40 Acres Sports

Texas football commit James Kirkendoll wins basketball All-Star MVP. WR/DB may try to walk onto basketball team.

Tarell Brown works out for the Dallas Cowboys, he’d be an ideal pick for them on the second day.

Oklahoma says NCAA infractions hearing was “fair”. Hopefully fair means the death penalty, but I doubt it.

IGN has another preview up of NCAA Football 2008. Sounds like the next gen versions will have full feature sets this year.

paidContent.org is reporting that Yahoo may be about to acquire Rivals.com for up to $100 million. The guys running Orangebloods.com are saying it’s not a done deal yet, but it certainly looks like its just a matter of getting the final dollar amount ironed out between the two companies.

You’re reading it here first: Yahoo is close to making its biggest sports acquisition after, well, the Broadcast.com deal: the college sports network Rivals.com, paidContent.org has learned. The price could reach around $100 million, which some we’ve spoken to say is overpriced, and that’s why the traditional sports media buyers are sitting out on this one. One exec involved in online sports acquisitions told us $50-75 million would be more realistic given a model that can—and has been—replicated and described the reaction to what Rivals was asking—$100 million—as “sticker shock.”

For comparison, FIM paid $60 million for Scout Media in September 2005.

The new acquisition would be a boost to Yahoo Sports, which has been looking for ways to catch up to the juggernaut of ESPN.com and the surge from FoxSports.com. It has an already-existing deal with Rivals.com for sharing sports content; Rivals also supplies content to USAToday.com, AOL Sports, SportingNews.com, MSNBC.com and SI.com.

Rivals is an incredible network of websites for college sports fans, and an Orangebloods membership is a must have for any hardcore Longhorn fan. They’ve got great writers at both the national and school level and their recruiting coverage is second to none. It’s probably the best ten bucks I spend every month. Hopefully Yahoo is simply looking to improve their college sports coverage and won’t be changing too much with the sites.

Jermichael Finley is Rivals.com’s #8 tight end. Martellus Bennet is so overrated.

Ricky Williams was on ESPN Radio’s Dan Patrick Show at the ned of last week and his interview with Dan and Keith Olbermann was incredible. Ricky sounds intelligent and introspective and I’m really rooting for him again to get that chance to prove people wrong in the NFL.

The first 15 minutes of audio is Ricky and the last 10 is Dan and Keith discussing it. Listen to the entire thing below:

It appears Ricky is finally comfortable being Ricky Williams and he’s found ways to deal with the celebrity and stress that comes with being an NFL superstar. Sounds like Dan and Keith were pretty impressed with him, and like them I hope Ricky is able to keep things together when the full pressure of the NFL comes back.

Update: Anybody else having issues with the Odeo player? If so use the player below:

Overachieving nothing new for Major Applewhite. Good article on Major’s rise to offensive coordinator at Alabama.

Take heart, A&M fans, there’s still women’s basketball. And you’ve still got Fran!

Great 2006 highlight video of Longhorn tight end [tag]Jermichael Finley[/tag] from his redshirt freshman season (for some reason there’s about 20 seconds of dead air to start the video):

J-Mike had a great season last year and finished with 31 receptions for 372 yards and three TD’s. Texas fans are expecting big things from him in 2007.

Video originally created by HornFans member NEWhereButA&M. Great work.