the feed. You have to assume the sportswriters took to Armstrong’s tweets like a busted investment banker takes to serving venti half-caf’ vanilla lattés at his new Starbucks barista position.

All middlemen think they’re worthwhile. You know who doesn’t? Everyone else. The moral of the Armstrong story is that he didn’t want to talk to journalists, so he didn’t. And the common cycling fan was just as empowered to keep tabs on Armstrong as a credentialed reporter. With the way athletes have branded Twitter into the flesh of their public existence, the role of journalist is shifting right along with the definition of what one is.

Cincinnati Bengal Chad Johnson Ochocinco has already threatened to tweet throughout next season’s games even though the NFL said it won’t be tolerated (shocker). Guys like “85″ have the potential to really blow the roof off of Twitter because fans want these tweets to be “real.” Fans want a revealing look into the life experiences of a pro athlete. And while a lot of stars are too corporately managed to say anything worth anyone’s attention, not everyone will be as vapid. Some of the stars that fail to filter themselves in interviews will likely do the same on Twitter, but with tons more grammatical errors.

Granted, not every tweet scheme is gold. Generally unknown and unliked tennis player, Justin Gimelstob, sent messages to a ball girl to pass along to fellow U.S. player Sam Querrey parked on the sidelines. Querrey then updated Gimelstob’s Twitter feed in-game. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with this since Gimelstob himself never posted a tweet. But when you stop to consider the 10 seconds here and there that he used to jot down useless information like scores and one-word adjectives throughout the match, it really didn’t add anything to the fan’s experience of tennis.

And for the scared sports journalists out there who absolutely must attack new social media, your real reason to dislike Twitter isn’t because it threatens sports writing (it doesn’t) but because it encourages athlete’s egos. Gimelstob added nothing with his play-by-play recaps, but he felt he did (similar to how I feel I’m somehow adding to a discussion about in-game tweeting despite most people already having made up their mind about the topic).

If it’s not players mistaking their own narcissism for serving their sport, it’s the media themselves trying to figure out Twitter’s best use. The Washington Post announced Thursday its plans to collect tweets from Nationals fans (all five of ‘em) at the home games over a period of 10 days and then regurgitate them onto the Post. Again, not every use of Twitter is a good one. While I applaud one of America’s most respected news sources for trying … something, this won’t add value. Fans don’t care about random tweets, they care about very specific tweets from specific people (mostly players and important team personnel).

What are we worried about with these in-game tweets? Players becoming distracted? Leaked play strategy for the other team to intercept? Some boneheaded player typing some boneheaded sentiment? All these problems exist already and all have been dealt with. Twitter wouldn’t be any different. What would be different is the unprecedented access to the athlete’s lives. Anyone aware of the reality programming/ tabloid culture we live in understands how our society craves intimate looks into people’s lives. The more famous the better.

But it isn’t just pros getting in on the action. The St. Paul Saints minor league baseball team will host an all social media night where the players and coaching staff are not only allowed, but encouraged to update their Facebook status and send tweety Twitter twittles throughout the game. The pitching coach for the Saints even said he’d tweet while making a trip to the pitcher’s mound.

Sigh.

First of all, it’s a minor league game. I doubt tickets are so scarce that scads of people are forced to stay home watching Twitter feeds of the Saints rattle off for three hours. The fans that care will be there. What are the odds that any of these jokers will have anything to say? Services like Twitter should be an outlet for a pre-existing need, not a void that people should find whatever rubble they can with which to fill it.

But at least the Saints – like the Washington Post – are open to the medium in the first place. It’s a start, right? Every sports outlet in every city throughout the world wants to bring fans closer to their favorite sport, right? Well, ain’t nothin’ closer than the immediate, unedited musings of the athletes themselves.

And although it isn’t a flawless system, it is a promising one that could use a lot more embracing and a lot less chastising.

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Pictures courtesy of Flickr

Of the 1,500-some-odd players in the NFL, there are those chosen few who get 90 percent of the headlines. They’re not always the best players, but sometimes they’re the loudest. And in almost every case, they’re the guys on the police blotter.

In the grand tradition of CBS Sportsline’s annual rankings of the top 50 NFL players, we present the top 50 most misbehaving, irritating and downright ruckus-causing players in the league.

And note, we purposefully excluded Michael Vick and Pacman Jones from the list because it would have been far too easy to put them on top. They’re both also not on a team right now.

50. Peyton Manning Just kidding. He’s as harmless as Opie. We just wish that SNL commercial he did was the real version of him.

49. Matt Leinart Similar to Brady Quinn, Leinart gets way too much attention paid to him because of his college pedigree. And granted, he had a great career at USC, but getting beat out by Kurt Warner does not signal a great hall of fame career for this guy. But you’d never know it if you read stories about him.

48. John Henderson Big John tends to stay out of trouble, but we like him on this list because of his pre-game ritual. If you haven’t seen it, prepare to view a giant man being slapped.

47. Chris Cooley His blog is awesome. But he accidentally exposed himself on it.

46. Kurt Warner He’s not controversial in his own right. But his wife raised plenty of ruckus shortly after the Rams’ Super Bowl win.

45. Darnell Dockett He’s not terribly interesting, but he’s playing the role of ‘unhappy star on the losing Super Bowl team’ to perfection.

44. Shaun Rogers He’s worth of the list because every season there’s a distinct possibility that he’ll become too fat to function.

43. Anquan Boldin Tough player, awesome talent. But an incredible whiner when it comes to his role with the Cardinals. Then again, if I made $2.5 million a season, I’d probably be jealous of Larry Fitzgerald’s $14.5 million salary too.

42. Roy Williams (the safety) He broke Terrell Owens’ ankle. And while that’s normally a cause for celebration, the guy managed to get an illegal tackle named after him. Ask any Cowboys fan if he’s done anything else in the past five years, and you’ll just get a blank stare.

41. Braylon Edwards A sometimes-great player. Though you know the guy has been trying to force a trade out of Cleveland since he first got there.

40. Jared Allen Another awesome player, but the guy picks up DUI’s like they’re invitations to the Playboy mansion.

39. Visanthe Shiancoe Visanthe really hasn’t done too much to bring in the controversy. But for the mere fact FOX Sports accidentally showed a little too much of Shiancoe to a national audience, he’s on the list. He could make the next 20 Pro Bowls, and people will still only remember him for that one thing.

38. Brady Quinn Huge expectations, little results. Had he come from anywhere but Notre Dame, people wouldn’t give two thoughts about the backup QB for the Cleveland Browns, but here we are.

37. Travis Johnson This guy would be higher on the list if he was a decent defensive tackle. But when your career highlights include knocking Trent Green unconscious (as if that’s hard) and then taunting the motionless quarterback, you know you’re bad.

36. Martellus Bennett When the Cowboys tight end started whining that Jason Witten didn’t like him, we started to agree. But after reading his blog and watching his videos, it’s clear that Bennett might be the funniest guy in the league. But we wonder how long before his team or the league crack down on him.

35. JaMarcus Russell Where to start with this guy. There’s the epic holdout in 2007, the exorbitant contract, the two completely forgettable seasons, and only now is he starting to show signs of leadership. The guy is simply a walking, talking example of how screwed up the Raiders continue to be.

34. Channing Crowder He’s had his fair share of dustups, but man, talk about a great quote. In the past year, the guy has launched shots at Rex Ryan, Matt Light, Bart Scott, the University of Miami, the Carlyle Group, the Jonas Brothers … the list goes on and on. And we only hope Crowder keeps talking.

33. Vernon Davis Waaay too much attention gets paid to Vernon Davis, seeing how he’s a sub-par tight end (nine career TDs) on a bad 49ers team. Still, his catfights with Mike Singletary should be good for a few headlines this season.

32. Bart Scott Compared to former-teammate Ray Lewis, Bart Scott is a saint. But when Scott said he planned on killing Hines Ward, he raised enough controversy to fill two seasons.

31. Pat Williams Really nothing controversial about him off the field, but getting himself embroiled in the StarCap controversy makes him worth of the list.

30. Kevin Williams You can’t have one Williams without the other.

29. Shawne Merriman He’s not terribly controversial off the field, but don’t you love how he gets busted for steroids, yet there’s nowhere near the outcry over it compared to baseball? Incredible.

28. Jeremy Shockey How great was that when the Giants won a Super Bowl without their talented yet obnoxious tight end? So far, his time with the Saints has included zero touchdowns and one instance of being found passed out in a Las Vegas pool.

27. Marshawn Lynch Sexual assault, hit and run, marijuana possession. He’s also a dead ringer for Little John.

26. Koren Robinson Ninth overall pick. Fourteen career touchdowns. One year suspension. That’s all you really need to know about this guy.

25. Tank Johnson He was in that Henry-PacMan-Johnson triumvirate that helped create the personal conduct policy. But you haven’t heard a peep out of Tank since he rejoined the league. That’s largely due to the fact he’s been terrible since leaving Chicago.

24. Donte Whitner Whitner’s not a bad guy, he’s even a promising safety for the Bills. But we’re putting him in the top 50 because of his promise as a controversy-starter. Beyond his arrest for disorderly conduct last year, he’s now teammates with Terrell Owens, and that can only lead to more headlines.

23. Jay Cutler Cutler is talented, whiny and diabetic. But that second quality is what he’s now best known for after crying his way out of Denver. It’ll be interesting to see whether the City of Chicago embraces a guy who tends to pick catfights with Philip Rivers.

22. Brandon Marshall Having a rap sheet is one thing, and Marshall certainly has one, but the guy has just landed on the NFL radar and he’s already stirring up trouble. And come on, who hates the city of Denver?

21. Steve Smith He’s had no fewer than two fights in training camp, but we give him credit, he managed to win both tussles despite being only 5-foot-9.

20. Mike Vrabel He was a key member of the Patriots’ Super Bowl teams, but he pushed Rodney Harrison as the dirtiest player on New England’s defense. The list of guys who’ve fallen victim to his cheap shots is a long one.

19. Santonio Holmes Santonio talks openly about his rough upbringing. But if he could just stop getting arrested every season, maybe that Super Bowl MVP would become what people remember him for.

18. Matt Jones Jones probably won’t ever be a great NFL receiver, but he could at least stay out of trouble if he eliminated one thing from his life. And that would be the mountains of cocaine he constantly gets arrested for. He’s officially the Dr. Rockso of the NFL.

17. Albert Haynesworth Doesn’t matter if he’s awesome and makes insane money. He has a permanent spot on this list because of two words – Face. Stomp.

16. Kellen Winslow The poor guy had boatloads of controversy follow him from his college career (I’m a soldier!). But then he crashed his motorcycle, mouthed off 200 times and got shipped off to Tampa Bay, where we’re guessing he’ll cause an even greater ruckus if he can stay on the field.

15. Joey Porter Where to start…Porter’s got a truckload of best moments, starting with the time he got shot before the 2003 season. He’s pretty much the only quote you need to read when the Dolphins play … well, anyone.

14. DeAngelo Hall The guy is such a big yapper that it drove Terrell Owens to spit in his face during a game. We don’t doubt that T.O. is nuts, but Hall has done his fair share of other crazy things, like getting a giant contract from the Raiders despite being highly overrated.

13. Ray Lewis You really haven’t heard much controversy out of Ray Lewis in the past four years, because he’s been focused on staying on the field even as his age starts to set in. But the tranquil waters of Reverend Ray can’t make up entirely for the wild first half of his career, where he may or may not have helped kill a man.

12.  Larry Johnson It’d be interesting to see if a running back has ever gone from all-everything to all-police blotter so fast. Chief fans love to remember his two 1,700-yard seasons, and everyone wants to forget the fact he’s repeatedly assaulted women at Kansas City nightclubs.

11. Cedric Benson You don’t need to be a Chicago Bears fan to hate this guy. Benson causes way too much controversy for a running back with 12 career touchdowns. He also helped further the perception that players from the University of Texas are nothing more than hard-drinking, pot-smoking whiners (though that’s probably true).

10. Hines Ward Who knew a receiver could be a dirty player? Hines is a key component to the Steelers’ recent championships, but he left a lot of broken jaws in his wake. Hines might be the only guy in the top 10 who reached that mark by his on-field behavior alone.

9. Donte Stallworth We never had much of a beef with Donte Stallworth before 2009. He was a solid receiver for the Saints and Eagles, then he played a bit role with the Patriots before going to the Browns. Then he killed a guy, so here we are.

8. Ricky Williams Oh, Ricky. Like Vince Young, his controversy-factor is pretty much in the self-destruction category. Although he gets the added bonus of setting the Dolphins back a few years with his wackiness. He’s got his career back on track now, but you couldn’t count the number of headlines he caused from 2004-07.

7. Randy Moss Moss has a laundry list of controversial moments, but he’s never killed a guy (we don’t think). The only reason he’s not in the top five is his production over the past two years with the Patriots has helped him re-emerge as one of the best receivers in the game.

6. Vince Young Most guys are on this list because of things they’ve done to teammates or society. But Vince Young is simply self-destructive, and that’s obviously been well chronicled. But don’t forget his shirtless birthday dance party last summer in Austin. That one was just plain weird.

5. Chris Henry He’s the third player in the PacMan-Tank Johnson-Chris Henry triumvirate, and he can take credit for helping create Roger Goodell’s personal conduct policy. For that, and the fact he’s managed to stay in the league, we give Chris Henry a top 5 billing.

4. Plaxico Burress Not sure where to begin here. For the mere fact his leg-hole in 2008 tanked the Giants’ chance at a Super Bowl repeat is worth a place near the top of the mountain.

3. Brett Favre For the vast number of headlines he causes every offseason, Favre gets a place in the top 3. But to be honest, he might be one of the least controversial players on the field.

2. Terrell Owens If Ochocinco is the court jester of the NFL, then TO is obviously the prince of darkness. We don’t need to fill you in, just look at the wreckage he’s caused. The best part is, no matter how nuts he acts or how much he alienates his quarterback, the guy backs it up on the field, and that means we have to keep paying attention to him.

1. Chad Ochocinco The difference between T.O. and O.C. is clear. Owens creates controversy because of football-related transgressions, whereas Ocho makes controversy his primary and seemingly solitary goal. Where to start with him? Beyond the name change, there’s his Twitter obsession, the infamous fight with Marvin Lewis after the 2005 playoffs loss, the ‘who covered 85 in ‘05’ list, the footrace against a horse, the Riverdance touchdown celebration…we could go on and on. But whether you find him hilarious or tiresome, Ocho reigns supreme over the NFL land of ill repute.

Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images/ Flickr

HBO insiders said that the volatility of Artie Lange‘s appearance on the premiere episode of HBO’s “Joe Buck Live” sparked those involved to ditch the comedy portion of the show and retreat to the more vanilla format of the other HBO sports programs from Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas.

It’s an odd decision all around. After all, the show A) airs on HBO, a channel known for not shying away from hot-button conversation from the mouths of controversial people (see: Maher, Bill), B) had only one episode and they’re doing away with the only thing people talked about from it and C) was touted as a forum to display Joe Buck’s long-hidden wit and humor.

The odd thing about this deletion of “blue” comedy is that it is what Joe Buck asked for, according to Lange in an interview with ESPN’s Michael Irvin:

Joe Buck came to me in the green room and said, “Listen, let me have it. You know what, you guys are here because you’re comedians.’” He said he’s a fan of mine, he knows what I do … and Joe said, “Let me have it.’” Ross Greenburg, the producer, said to me – and I regret this because I love Paul Rudd and Jason [Sedeikis] – he said, “Art, if this segment gets boring with these other two guys, you get in there and really inject some energy and go crazy.’” On HBO, you tell me something like that, I’m gonna … run with it.

The problem seems to be that Lange didn’t make or understand the distinction between HBO programming and HBO Sports programming (why would he?) and that Buck didn’t make the distinction for Lange. In a radio interview with Buck on the Dan LeBetard show, Buck corroborates Lange’s claims, clarifying that Buck hoped for a juicy PG-13 performance and got something much rawer, which has since led to the President of HBO banning Lange from making further appearances on his network. That’s one less person for Ari Gold to feel threatened by. From the LeBetard interview:

“It just got a little dirty, which is the problem I had with it. I swear to you, [Lange] gave us exactly what he thought we wanted, for that I don’t fault the guy. He was performing and I needed to be more specific on what we wanted.”

The two stories seem to match one another. Neither – if true – would explain why a show dedicated to utilizing Buck’s sports acumen and his humor would rid itself of one of those two things after one misstep. Buck doesn’t seem to have been penalized by HBO (unless you count having to do more shows in September as punishment, which I do). Isn’t this miscommunication partly his fault? And even if it isn’t, and Lange deserves his blacklisting, why scrub away the comedic residue away from the show?

Unless of course, Joe Buck realized that he’s not television funny, he’s just sports funny. You know the difference, I’m sure. Sports funny is like NBA stars Chris Bosh and Baron Davis trading video skits. It’s noteworthy because athletes are showing a different emotion other than boredom or intensity. It doesn’t take a whole lot for the media to get a kick out of certain athletes. Look at how much attention Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter page gets. Real-world funny is like Pryor, Rock, Carlin, Bruce or y’know … Bob Newhart (seriously, if you haven’t checked out Newhart, he’s side-splitting).

Honestly, who ISN’T funny when you sit him in a booth next to Tim McCarver? It’s like hearing about how Sen. Hillary Clinton has never had the chance to let her wit and humor shine through in public. Is it that she hasn’t had the chance or that she tries, but her wit doesn’t translate in front of a broader public?

I believe people think Joe Buck is clever (none more so than Buck himself, I’m sure), but a lot of this show was predicated on Buck being able to shake loose and get a little more relaxed in front of an audience. In his first show, he never did it. The only one who did is now banned and the producers are calling an audible on the show’s original philosophy.

That points to a gaggle of writers, producers and talent suddenly realizing they didn’t have a clear view of how to be funny or what funny looks like in a talk show format. It might not look like Artie Lange, but it sure don’t look like Joe Buck either.