From the House of Sports - June 18

Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter and was sentenced yesterday in Florida to one month in jail. Before you go ballistic over what initially appears to be a slap-on-the-wrist miscarriage of justice, let’s take a closer look. Stallworth was also sentenced to two years’ house arrest, eight years’ probation, loss of his drivers license for life, 1,000 hours of community service and an undisclosed financial settlement with the family of the man he killed, Mario Reyes. Let’s be honest here: what good would be served by locking up Stallworth for five or ten years? At least he remained at the scene of the crime when countless others would have fled, he took responsibility and admitted his guilt, and has agreed to the Reyes family’s desire to avoid a protracted legal proceeding. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Rundle emphatically stated, “He is being punished appropriately. This is what the family wanted.” Even a representative for Mothers Against Drunk Driving said the deal was the best outcome. “I think there are a lot of kids as well as adults who will listen to his message,” said Miami-Dade MADD Director Janet Mondshein. “I think he’ll do more good being out of jail and being active in prevention.” Now Stallworth must await further punishment from the NFL, usually meted out in the form of game suspensions.

Tiger Time

A fully recovered Tiger Woods can make history by winning this week’s U.S. Open in Farmingdale, NY. Playing on a course that will include THREE par-4 holes of 500 yards or more for the first time ever, Woods will try to become the first man since Curtis Strange in 1988-89 to win back-to-back Opens. Already the owner of a whopping 14 Major championships at age 33, Tiger modestly summed up the possibility of taking home the 109th Open trophy by saying, “I like my chances in any Major.”

Someone Finally Said It FINALLY!

A professional tennis coach has spoken out on an aspect of the game that we’ve felt needed to be addressed for quite some time. Nick Bollettieri believes some sort of action should be taken against touring players who GRUNT loudly during matches! “There is a need for some sort of regulation,” declared Bollettieri. “Players on both the men’s and women’s tours grunt. Something eventually needs to be done.” We couldn’t agree more, Nick. In fact, we’d like to see Maria Sharapova and other main offenders play a match with their mouths taped shut so they can’t bellow like farm animals on every serve and shot.

NBA Wipeout

No surprise here. The five NBA Finals games just shown on ABC between the Lakers and Magic recorded a viewer loss of 10% compared to last season’s matchup between the Lakers and Celtics. May not sound like much to the average Joe but to the NBA, ABC and the game advertisers, the dropoff was HUGE.

Danica, Danica...

Here’s the most interesting news we’ve heard in awhile. Even though she says she won’t make an announcement about her future in racing until after the current IndyCar Series season ends in October, Danica Patrick is supposedly gathering info about a possible switch to NASCAR! Although many Sprint Cup drivers have dismissed Patrick’s abilities with comments like, “You’ve got to DRIVE these cars, not just point ‘em straight ahead,” the fact is NASCAR is struggling in a major way this year and the addition of a mega-star like Patrick would give stock car racing a desperately needed boost in 2010.

Thoughts from the House of Sports.com.