The Georgetown Hoyas Had a Scary Fight in Beijing
Today in sports: a fight in China, a crumbling stadium in Los Angeles, and Michael Vick reveals the Eagles were his safety school.
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An exhibition basketball game in Beijing Thursday between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets of the Chinese Basketball Association erupted into a bench-clearing, chair-throwing, bottle-whipping melee late in the fourth quarter after Georgetown senior guard Jason Clark was fouled hard by Rockets big man Hue Ke. According to the Washington Post's game story, Clark "clearly took exception to the hard foul and said so to Hu, triggering an exchange of shoves" and prompting the benches to clear for the second time in the game. The ensuing brawl was filmed, apparently by someone in the stands at Olympic Sports Stadium Center, and right now it's pretty scary, though it may seem less so in a few days when everyone involved is back home safe and people can begin joking about how it still wasn't as rough as the average Big East conference game. The school says nobody was hurt, but that plans to travel tomorrow to Shanghai for the final five days of the ten day tour of the country are in doubt, because of the possibility of reprisals not just against players and coaches, but "the entire Georgetown contingent, including alumni and supporters who attended the game as part of a 10-day tour of China." [The Washington Post and the New York Post]
It's still unclear if and when pro football will be returning to Los Angeles, but when it does, the team won't make its home at the 88-year-old Los Angeles Memorial Colosseum. While the crosstown Rose Bowl just finished a $152 million renovation project, the nine member city, county and state commission that runs the Colosseum has completed less than $10 million of a planned $50 million improvement plan, which has USC, which plays its games there, "poised to send the commission a default letter on Oct.1 that will state the organization is in violation of the lease." Four years ago, the school offered to pay $100 million for the improvements, in exchange for a master lease on the building. The commission declined, believing they could make that money up in the soon-to-pop corporate naming rights bubble. They didn't. [Los Angeles Times]
Quarterback Michael Vick's Philadelphia Eagles are the favorites to win the Super Bowl this year, but the quarterback tells GQ the team was his third choice after emerging from prison in July 2009 after serving 20 months for running a dogfighting ring. His top two choices? The lowly Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, because they would have made him their starter immediately. [GQ]
