FanHouse

Seth Petruzelli knocked out Kimbo Slice in 14 seconds on Saturday night, but in one respect, Kimbo is getting the last laugh: He got paid 10 times as much money as Petruzelli.

The official payroll reported to the Florida State Boxing Commission shows that EliteXC paid Kimbo $500,000 to fight Petruzelli, who made only $50,000 for his efforts. Petruzelli's base pay was $35,000, and he got an extra $15,000 as a bonus for winning. If Kimbo had won, he would have received an additional bonus of $100,000.

Obviously, what this means is that if you're a professional fighter, you're paid primarily for the number of people you can get to watch your fights, not for your performance in the cage. And since most of the people were watching that fight because of Kimbo, that means Kimbo gets most of the money.

By all accounts, Rich Eisen seems like a nice enough guy. He does a great job on NFL Network, as he did at ESPN, and never really ruffles any feathers. I guess the same can't be said about his wife and former ABC sportscaster Suzy Shuster, who writes a little for The Huffington Post.

Shuster decided on Friday that the Sarah Palin act had gone too far, only it wasn't the "I'm a good ol' fashioned mom" act that led Tina Fey to revive her Saturday Night Live career, no, the act Schuster takes offense to is the supposed "quit flaunting your five-month old baby Trig" act that only Shuster seems to take offense to. Trig, as you probably know, is Palin's youngest child, who was also diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

It actually came after the debate, when for seemingly the millionth time, Sarah Palin trotted out her piece de resistance, her favorite prop of this campaign season: her five and a half month old son Trig.

Why is this child up so late every time there is a camera op? Why isn't this baby sleeping in a crib or bassinet somewhere with a sleep sheep or some other sound apparatus lulling him into night-night? Is it just me or does it seem like she carts this poor child around like a living breathing example of how wonderful a mom she is? After all, she's more than adopted the "I'm just a mom, just like you moms out there, America" attitude.

The White Sox rode the left arm of John Danks to stay alive in their ALDS series with the Rays. Today, we see a matchup of two talented pitchers making their playoff debuts: Andy Sonnanstine for the Rays, Gavin Floyd for Chicago.

Who cracks? Who shines? Is this series going back to the Trop, or do the Rays start scouting that Angels/Red Sox game tonight? Find out along with us in a very special "FanHouse Live Chat"!

Hey, it's one of those early-season "must-win" games! The 1-3 Vikings travel to New Orleans to face the 2-2 Saints. A lot of people had both teams as preseason favorites to make deep playoff runs, and as it stands, only the Lions stand between the Vikes and last place in the NFC North, and the Saints are in the NFC South basement looking up at ... wait, the Falcons? For real?

Whatever, we'll be live-bloggin' it up tonight, Fun starts at 8:15-ish.

Now that EliteXC's most famous fighter, Kimbo Slice, has been exposed as a fraud, the promotion is looking for ways to make its second-most famous fighter, Gina Carano, a bigger star.

One way they're doing that, I've been told, is that they're trying to book Carano on The View.

And really, that makes perfects sense. I've always thought that one of the best ways EliteXC could take MMA mainstream is to get more female fans to take an interest in the female fighters. I imagine the overlap in viewership between MMA and The View is close to zero, so that means every single viewer of The View who starts watching EliteXC because of Carano is a viewer EliteXC wouldn't have otherwise.

I'm not sure what kinds of questions Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg would ask Carano, but I hope they ask her how much she weighs.

When Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Barry Melrose benched defenseman Shane O'Brien for Sunday's game against the New York Rangers in Prague, Tampa Bay Online's Damian Cristodero wondered out loud whether or not the benching wasn't so much for poor play as it was to make sure O'Brien wasn't injured while the team was trying to deal him.

Just 24 hours later, Cristodero was proven right when the Lightning shipped O'Brien and and right wing Michel Ouellet to Vancouver for defenseman Lukas Krajicek and minor league winger Juraj Simek. Needless to say, the move provoked a lot of headscratching in our FanHouse email group. After all, if Tampa Bay's blue line is soft now, how in the world will the addition of Kajicek -- and the rumored interest in free agent defenseman Bryan Berard -- make things better?

Plaxico Burress basically has one true road he can take with all this suspension hullabaloo -- either accept the punishment, apologize to teammates and fans, and get ready to play once he's reinstated, or he can just tell people that he's just a football player and they don't have to like him. Yep, I'm going with B.

Burress said in a conference call with the media that he has some teammates he is close to, and they contacted him about the suspension, but other than that, nobody should really care.

"I know the people that care about me a lot. My job is to go to work and catch footballs Everybody doesn't have to like me. I don't have to be friends with everybody. Everybody has a role to play, everybody has a job to do. My job is to get on the field and catch footballs."

Well, actually, your job is to go on the field and catch footballs as well as not ditch out on a workout day without a phone call. That is what is called "being on a team" and unless Plax is thinking about getting some tennis lessons fairly soon, these rules will stick around.

In the MLB regular season, "home-field advantage" is less about fans, and their energy, and much more about familiarity and comfort. Fans don't really get too crazy for regular season games, so any intangible little benefit from cheering and whooping is rare.

In the playoffs, though, the props come out. The Brewers and Angels have the thundersticks, the White Sox have their blackout, and the Rays, well, the Rays have cowbells. Not sure how that got started, but if the goal is to irritate rotund opposing closers, Rays fans can consider it a success:

''Dumbest thing I ever saw,'' he said Sunday of the fans' rallying tactic. ''Just annoying. Minor league.'' But the Sox' ''rolling blackout promotion'' for fans Sunday at U.S. Cellular Field? ''Whoever came up with that idea is a genius,'' Jenks said. ''It brings electricity to us and excites 25 players.''

In other words, Jenks's preferred regional team's fans are better than your preferred regional team's fans. I've heard this joke before.

Luke Walton has been teased by his teammates from time to time for being a "pretty boy" that the ladies are fond of, but one female took things way too far. An obsessed fan was apparently following Luke around town doing the full blown stalking thing, and Luke told Kevin Ding of the OC Register how it all played out. Some of it definitely sounds a little scary.

"She seemed nice enough (when she first began appearing regularly outside the Lakers' El Segundo practice facility for autographs), and there are a lot of people who are out there all the time. I would sign stuff for them most of the time, but every once in a while you're in a rush trying to get somwhere after practice. So one time I waved and said I had to be somewhere. And I saw her reach her pen out, and I didn't think anything of it, and when I got to my house, I saw I had a big blue mark all down the side of my car from her Sharpie pen. So then I was like, 'That's messed up. I sign stuff for her all the time. Now she does that; I'm not going to sign anything for her anymore.' That's before I knew she was stalking me."

"It was more an annoyance than anything else until recently when she did that gun thing (gesturing at him with her hand as if shooting at him). And then I was like, 'All right. Now she's crossed the line."

I would have thought that the Sharpie incident, along with the whole "sitting for hours in a parked car with tinted windows in front of my house" thing was crossing the line, but a freaking gun gesture?! Yeah Luke, I'd say that's definitely crossing the line.

NBA players have fairly regular schedules during the season, so it wouldn't be that difficult for someone to make a habit of seeing their favorite player on an almost daily basis. Honestly, I'm surprised we don't come across more stories like this one -- but I'm thankful that we don't. Luke finally got the police involved, so let's hope this is the last we hear of this.

Have you ever found yourself standing in the middle of an open field, where there are no hills, no trees, and absolutely nothing obstructing your view for miles upon miles? And have you ever done that while a thunderstorm is brewing off in the distance, as you watch it slowly move in on you? It's pretty cool, actually, and that's sort of what's happening in Dallas right now with Terrell Owens. You know he's going to erupt, and we're just sitting out in the field, watching the storm build in the distance.

One week removed from complaining about how he didn't get the football enough -- despite being targeted on 19 plays -- Owens held court following the Cowboys' 31-22 win over Cincinnati yesterday and, well, the video above explains everything, even if it explains absolutely nothing.