This is an amazing, amazing, wonderful front page, right down to the weather description on the top right. [via]

Want to be a pretentious show-off with your friends this weekend when the big game is on? But you don't know the difference between the infield fly rule and a two-line pass (or even to what sports they apply)? Well, it's OK. Sports radio enthusiast and noted laundromat-lurker Jim Behrle, who graced us with his haiku picks this NFL season, has once again written down a cheat sheet of smart-sounding things you can spout during the Super Bowl! Remember, always take a pause in the middle of every sentence for maximum gravitas. Don't choke on a nacho while you opine! READ MORE

Over the weekend, as Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s titanic battle at the Australian Open effectively put an end to the sport of tennis, I played an hour of the game inside Grand Central Terminal. Up until recently, I had no idea there was an actual, full-size tennis court inside one of the most famous train stations in the world. I would wager that many of the 70,000-plus commuters who pass through every day don’t know about it either (perhaps they missed these photographs, as I did). But there I was, tennis bag in hand, with a voucher to play for one hour at the Vanderbilt Tennis Club—so it had to be there. READ MORE

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Scott Raab’s new memoir The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James isn’t really about basketball. It’s about addiction and sobriety, marriage and divorce, childhood and parenthood, loyalty and autonomy. In 15 years at Esquire—and five years at GQ before that—the 59-year-old Cleveland native has, as he writes in the book, “shared cunnilingus tips with Robert Downey Jr., got tattoos with Dennis Rodman, once smoked a bone with Tupac, twice did nothing with Larry David, and visited with Phil Spector in his castle in Alhambra three times, all without gunplay...[and] even went to Bill Murray's house once for an Oscar party." He’s also responsible for hands-down the most insightful and exhaustive reporting on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. We spoke at his home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. READ MORE

I actually find this video of National Guardsmen cross-teaching each other luge, skeleton and bobsled starts totally fascinating, and I mean in a sports sense even! Winter sports are so crazy-specialized, and when you've been bobsledding, trying a luge start is like trying to write with the wrong hand. (via)

How stupid are magazines? So stupid that the writers of the pieces for those magazines now tend to take to Twitter to denounce the packaging, headlining and illustration. (The illustration—Michael Vick whiteface—ESPN promptly removed; you can see it here.)

In any event, if you read the actual ESPN piece by Touré, you learn that Michael Vick couldn't possibly be white but also is "heroic," because of how he's acted in his post-dog-fighting life. I... guess? I dunno? Elsewhere in ESPN the magazine's Vick package, you can read about how we love dogs too much but are too mean to animals and how we don't have a moral leg to stand on criticizing anyone because of our contradictions of eating versus petting: "We don't have to witness the stomach-turning horrors inside a farm factory in order to get chicken nuggets for lunch"! (This is not written by Jonathan Safran Foer, but ESPN definitely is starting to read like Cosmopolitan at this point.) Also, somewhere Oprah is cringing sympathetically: enjoy your food libel lawsuit, ESPN.

David Roth: I was trying to explain why having Keith Hernandez sit in the seats at Not-Shea Stadium to announce yesterday's Mets game was such a good idea to my wife. I embarrassed myself. READ MORE