Before you go knocking the turtle-shell designs on one of Maryland’s new football helmets, a nod to the school’s Terrapin mascot, consider first the iconic winged helmet design of the University of Michigan, which looks less like wings and more like the deformed horns of a ram. People are so used to it by now that the look doesn’t give them pause. That’ll eventually be the case with the University of Maryland’s new look(s).

Maybe.

Or maybe they’ll simply become the next Oregon, who change outfits as often as an extra on Saturday Night Live.

Yeah, it might have been cool if this turtle-design helmet were the only new aspect to the Terrapins’ uniform. But the football program (via Under Armour, which is based in Baltimore) will now have 16 different combinations of jerseys and pants in red, black, white and gold – to go along with two different helmet variations.

“I know this: the kids are very, very proud of those uniforms,” said new Terps coach Randy Edsall. “I told the captains, you’re the guys that are going to have to decide what we’re wearing because there are too many options for me.”

“I’m not looking forward to it all,” linebacker Kenny Tate told the Washington Times. “With all these combinations, I don’t know. We could be sitting there arguing. We can come out every week and have something new just looking good and trying to come out and perform very well. We’ll consult with the team, see what we want to wear, make a decision and go play football.”

NBA stars Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh will make cameo appearances on an upcoming episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

According to the episode description, Dan Lauria plays a youth basketball coach suspected of being a sexual predator. Mehcad Brooks and Heavy D also star in the episode. Anthony and Bosh will appear in the opening scene and episode climax.

The SVU episode will air on Sept. 28 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

The five new hires of Bleacher Report all wrote introductions for their new sports home. Below are excerpts:

Bethlehem Shoals, NBA Lead Writer – Sometimes I wonder how many critics bagging on Bleacher Report’s approach or content actually ever look at the site – or their own. Slideshows are everywhere now; maybe a lot of writers here are still learning their craft, but there are plenty of name bloggers and columnists who could stand to go back to school. What’s more, this place knows it has to get better. They brought in King Kaufman to help their writers; when Harvard’s Nieman Lab does a story on the program, you know it’s being taken seriously. I regularly get emails asking for career advice, tips on how to break into the business. They could do far worse than to start out at a place that can guarantee them eyeballs; get input from King that will help them as writers; and learn about what people really want to read in a way that doesn’t limit their options. Oh, and start to get paid while they’re figuring it out. Read more

Reports of the fight that broke out between Georgetown and a team in China were widespread in the United States, but were quashed in China by government censors. Washington Post reporter Gene Wang, who was present at the game, writes, “Xinhua News Agency, China’s official news service, did not have an immediate account of the game, and although other prominent Chinese Web sites such as 163.com and sina.com posted stories, government censors shortly thereafter took them down.”

Here’s to the First Amendment in our country.

(H/T to GameOn)

Plaxico Burress sits down with Bryant Gumbel on HBO’s Real Sports Tuesday to discuss the nightclub incident that landed the New York Jets wide receiver in jail for nearly two years.

I hope Burress actually took something away from his time behind bars and can succeed on the football field once more.

A group of sportswriters with varied and impressive resumes are together hoping to launch a new daily web publication called The Classical, which “will deliver several regular columns, a host of quick, random goodness, and a fun, smart community for talking about the sports world….We will make no attempt to be comprehensive, or even to offer a reliable guide to the world of sport at a given moment. We will not try to be a smarter version of what you can find elsewhere. Instead, The Classical will be a running, wide-ranging conversation between us and our readers about baseball, basketball, soccer, football and fighting, and about things that aren’t sports, too. Our model in this regard is The Awl, a site for which many of us have written and which all of us love.”

The writers involved include Tim Marchman, who’s written for Sports llustrated; Bethlehem Shoals, who’s the co-founder of Free Darko and has written for GQ, Sports Illustrated and Deadspin; and Lang Whitaker, who is SLAM Magazine‘s editor-at-large.

The gist of this site will probably remind many of Bill Simmons‘ new website Grantland. Unlike Simmons’ vehicle, however, The Classical (origin of name unknown) is not flush with ESPN cash. In fact the site will only get moving if its raises $50,000 on Kickstarter by September 29. As of 1 p.m., $3K had been raised.

Good luck, folks.

Football fans won’t have five-weeks of Hard Knocks this summer, but HBO is airing a 90-minute special celebrating the past ten years of the sports documentary on Aug. 31 at 10:00 p.m.

“We know football fans are hungry for compelling NFL programming and we think they’ll love the 10th anniversary special,” said Rick Bernstein, executive producer, HBO Sports.

According to HBO, the Hard Knocks special will feature moments from previous seasons that featured the Baltimore Ravens (2001), Dallas Cowboys (2002, 2008), Kansas City Chiefs (2007), Cincinnati Bengals (2009), and the New York Jets (2010) along with new interviews and never-before-seen out-takes. An official title for the show will be announced in August.

“The first 10 years of Hard Knocks has been the ultimate fly-on-the-wall NFL training camp experience,” said Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films. “We look forward to taking a look back at those shows and reintroducing the fans to those characters who made the decade of Hard Knocks so memorable.”

It’s down to the final four in Awful Announcing’s 32-person contest to decide who will succeed former Sunday Night Baseball announcer Joe Morgan on AA’s Mt. Rushmore of awful announcers, joining Pam Ward, Dick Vitale and Tim McCarver. On one side of the bracket we have Chris Berman versus Craig James, and on the other we have Colin Cowherd versus Joe Buck. (Is Cowherd really an announcer? He hosts an ESPN radio show and SportsNation, two programs that are eminently avoidable. He doesn’t cover live sporting events. That’s not to say he’s not awful, but he’s awful for other reasons.)

I think we can trace James’ presence in the final four to the controversy involving ESPN college football writer Bruce Feldman, who was “not” suspended by ESPN for ghostwriting Mike Leach‘s new book, Swing Your Sword, which was highly critical of ESPN’s coverage of Leach’s ouster at Texas Tech — a falling out that was directly related to Leach’s alleged treatment of James’ son, Adam.

Voting for the semifinals ends Wednesday.

FIFA announced Monday that the 2010 World Cup final was seen by at least 1 billion people.

FIFA research shows that 909.6 million television viewers watched at least one minute of the match between Spain and the Netherlands.

When you factor in fans who watched online and in public viewing places, that figure is more than 1 billion.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony retains its spot as the most-watched televised event in the world with 984 million people tuning in for at least part of the four-hour ceremony.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was show in every single country and territory on Earth. Coverage of the competition reached over 3.2 billion people around the world (46.4 percent of the global population), based on viewers watching a minimum of over one minute of coverage. Those numbers are up eight percent compared to the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Read more

While he’s not playing in The Open Championship next week, the endorsements are rolling back in for Tiger Woods.

And by endorsements, I mean for Vantelin Kowa, a Japanese pain relief sports cream.