Last night, the Phoenix Coyotes’ Paul Bissonnette (you know, this guy) posted pictures from his team’s Halloween party. The most attention-getting photo was of teammate Raffi Torres, who went as Jay-Z. Here’s what Torres looks like normally. Yeah.

Earlier this week, HBO’s Bryant Gumbel made a controversial comments regarding NBA commissioner David Stern.

My head is spinning. Generally, when one watches Outside the Lines, one expects to find some of the most level-headed analysis ESPN has to offer. Today, thanks to Alabama-based sports radio host Paul Finebaum, that…did not happen. The topic at hand: ESPN severing ties with Hank Williams Jr., longtime singer of the Monday Night Football theme. The people discussing it: Bomani Jones, who hosted The Morning Jones radio show and frequently contributes to various ESPN programs, Finebaum, and The Nation’s Dave Zirin. The result: mayhem, basically.

Last week, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds, who is black, had a banana thrown at him during a preseason game. The incident was widely, and rightly condemned, and Simmonds handled it about as well as anyone could. But it didn’t take long for the shoe to find the other foot.

The NHL barely has an offseason, so now, a scant three months after the Boston Bruins lifted the Stanley Cup, the preseason is underway. As happy as hockey fans are to have the league back, however, one incident from a preseason game involving Philadelphia Flyers right wing Wayne Simmonds has to dampen that enthusiasm.

By now you’ve heard that conservative political lightning rod and Fox News pundit Sarah Palin may or may not have had an affair with a college-aged Glen Rice. You may have also heard that Palin, then a TV reporter for Alaska’s KTUU, allegedly had a “fetish for black men.”

What role did race play in Serena Williams’ outburst at the US Open yesterday? None. But wouldn’t it be nice if someone suggested it did play a role? Take it away, Fox and Friends!

According to this piece, published in Science Daily, umpires (both white and non-white ones) give a slightly fatter strike zone to guys who look like them: “Analysis of 3.5 million pitches from 2004 to 2008 found that minority pitchers scale back their performance to overcome racial/ethnic favoritism toward whites by MLB home plate umpires, said economist Johan Sulaeman, a financial economist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a study author. The study found that minority pitchers reacted to umpire bias by playing it safe with the pitches they throw in a way that actually harmed their performance and statistics.”

Fox Sports’ Bob Oschack hit USC’s campus recently with a simple mission: get USC students to welcome the school’s newest conference rivals, Colorado and Utah, to the Pac-12. But he wasn’t going to get just any students to do it – he was going to get students who might not be big sports fans (and therefore nerds), and therefore be uncomfortable with the Pac-12 greeting. But these couldn’t be just any hilarious nerds Oschack would make squirm: no, specifically, he’d be targeting Asian nerds. That way, we’re able to laugh at the kids for being uncomfortable, and their hilarious accents!