Updated: March 19, 2010, 3:15 PM ET

Tyler quits Maccabi with 5 weeks left

ESPN.com news services

JERUSALEM -- Former U.S. high school basketball star Jeremy Tyler quit Israeli team Maccabi Haifa and returned home Friday, cutting short a disappointing first pro season.

The 18-year-old Tyler arrived in Israel on a wave of publicity in August after deciding to skip his senior year at San Diego High School to gain professional experience.

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Tara Todras-WhitehillJeremy Tyler, warming up before a November game in Israel, averaged only 2.1 points and 1.9 rebounds in 10 games.

However, his time in Israel was fraught with problems, and he left five weeks before the end of the season.

"Due to personal matters, Jeremy chose to leave the team on his own will on March 18 and return home to San Diego," Maccabi Haifa owner Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement. "We wish Jeremy all the best."

In the 10 games Tyler played for Haifa, the 6-foot-11 power forward averaged only 2.1 points and 1.9 rebounds in 7.6 minutes. Tyler, who reportedly earned a $140,000 salary, found it hard to adapt to the pro game and couldn't find a place in Maccabi Haifa's starting lineup.

Tyler's agent said he wasn't aware of his client's plans to leave the team.

"I'm as surprised as you are. We had no idea he was coming home," Makhtar Ndiaye of the Wasserman Media Group told ESPN's William Weinbaum. "I'm speechless at this point and look forward to speaking with Jeremy. A contract, a learning process -- things weren't great -- but it was part of growing up. I'm disappointed and frustrated."

Tyler's frustration was evident. Last month, he walked out on the team at halftime to protest not getting more minutes. For the last three games, he sat on the bench not wearing a uniform after being left off the Haifa squad.

Ndiaye said he spoke to Tyler earlier this week and "everything was cool."

"The kid decided on his own," Ndiaye said. "We did everything humanly possible to make it a success story for him and his family."

Sonny Vaccaro, an adviser to Tyler and his family, told ESPN the season in Israel wasn't a negative experience despite how it ended.

"Nothing was lost here -- he went, it was hard, it was eight months," Vaccaro said. "It would've been beautiful, utopia, if he had played and helped his team win a championship."

Vaccaro said Brandon Jennings, a star rookie for the Milwaukee Bucks, didn't show very much in his stint overseas, either.

"Five or six NBA scouts have told me recently to just have Jeremy come home and start practicing, that the experience in Israel is not detrimental to his future," Vaccaro said.

Vaccaro, who said Tyler would be able to sign another deal to play somewhere in August, added there's another year before Tyler would be eligible for the NBA draft, and that he didn't understand "everyone's rush to judge him."

"He's got talent and is not a bad kid," Vaccaro said.

As for the implications of the Tyler episode for the NBA's ban on high schoolers playing in the league, Vaccaro said: "If that option were allowed, he could have gone to the NBA [in tryouts] and seen if he could make it.

"It is a ridiculous system where that can't happen, where a kid can't try, be told he's not good enough and then go back to school, retaining amateur status. This could've been avoided."

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Viacom, YouTube air dirty laundry in legal battle

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer

Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer

1 hr 52 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Viacom Inc. and Google Inc.'s YouTube site began airing each other's dirty laundry Thursday, providing a tantalizing peek at the wheeling and dealing that triggered a bitter battle over the copyright laws governing the Internet.

The previously confidential information came out as part of the evidence in a copyright lawsuit that Viacom filed against YouTube in 2007 for alleged copyright infringement of "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show" and other shows.

The sensitive documents were unsealed because Viacom and YouTube are both trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton to decide the case without a trial.

Both YouTube and Viacom are getting muddied in the process.

Internal YouTube e-mails depict at least one of the company's founders as a video pirate and suggest the Web site's employees were more interested in getting rich quick than adhering to copyright laws.

Other records show Viacom wanted to buy YouTube at least seven months before it filed its lawsuit and often used the Web site to promote the shows on its cable TV programming.

Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in November 2006, but not before Viacom made a last-ditch effort to persuade Google to team up in a joint bid for the Web's leading video site, according to the court documents. A few months later, Google offered to pay Viacom $590 million for licensing rights to video, according to the records.

Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures and cable TV channels that include Comedy Central, instead sued Google and YouTube in a complaint seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

The media company alleges that YouTube allowed copyright-protected clips to appear on its Web site in its early days to attract a bigger audience. YouTube maintains it has always obeyed online copyright laws, which generally protect service providers from copyright claims as long as they didn't post the infringing material themselves and promptly remove it when notified about a violation.

But an e-mail exchange among YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim showed there were in-house copyright abuses.

"Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site," Chen wrote in the July 19, 2005, e-mail. "We're going to have a tough time defending the fact that we're not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn't put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it."

In a statement after the documents were unsealed, YouTube said Chen's e-mail was referring to some aviation videos that had been making the rounds on the Web. "The exchange has nothing to do with supposed piracy of media content," YouTube said.

Karim left YouTube before Google bought it in 2006. But he kept YouTube e-mail on his personal computer, enabling Viacom to obtain correspondence that Hurley had said he lost, according to court documents.

In a July 29, 2005 e-mail, Chen advised Hurley and Karim to "steal it!" in an apparent reference to an unidentified video clip, according to the court documents. After Hurley asked if he wanted to steal movies, Chen replied, "haha ya. Or something."

Hurley, though, brushed off the suggestion, saying he had bigger ambitions than other sites that depended on unauthorized video for traffic. "I would like to build something more valuable and more useful ... actually build something that people will talk about and changes the way people use video on the Internet," Hurley wrote.

YouTube was still in a testing, or "beta," phase at the time Chen and Hurley wrote their e-mails. The site didn't drop the beta tag until December 2005 when the YouTube was processing about 6,000 video clips per day. It now accepts about 24 hours of video per minute and hosts more than 500 million videos, according to the court documents.

Google had its own copyright reservations about YouTube before it struck a deal. Internal documents obtained by Viacom quote Google executives describing YouTube as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft" and warning the site "is completely sustained by pirated content."

Viacom was sizing up YouTube as a takeover target before it launched its legal attack against YouTube.

MTV Networks, the division overseeing Viacom's cable TV operations, made the case for a YouTube bid in a July 2006 presentation.

"We believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks/Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online," Viacom's review said.

Viacom also hailed YouTube as "the dominant platform" for Web video and worried that the site would end up being sold to News Corp.'s MySpace. The documents didn't mention how much Viacom might have been willing to pay for YouTube.

The presentation was drawn up by Adam Cahan, an MTV Networks executive vice president. Cahan had left Google earlier in 2006 to work for Viacom.

Just a few days before Google announced its YouTube deal, Cahan tried to persuade his old employer to make a joint bid. "The idea would be: Viacom and Google buy YouTube," Cahan wrote in an Oct. 6, 2006, e-mail to Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of product management and the sister-in-law of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

After Google announced it had struck a deal with YouTube on its own, Viacom employees continued to post a "boatload" of clips to the video site, according to a Viacom e-mail released Thursday.

Since Google's takeover, YouTube has struck licensing deals with many media companies, which now get a cut of revenue from ads shown on the video site.

YouTube won over much of the professional media by developing technology that automatically detects video and audio claimed by its copyright owners. It worked with another Silicon Valley firm, Audible Magic, on the audio detection.

 "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

- Sir Winston Churchill -

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Updated: March 17, 2010, 1:38 PM ET

Report: Gonzalez fired as coach

Associated Press

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. -- A person close to the university tells The Associated Press that Seton Hall Pirates basketball coach Bobby Gonzalez has been fired.

The person spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because an official announcement has not been made. The school called a news conference for later Wednesday to discuss its basketball program.

Gonzalez was fired a day after the Pirates (19-13) were beaten by Texas Tech in the opening round of the NIT.

Gonzalez met with Monsignor Robert Sheeran early Wednesday and was informed of the decision, the person said.

The firing comes two days after women's basketball coach Phyllis Mangina resigned after 25 years.

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Last Edited: March 17, 2010, 2:00 pm

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

- Jack London -

NFL to examine 2 possessions in playoffs OT

By BARRY WILNER, AP Football Writer

Barry Wilner, Ap Football Writer

1 hr 6 mins ago

NEW YORK – NFL owners will vote next week whether to allow each team a possession in overtime in the playoffs if the team winning the OT coin toss kicks a field goal on the first series.

Previously, the game would end whenever either side scores, as happened in the NFC championship game in January, with New Orleans beating Minnesota on Garrett Hartley's kick. But NFL competition committee chairman Rich McKay says a trend has developed showing too strong an advantage for teams winning the coin toss to start overtime.

If the team that falls behind by three points on the first series also kicks a field goal, then the game would continue under current sudden death rules.

The proposal is only for the postseason.

"Statistically, it is pretty clear there has been a change," McKay said. "When sudden death was put in for 1974, it clearly worked very well and was a good system. It brought excitement and effectively broke ties. From '74-'93 you had a 50-50 (breakdown) in who would win between those who won toss and who lost the toss.

"Changes occurred over time, and the numbers have changed to 59.8 percent winning the coin toss and winning the game. The team that loses the coin toss wins 38.5 percent.

"We are trying to put in a system that emphasizes more skill and strategy as opposed to the randomness of the coin flip."

McKay credited the advancements in field goal accuracy and skills of return teams for the hefty switch in statistics. The competition committee found that since 1994, when the kickoff was moved back 5 yards to the 30, teams winning the OT coin toss won 34.4 percent of the games on the first series. They kicked field goals 26.2 percent of those times, an increase from 17.9 percent in 15 years.

"I would say this is something that's been on our radar for a number of years and been talked about a lot," he said. "In the last four or five years, we have not proposed anything because we thought if there weren't enough votes (among the 32 owners), we should not propose it. This year, the statistics are so compelling we need to get the discussion going."

Rest assured there will be plenty of discussion; 24 votes are needed to adopt the change.

The players union strongly has supported the current overtime setup because it fears another system could lead to more injuries. McKay said the competition committee has "not spent a lot of time with them" on this proposal, but will make the players association aware of the recommendation.

Another recommendation to the owners, who will hold their meetings in Orlando, Fla., beginning Sunday, centers on expanding protection for defenseless players, most notably receivers. McKay said a recent rule change helped, but there are cases where receivers already have made a catch and still are defenseless when they get hit in the head area.

The proposal will offer those players protection from hits to the head until after the catch is made and the receiver has an opportunity to protect himself.

"Before you can do something you must first be something."

 "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity."

 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -

Tiger Woods to return to golf at the Masters

By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer

Doug Ferguson, Ap Golf Writer

32 mins ago

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Tiger Woods said Tuesday he will return to golf next month at the Masters, ending a four-month hiatus brought on by a sex scandal that shattered his image as the gold standard in sports.

"The Masters is where I won my first major and I view this tournament with great respect," Woods said in a statement. "After a long and necessary time away from the game, I feel like I'm ready to start my season at Augusta."

The Masters begins April 8.

The Associated Press first reported his plans to return at Augusta National last Thursday.

Woods has not competed since Nov. 15 when he won the Australian Masters for his 82nd victory worldwide. Twelve days later, he crashed his car into a tree outside his Florida home, setting off shocking revelations that he had been cheating on his wife.

"The major championships have always been a special focus in my career and, as a professional, I think Augusta is where I need to be, even though it's been a while since I last played," Woods said.

"I have undergone almost two months of inpatient therapy and I am continuing my treatment," he said. "Although I'm returning to competition, I still have a lot of work to do in my personal life."

There had been reports he would play the Tavistock Cup exhibition next week in Orlando, followed by the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, where he is the defending champion and a six-time winner.

"When I finally got into a position to think about competitive golf again, it became apparent to me that the Masters would be the earliest I could play," Woods said.

Already the major with the highest TV ratings, this Masters could be the biggest yet. The first two rounds are televised on ESPN, with CBS Sports on the weekend.

"Obviously, the ratings will be off the chart," Heath Slocum said. "It will be interesting to watch — not only the reaction from him, but from the fans, the media, the players. I would venture to say he might be nervous."

Woods twice has come into a major after a long layoff without playing, with mixed results — he missed the cut at Winged Foot for the 2006 U.S. Open after his father died, and he won the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines while playing on a shattered left knee.

Woods is a four-time Masters champion, although he has not won at Augusta National since 2005, his longest drought there.

In some respects, the Masters makes sense for golf's No. 1 player to return. Media credentials are limited regardless of who's playing or what's in the news, and Augusta National has more control of its tickets than any other golf tournament.

Those with season badges risk losing them if they violate policies, or are caught selling them.

Woods has been the biggest draw at the Masters ever since he became its youngest champion at 21 in 1997, when he broke the tournament scoring record with a 12-shot victory.

That likely won't compare to this year.

Woods' world came crashing down on Nov. 27 when he fled his house in the middle of the night and ran his Cadillac SUV over a fire hydrant and into a tree. About that time, allegations of womanizing began to emerge, and Woods' silence was replaced by rumors of what happened that night and how, as the world's most famous athlete, he could keep so many affairs a secret.

He eventually confessed to infidelity and said Dec. 11 he would take an "indefinite break" from golf. Woods spoke publicly for the first time on Feb. 19 at TPC Sawgrass, where he confessed to cheating on his wife, Elin.

"I have made you question who I am and how I could have done the things I did," Woods said that day.

He was in a Mississippi clinic from Dec. 31 until Feb. 11, then went to an Arizona clinic for a week of family counseling. He returned to practice when he got home to Isleworth, and swing coach Hank Haney joined him last week.

This will be the first time Woods won't play Bay Hill, the only regular PGA Tour event he has never missed as a professional.

Meantime, the governing body of golf outside the United States said it hoped Woods would play at the British Open in July.

"We're pleased to hear that Tiger is to return to golf. ... Golf needs the world No. 1 to be playing," Royal & Ancient spokesman Malcolm Booth said.

Woods has not yet entered to play at the British Open at St. Andrews, but has until May 27 to send in his entry form. Booth says it's "normal that he hasn't" entered yet.

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That it cost $14.7 billion dollars to count all americans in the 2010 Census? I think it's a waste of money when you can use a birth and death certificate to approximate and I don't think everyone is totally honest on the form anyway. Just me thinking out loud.

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