…tell him to grow up and/or put down the smart (?) phone.  That’s the lesson we can take away from CNN contributor Roland Martin, who was suspended by the network today following a firestorm of criticism after a series of tweets on Super Bowl Sunday take exception to Beckham’s signature line of man-pants and/or pink attire at a football game.

Martin has tried to pass himself off as a soccerphobe rather than a gay basher, but unless you’re auditioning to become Jim Rome’s guest host, that’s a curious brand of damage control.  It’s far too easy for Martin to label himself an anti-bullying advocate when it’s clearly no big deal when he suggests — even in jest — that those with a Boner For Beckham deserve a beatdown.  With all due respect to the folks at It Gets Better,  it doesn’t necessarily get any better in the world of sophisticated adults employed by CNN.

A slight distracting from the continued ascension of PG Jeremy Lin was Knicks fans’ continued verbal abuse of Jared Jeffries during Monday’s win over Utah. Jeffries, who continues to struggle offensively from close range while performing much of the team’s dirty work on defense. is an undeserving target in the eyes of head coach Mike D’Antoni, as the New York Post’s Marc Berman explains.

“Indulge me for a second, anybody who boos Jared Jeffries has got to reexamine their life a little bit,” D’Antoni said following the Knicks’ 99-88 win over the Jazz at the Garden. “I love our fans and I like Madison Square Garden, the arena, but here’s a guy who came back to us, minimum contract. He could’ve gone to a lot of other teams. He plays as hard as anybody could possibly ever play, with injuries, everything you ask him. He takes every charge, every dirty play, every rebound. He works every second.”

“I’ll die for him,” an appreciative Jeffries  said. “I’ll leave blood on the court … because he’s the best coach in the NBA.’’

Fans are hard on Jeffries because he was a nonentity in his first stint after Isiah Thomas gave him the full mid-level exception in a $30 million deal. Jeffries was also the goat in the Game 2 loss in Boston in the playoffs for going up meekly and blowing a game-tying layup in the final seconds.

“There are people that look at that and go, ‘Well, I think I’ll boo him.’ I have a hard time believing that,” D’Antoni said.

Instantly killing the growing urban legend Madonna’s tightrope artist from Sunday night was actually the little kid from “Bad Santa” all grown up, the New York Times’ Jere Longman profiles Andy Lewis, who “makes his living performing an extreme and obscure form of tightrope walking known as slacklining.”

Slacklining reached the Super Bowl about three decades after originating in Yosemite in the world of rock climbing. Frequently, it involves stretchy nylon webbing attached low to the ground between two trees. But the more adventuresome have branched into highlining (sometimes performing hundreds of feet above the ground), waterlining and tricklining, Lewis’s specialty.

He is said to be the first to complete a back flip on a slackline. He is definitely the first to complete a kiss on the cheek by Madonna at halftime of the Super Bowl on a slackline.

“The kiss was my idea,” said Lewis, who lives in Moab, Utah, a slacklining haven. “Madonna likes to present her show with some kind of meaning. I wanted the kiss to give me energy to perform tricks. She kissed me every day in rehearsal. I’ve been kissed by Madonna something like 27 times.”

Initially, Lewis said he had some reservations. Exactly how much slack would Madonna allow in this slacklining routine?

“I was afraid I would get bossed around,” he said. “But Madonna was so nice and friendly.”

From the Boston Globe’s Eric Wilbur, February 6, 2012

What an embarrassment for the Patriots organization and Bob Kraft. So now the Giants have taken Lombardi from you twice, and you haven’t looked this bad in a playoff game since…well, two weeks ago against the Ravens. Maybe that moment will actually hit you as you’re whittling down water slides in South America looking like Prince Valiant this spring.

Your legacy has been stamped, but you’re turning your Joe Montana status into one of Jim Kelly. But, hey what you worry? There’s that new mansion in the “Names” pages to deal with.

That was Wilbur’s take on Tom Brady’s performance in Super Bowl XLVI, a somewhat hysterical, nearly Shaughnessey-level evisceration of the only New England QB to have won one Super Bowl, let alone three. After being pilloried throughout the blogosphere, Wilbur has today apologized (sort of), claiming “I never intended Sunday night’s column, written in the immediate aftermath of the Patriots’ loss, o garner quite the widespread attention – and negativity.” In other words, Wilbur had no idea whatsoever he was writing something kinda provocative that would be seen by anyone beyond his closest friends.

To the dozens who have pointed out my follically-challenged scalp (thanks, I hadn’t noticed), called me a hack, loser, or some other unprintable expletive, and even the tough guy who promised to put my head (that’s “cue ball” head, sir) through a wall if he spotted me in Boston, consider this my repentance.

I still think Tom Brady was most at fault for the loss, but it wasn’t directly because of the safety as I noted. Granted, it did lead to forcing the defense on the field for most of the first quarter, but it wasn’t the quarterback who happened to be the 12th man on the field. I didn’t take into account how hurt he might have been when he tremendously underthrew that ball to Rob Gronkowski, but if he knew he was hurting, his decision-making process there should have been better. Yes, Wes Welker should have caught the ball, but it also could have been thrown with more accuracy. Again, I didn’t take into account how Brady’s possible injury may have affected his performance.

But rational thinking doesn’t come to head in such a moment, and frankly, that was my intention; to present the knee-jerk reactions of what the fan base had to be feeling at that very moment. As it turned out, there was little anger directed toward the Patriots. Disappointment, yes, but the anger was at a minimum.

That, apparently, was reserved for me.

Of Danny McBride’s comic creation Kenny Powers, former Braves closer John Rocker insists, “It’s about me. It is. The guy wears 49, is a Braves pitcher, he’s a bit of a hothead. It’s kind of obvious.” Continuing on a promo tour of television stations to promote his new tome, Scars & Strikes, Rocker continues to blame  Jeff Pearlman for his rotten reputation, claiming the Sports Illustrated scribe / author is prone to “vilifying every subject he encounters.”  And some of ‘em don’t give Pearlman nearly so much to work with!  From WXIA Atlanta (link swiped from Baseball Think Factory):

Jaye Watson asked, “Do you blame him completely for the article for you looking like a racist and a homophobe?”

“Absolutely,” said Rocker.

Watson replied, “So none of it was your fault? Nothing that you said?”

Rocker answered, “If the article was 20 pages long and my long winded commentary had been included in its entirety, the opinion of me today would be drastically different.”

Rocker uses his book to make clear his views on immigrants. He writes that he welcomes those who are legal, who want to assimilate, learn english and adapt to american culture. But he also says, “If you are that kind of immigrant that comes here, looking to exploit, looking to take advantage, not looking at any way shape or form to endear yourself to this great country. I don’t appreciate you.”

Rocker launched a ‘Speak English’ campaign, t shirts included. He said a trip to Miami frustrated him. “I went to a Starbucks, tried to simply order coffee. The person was literally insisting I order my coffee in spanish. I was like ‘I could do it’, but I’m not going to.”

Though chances are extremely slim that Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov (above, left) will defeat Russian President Vladmir Putin next month, if the former pulls off an upset greater than retaining Deron Williams his team making the playoffs, he promises he’ll sell the franchise. From Bloomberg News’ Jane Rudintsky and Ilya Arkhipov ;

“I’ll sell everything, all my assets when I become president and donate almost all of the money to charity,” Prokhorov said during a talk show with fellow candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky that was broadcast on state-run television.

Prokhorov, who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team in the U.S. and stakes in Russian metals companies United Co. Rusal (486) and Polyus Gold International Ltd., said he’d need the remaining $1 billion for personal expenses after life in the Kremlin.

“I’ll need something to live on,” Prokhorov, 46, said.

(though he’s persona non grata with Sandy Alderson, we’ll have to hope Howard is still in the good graces of Sandy The Seagull.  Image swiped from Pick Me Up Some Mets)

Sporstwriter / author Howard Megdal has used a variety of platforms to tweak the New York Mets over the years, but upon taking over the Hudson Journal’s LoHud Mets Blog, he’s essentially assumed the role of a beat reporter — the same role Peter Abraham fulfilled covering the Yankees for the same publication prior to helming the Boston Globe’s Red Sox coverage.  So despite what you might think of Megdal’s prior endeavors writing for such obscure outlets as ESPN.com or The New York Times, he’s obviously gone legit and is fully deserving of media credentials next season at Citi Field, right?  Not after the Mets’ all-too-prickly ownership & management checked out his most recent book, claims Megdal.

Last week, my editor Sean Mayer received a call from Jay Horwitz, the Director of Media Relations for the New York Mets, telling him that while the Journal News can continue to receive credentials, the Mets would not be credentialing me.

Sean asked why that was, and Jay responded that the Mets “don’t like my reporting”. The team declined to respond to my multiple attempts to reach them for a fuller explanation.

But I don’t think much investigation is required. As of the final game of last season, I was credentialed. I participated in a conference call with Sandy Alderson in December.

Later in December, Wilpon’s Folly was published. The book details the financial and legal problems facing Met ownership due to their investments with Bernie Madoff. The book was no surprise to the Mets- I reached out to them once I was asked to write the book by Bloomsbury, and spoke many times on background to multiple people within the organization about all specific reporting within the book.

The book’s reporting, incidentally, has not been challenged. It has been reinforced by subsequent articles in The New York Times, Adam Rubin at ESPN.com, and numerous other places. The only response the Mets have provided is to attack me personally.

The Mets can’t very well keep out Adam Rubin, whose right to be in the clubhouse is guaranteed by his membership in the Baseball Writers Association of America. Though I am a full-time sportswriter as my profession, I am ineligible for the BBWAA because I make my living through regular, part-time gigs, not a single, full-time one. So the team is lashing out where it can.

…you can’t blame Wes Welker. Lest you believe tonight’s heroics of Eli Manning and Mario Manningham are a prelude to wife-beating in towns from Foxboro to Fitchburg, The Guardian’s Michael Solomon reminds us the decades old claim that “Domestic Violence Is Highest on Super Bowl Sunday”, in not based in truth.

How did shoddy science about such an important topic come to be so widely reported? Christina Hoff Sommers retraced the story in her book Who Stole Feminism? In 1993, a few days before Super Bowl XXXVII, a network of women’s groups held a press conference in Pasadena, California, to announce that Super Bowl Sunday was “the biggest day of the year for violence against women.”

Citing several studies—including one by Old Dominion University—and backed up by a representative by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), there was enough anecdotal evidence on the topic to inspire newspaper stories and TV segments. Within days, the New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte referred to the game as “Abuse Bowl” and Good Morning America did a piece connecting the game to violence against women.

Later that week, Ken Ringle, a reporter for the Washington Post, looked into the evidence behind this “day of dread” and found that none existed. The Old Dominion study actually contradicted the reported findings of spousal abuse, and other sources denied similar facts that were attributed to them.

Retractions connecting the Super Bowl and domestic violence were printed, but nearly 20 years later, the myth lives on.

…just like any number of other friendless schlubs.  USA Today’s Mike Foss on Tiquan Underwood’s method of keeping his chin up after being cut by New England on the eve of Super Bowl XLVI.

The former New England wide receiver told Mashable in an interview Sunday that he planned to live-Tweet the entire game.

“It won’t get in-depth as far as what happened in practice and stuff like that,” Underwood said. “But it will basically be comments on the game, only from someone who will obviously have a bit more knowledge about it than a regular fan.”

The team released Underwood in favor of adding another defensive lineman to their Super Bowl rotation. After the Patriots’ decision, Underwood has gained over 5,000 new followers on Twitter and has posted several upbeat Tweets in the hours leading up the game.