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The Indiana Hoosiers hired Mike Woodson to take over their basketball program last month, but a number of reports indicated he wasn’t the only NBA coach the university targeted for the job. Hoosier State native Brad Stevens, who came through the coaching ranks at Butler before taking over the Boston Celtics, saw his name linked to the job extensively, even though he publicly shot down any indication that he’d leave Beantown for Bloomington.

Still, there haven’t been too many reports about how legitimate the interest from Indiana was, if there were any conversations, all those sorts of things. On Saturday night, however, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN indicated there was at least an offered shot over to Stevens, one that would have compensated him handsomely.

The deal Woodson signed with his alma mater is worth $3 million a year for six years, so there’s quite a bit of difference between what Indiana paid and what Indiana wanted to give Stevens. Of course, college contracts can feature a number of stipulations and bonuses, so it stands to reason that whatever Stevens might have been offered wasn’t $10 million a year, no questions asked. For now, though, this will merely be a “what if?” … unless, of course, Woodson strikes out in Bloomington and the Hoosiers decide to kick the tires on Stevens again.

Pat Sajak has certainly made a meal of some final puzzles on Wheel of Fortune, but his latest mistake no one seemed to notice. The longtime host of the word puzzle game show has had a number of odd moments on this season of Wheel, some perhaps more offensive than others.

On Thursday’s episode, Sajak actually gave away the answer to the final puzzle that ended up stumping a contestant because he didn’t realize he had been given an enormous clue in the pre-guess banter. Sajak brought the show to its final puzzle where our big winer, Jeffery, didn’t get much help from RSTLNE and his choice of letters and vowel.

“Yikes,” Sajak said when only the “A” popped up for Jeffrey. “Well, I’d rather be standing here than there, quite frankly.”

But here’s the problem: the answer to the puzzle actually was “quite frankly.” Sajak gave it away just before the 10-second timer started for Jeffery, but he didn’t notice the phrase said out loud on the board of blank letters in front of him. After the commercial break, Sajak actually noted that he gave the whole thing away without anyone realizing, though he immediately knew he had made a gaffe.

The show’s Twitter account even called him out on Friday, sharing the clip with the eyeballs emoji.

It’s a very funny moment because no one realized what Sajak had a slip of the tongue here, but it would have brought up an interesting quandary if Jefferey had solved the puzzle, perhaps with Pat’s help. Fans have certainly rooted for players to get breaks in the past, and hopefully the same thing would happen here. Still, all Sajak can do here is laugh about what could have been a much bigger blunder, if anyone had noticed at the time.

“It’s funny,” Sajak later said. “What your mouth will say that your brain says ‘You shouldn’t do that.’”

Joey Votto has been very good at baseball for quite a long time, earning a reputation for being one of the best hitters of his generation. The dude’s got a bit of a glove over at first base, too, and on Saturday afternoon against the Cleveland Indians, Votto got the chance to show off what he can do.

Josh Naylor was at the plate with the Indians sitting on a 2-1 lead over the Cincinnati Reds. With no outs and runners on the corners, a good swing of the bat could have given the Tribe a little more breathing room. Naylor made good contact on the offering from Amir Garrett, but Votto was right there to pluck it out of the air for out number one.

Franmil Reyes was on first, but unfortunately for him, he got a little too overzealous and Votto tagged him out. Votto then stood up and realized that Eddie Rosario broke for home on contact and did not realize that an out was recorded, so Votto tossed the ball over to third for the exceedingly rare 3-3-5 triple play.

It took baseball until 2016 for its first 3-3-5 triple play, which was turned by the Washington Nationals against the San Francisco Giants.

Amazon may be spending a small fortune on a single season of a Lord of the Rings TV show for it streaming platform, but a video game from the same company is reportedly no longer in the cards.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that the gigantic multiplayer online game based on the written world of J.R.R. Tolken was canceled just two years after it was announced. Bloomberg’s ace gaming reporter Jason Schreier detailed the news of the discarded RPG, which largely seems to be a rights issue with Tencent after the conglomerate bought the company Amazon had partnered with to develop the game.

The game had been in development at Amazon Game Studios alongside the China-based Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd., which was purchased by conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. in December. The resulting contract negotiations led to a dispute between Amazon and Tencent that eventually caused the game’s cancellation, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that after Tencent’s acquisition of Leyou, “we have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time.”

The ill-fated RPG will see its support staff shuttled to other projects, but it’s the latest gaming failure Amazon has dealt with in recent months, as a number of titles from the company have fallen through or simply not met expectations since the company’s gaming division launched in 2014. Titles like Breakaway and Crucible have been canceled outright, while another title, New World, has seen a number of delays and still has yet to make it into the public eye. The Lord of the Rings title was expected to be part of the company’s massive push for Tolken-based properties, starting with the forthcoming first season of a TV show that cost a reported $465 million USD.

“We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won’t be bringing this game to customers,” the spokesperson for the Seattle-based company said in a statement according to Bloomberg.

[via Bloomberg]

It’s been three years since ASAP Rocky delivered a project for fans and while they’re certainly waiting for his next body of work, the rapper has something else in store for them later this month. Rock is joining in on the non-fungible token (NFT) wave with a collection of his own that will be released through Nifty Giveaway on April 21.

The collection includes a snippet of his “Sandman” track, which he premiered at the Yams Day Festival earlier this year and one that finds him reflecting on his rise to stardom. Buyers of the NFT will also be entered into a raffle to win one of his vehicles from his 2019 Injured Generation Tour or a studio visit to hear his upcoming fourth album.

The announcement comes after he joined ASAP Ferg to feature on Brockhampton’s “Bankroll” off the group’s latest album, Roadrunner: New Machine, New Light. Rocky also appeared alongside Nas in the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming drama film, Monster. The movie, which is executive produced by Nas, is based on Walter Dean Myers’ 1993 novel of the same title and finds Rocky playing the role a co-defendant to a 17-year-old honor student who was convicted of murder. The film is set to premiere on the streaming platform on May 7.

You can watch Rocky’s NFT announcement in the post above.

Hip-hop has lost yet another one of its artist at far too young an age on Saturday. Former Bad Boy rapper Black Rob has died at just the age of 51. The news was first shared by singer and producer Mario Winans on his Instagram page and was later confirmed by Mark Curry, who is also a former Bad Boy artist, in a video which a fan seemed to have screenrecorded.

“I don’t know where to begin this,” Curry said in the video while fighting back tears. “But I thank everybody for the donations. [Black] Rob passed away about an hour ago.” It’s unknown when or where Curry shared the video as it cannot be found on any of his social media pages. A cause of death for Black Rob has not been confirmed yet.

The unfortunate news comes just a week after a video of Black Rob in a hospital surfaced online. In it, the rapper can be seen struggling to talk while he sent condolences to DMX, who passed away last week. A day later, another video arrived, but this time it showed that Black Rob was out of the hospital. He did speak, however, about health issues and other struggles he’s been dealing with over the past few years, including a stint of homelessness.

“Oh man, I’ve been dealing with this for five years,” he said. “Four strokes … I don’t know what to tell you man. Sh*t is crazy. The sh*t is hard. I don’t got no house to live in — except maybe an apartment.”

Black Rob dropped his first album back in 2000 with Life Story. The project would debut at No. 3 on the Billboard and house his most successful solo single, “Whoa.” He would go on to release a total of four full-length projects in his career with the first two coming under the Bad Boy imprint. His most release was his 2015 mixtape, Genuine Article.

You can view the posts from Mario Winans and Mark Curry above.

Every now and then, a quarterback throws a pass that does not seem like it should be possible. They mean to do whatever they do, of course, but the pass that they throw is so breathtaking that it leads to a bunch of football fans wonder what the hell just happened — think, for instance, of the incomplete pass Patrick Mahomes threw in the Super Bowl when his body was parallel to the ground.

A rare offshoot of this is when the quarterback seems to do something unintentionally and it somehow works out. That, my friends, is what happened during Saturday’s spring FCS showdown between Villanova and Delaware. Wildcats signal caller Daniel Smith took a snap on third-and-1 from the doorstep, rolled out to his right, and then did some total nonsense that I can’t really describe. Just watch.

I think it’s probably safe to say this was an accident and the ball just slipped out of his hands? Maybe he meant it intentionally! I don’t know. It’s stupid. But stupid is very good here, because this is one hell of a play by Smith to turn a sack into a touchdown, even if he did not mean to do this by any stretch of the imagination.

Next week will mark two months since Bobby Shmurda was freed from prison after spending more than six years locked up on third-degree conspiracy and weapons possessions charges. Since his release, the rapper has seemingly been focused on staying out of trouble and preparing his return to music. His upcoming release will be the first piece of music he’s released as a lead artist since 2014’s Shmurda She Wrote. While the wait for it continues, Bobby stopped by the Maino Presents: Kitchen Talks podcast to share what he’s been working on.

“Man, we got so much new music coming,” Bobby proclaimed. “We got music coming with the biggest artists, from Maino, Quavo, DaBaby, 42 [Dugg], Uzi, Rowdy [Rebel], Jay. There is so much sh*t coming out it’s gonna be a hot summer.” While some were quick to assume “Jay” was a reference to Jay-Z, Bobby did not confirm whether or not he meant the Roc Nation founder.

Bobby is still on parole until early 2026, the special conditions of which prohibit him from drinking alcohol, going to bars, and associating with gangs. He also has a set curfew of 8 p.m., must submit to drug testing, and must receive aggression and anger counseling. Lastly, he must seek, obtain, and maintain employment, an easy requirement to stick to with the new album on the way.

You can listen to the podcast episode above. Jump to the 1:19:15 mark to hear him discuss the features for the upcoming project.

There are many things in life that can be defined as simple pleasures: the smell of fresh cut grass, for instance, or eating something that warms you up on a cold winter’s day. The sports example of this is when a baseball team is getting their teeth kicked in and they decide to put a position player on the mound, and fortunately for those of us who get joy out of this, the Minnesota Twins did exactly this on Friday night.

Minnesota lost to the Los Angeles Angels, 10-3, and instead of burning their fifth pitcher of the night during the bottom of the eighth inning, the team turned to utility man Willians Astudillo, who has become something of a cult hero for his portly appearance. The funniest thing is that Astudillo was the Twins’ best pitcher on the evening, as he did not allow a baserunner and got out of the inning without any sort of damage, in part because the Angels couldn’t get good contact on his 46 mile per hour heat.

It is extremely good that he dropped that eephus down the middle of the strike zone and there wasn’t even an effort to swing at it. It is also extremely good that him painting the edge with a 72 mph fastball probably looked like he was really letting loose. Do not think it is controversial at all to say he needs to pitch more. I mean, the results speak for themselves.

Award shows during the pandemic have been a bit awkward. There have been fires. There have been technical difficulties. There’s been possible sleeping. There have been nominees, usually dressed to the nines, going casual-casual in Hawaiian shirts and hoodies. The Oscars are up next, but its producers — including Academy Award-winner Steven Soderbergh — are promising it will be different. In fact, it will be, they say, downright cinematic.

“I know it’s not going to be like anything that’s been done before, so we’re leaning into that,” Soderbergh said during a press conference with fellow producers Jesse Collins and Stacey Sher. They were short on details, hoping for an element of surprise, but presenters will be playing versions of themselves, reciting dialogue from scripts. “You’ll feel like you’re watching a movie.”

Soderbergh also cryptically referenced how COVID-19 restrictions will be involved, saying, “Masks are going to play a very important role in the story of this evening.”

The tone, however, will not be downer, even though a number of the nominated films, like Nomadland and Judas and the Black Messiah, are. “It’s going to be a very sincere show, and it’s also going to be optimistic,” said Collins, who has also been involved with pandemic era iterations of the Grammys and the Super Bowl halftime show. “It’s going to show us where we can go in the future. And I think that’s exactly what the Oscars needs to be at this time.”

“We have to acknowledge what we’ve been through,” added Sher, “but we also have to fight for cinema.”

The Academy Awards will take place on April 25.

(Via THR)