Last year, a Shrekish Wayne Rooney became the first footballer to ever get a giant, fireworks-filled effigy in his honor for Guy Fawkes Night. This year, the only man it could’ve been, Mario Balotelli — complete with Super Mario cap, diamond earrings, hand-held mansion, a giant bottle rocket and “Why always me?” shirt — gets one of his own.

Balotelli was a late, yet unanimous pick for this year’s effigy. But having a firework house fire and promoting fireworks safety days later made him an easy pick for the Edenbridge Bonfire Society.

From the Daily Mail:

Jon Mitchell, from Edenbridge Bonfire Society, said: ‘We were all quite worried a few days ago because no celebrities had done anything quite silly enough to be celebrated on November 5.

‘We thought about the politicians and the other usual suspects – but Super Mario earned a unanimous vote among the committee.’

The effigies are always done in good fun and Mitchell said that he’s sure a man like Mario will see the humor in it. And it’s even funnier when you realize that even after the 30-foot, fireworks-filled Balotelli has been set ablaze, it still won’t be the most dangerous Mario Balotelli out there.

Ronaldo’s brilliantly-struck free-kick set the visitors on course midway through the first-half, and the Portuguese netted his and his side’s second from the penalty spot after 69 minutes to bring up his century of goals for Real after just two years there.

His goals also gave Real their first win in five attempts in Lyon and maintained their perfect record after four games in Group D.

Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo
Philippe Merle, AFP/Getty Images

With 12 points, they are now beyond the reach of both Lyon and Dinamo Zagreb—who lost 3-0 to Ajax in the evening’s other Group D game—and a win against the Croats at the Santiago Bernabeu later this month will ensure that Jose Mourinho’s men go into the last 16 as winners of the section.

Lyon meanwhile, can ill afford a slip up when they host Ajax in their next game if they are to reach the knockout stages for the ninth season running.

Half a dozen years ago, Lyon could have been considered favourites coming into this game, but times have changed, and Real’s comfortable wins in their last two meetings with the Ligue 1 club in Spain proved that they no longer had any reason to fear coming here.

Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo (C) is congratulated by his teammates after scoring
Philippe Merle, AFP/Getty Images

OL were deprived of two of their main attacking threats in Michel Bastos and Lisandro Lopez—both injured—and they never recovered from being utterly outplayed in the opening half-hour.

Preferred to Gonzalo Higuain in attack against his former club, Karim Benzema could have given the visitors the lead inside ten minutes, but, when clean through on goal, he saw his shot turned behind by France colleague Hugo Lloris.

However, with Lyon unable to deal with their opponents’ work rate and incessant pressing, a goal was not far away, and it duly arrived midway through the first period.

Benzema was brought down just outside the box, and Ronaldo stepped up to whip the resulting free-kick over the wall and into Lloris’ bottom-right corner for the club’s 900th in an illustrious European history.

Real Madrid’s Pepe (L) vies with Lyon’s Jimmy Briand
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek, AFP/Getty Images

Things could have been worse for Lyon, too, but Lloris again saved from Benzema after Ronaldo had beaten the offside trap and teed up the France striker.

Lyon began to show some signs of life as half-time approached, with Kim Kallstrom’s speculative effort almost surprising Iker Casillas before Yoann Gourcuff, who had been anonymous for most of the first half, was denied by a good Casillas save after being played in by Bafetimbi Gomis.

For all their control, Mourinho must have had concerns about his team’s inability to kill the game off, and Lyon came out fighting after the restart.

Ederson—the Brazilian making a rare start after an injury-ravaged year—was denied twice in quick succession by Spain’s World Cup-winning captain as Madrid lived dangerously.

But not without some new company.

Stewart has been left for dead several times this season. First, when he didn’t win a race during the regular season and characterized his spot in the Chase as nothing more than taking up room, then when he seemingly spoiled his hot start to the Chase (when he won the first two races) by going 25th-15th in the next two races to drop all the way to seventh in the standings.

It didn’t look like he’d make up any ground Sunday, especially with under 100 laps to go when he gave up the lead with an apparent flat tire. It wasn’t flat, but still Stewart went to pit road, dropping him all the way back to 23rd.

Over the next 80 laps he drove his way back toward the front and found himself in second with less than 10 to go. That’ where he would finish, or so it seemed because no one was catching Johnson. Then Brian Vickers decided to exact some revenge on Kenseth for an earlier incident. That brought out a caution with eight laps to go and, more importantly for Stewart, erased his deficit behind Johnson.

“You can thank Vickers for that, being a jackass,” Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus lamented over the team radio.

On the ensuing restart, Stewart started on the outside of Johnson. The two raced side-by-side during the first of a three-lap shootout, with Stewart nosing ahead of Johnson and eventually into the lead.

“When I was inside of Tony, I went down in the corner and thought that eight tires would be a lot better than four,” Johnson said, indicating that he thought about barreling through the corner and using Stewart’s car as a retaining wall. “I changed my mind. With where he is in the points, what’s going on, the fact we raced throughout the day today, he never touched me, I had a hard time doing that.”

Now it’s on to Texas, where Edwards finished third and Stewart 12th earlier this season. And though the Chase is more than just a two-man race – Kevin Harvick (4th on Sunday) is just 21 points back, Brad Keselowski 27 – Stewart is only focused on the man in front of him.

“It’s no disrespect to [Edwards],” Stewart said. “He’s a great competitor, he’s a great guy, he’s with a great organization that deserves their shot at that championship, too. We’ve had one of those up and down years and we’re having a run in this Chase now where we’re hungry. We’re hungry for this. I feel like our mindset into these next three weeks, we’ve been nice all year to a lot of guys, given guys a lot of breaks. We’re cashing tickets in these next three weeks.”

The points leader dodged a scud missile when he left Martinsville Speedway with an uncanny 9th-place finish Sunday. For that, he can breathe a little easier knowing he survived his worst track in the Chase. But he can’t feel comfortable with Tony Stewart hot on his tail.

NASCAR’s most ornery driver is on the hunt and he’s making no bones about who his prey is. It’s Edwards, whose lead is down to just eight points after Stewart pulled off an improbable victory Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, vaulting him from fourth to second in the standings.

“He better be worried, that’s all I’ve got to say,” Stewart declared after climbing out of his car in victory lane. “He’s not going to have an easy three weeks.”

If Edwards thought he was going to face a friendly, intra-team scrimmage for the 2011 championship, well, that’s not happening. Five hundred laps of short-track racing took care of that.

Sunday’s race at Martinsville was, in a word, chaotic. To recount who had run-ins with whom would require upping our bandwidth 10-fold. Since we can’t do that, I’ll summarize what went down this way: a demolition derby would have been jealous of Sunday’s race, which had almost as many leaders (12) as it did cautions (18).

First it was Jeff Gordon’s race to lose, then Kyle Busch’s, then Jimmie Johnson’s. You’ll note the absence of Stewart, who ran in the 20s for much of the day. Joining him mid-pack was Edwards, who’s never been very good at Martinsville and, knowing so, came in with a just-survive attitude.

While they raced just to stay on the lead lap, Busch and Johnson were battling to get back into the championship hunt. And for much of the race, it looked like they would, at least Busch anyway. He led the most laps (126) and at one point during the race was just 18 points back of Matt Kenseth, who’d assumed the in-race points lead as his teammate, Edwards, struggled.

Jimmie Johnson congratulates Tony Stewart in victory lane at Martinsville.
(Getty Images)

For 463 of 500 laps, the big winner on the day looked to be Kenseth. Not only was he surviving one of his worst tracks but he was thriving, running in the top 10 the entire day. But then he and Busch made contact, cutting a tire on Kenseth’s No. 17. Moments later, Kenseth lost control of his car, collecting a handful of others, including Busch, wrecking both their title hopes.

“Obviously I didn’t make good decisions and we ended up in a bad spot,” Kenseth said. “I wish I could do some things over and try again, but we can’t do that. We raced hard all day. I thought we had pretty good track position at times and just couldn’t capitalize on it.”

With Kenseth out of the picture, Johnson had a glimmer of hope. Trailing by 50 points coming in, the five-time defending champ needed both Edwards and Kenseth to run into trouble if he was to have a chance at extending his unprecedented run, and it was happening. That is, until Edwards gradually started creeping up the leaderboard. At one point he was a lap down and even had a penalty levied against him for jumping a restart. NASCAR later rescinded that penalty, saving Edwards from falling into an insurmountable hole.

Given new life, Edwards pulled off a potentially championship-saving rally.

Jordan, a decent-enough golfer who’s had a touch more success in other fields, announced Wednesday that he won’t be accompanying the U.S. team to Australia to play in the biennial competition. Jordan had served as one of Fred Couples‘ assistants during the team’s victorious 2009 effort, motivating the troops and providing some complementary star power to Tiger Woods, who was still weeks away from the hydrant and everything after.

About a year ago, Couples, flush with victory and anticipating this competition, announced that Jordan would be returning to the ropes for the 2011 showdown. At the time, we questioned the move, wondering whether Jordan, still a viable force in the NBA from a management perspective, had his priorities in order.

And now it appears he does, and those priorities place the NBA first. “After careful consideration, it is with regret that I have decided to cancel my trip to Australia later this month for the Presidents Cup,” Jordan said. “With the NBA labor situation unsettled … I feel it is necessary that I remain in the country.”

Couples named John Cook as Jordan’s replacement, which is a solid choice. Cook has strong relationships with many of the players, including Woods, although Cook lags slightly behind Jordan in the NBA championships department. Jay Haas remains as the other co-captain, though Scottie Pippen is still available if needed.

The Presidents Cup runs from Nov. 17-20 at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

It’s basically a fait accompli that Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck will be the first overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft should he choose to declare for it, and there are those who believe that Luck is the best college quarterback prospect in years — maybe since Peyton Manning(notes), maybe since John Elway.

But one analyst who’s not necessarily over the moon with Luck’s rare combination of poise, football acumen, ability to read defenses, and playbook intelligence is former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms. Tuesday, on Sirius NFL Radio with Adam Schein and Rich Gannon, Simms said that while Luck does have some positive attributes, he’s not buying in just yet.

“I think the hype is a little too much,” Simms said.  “I feel bad for him in that respect. I mean, [how's] he going to do to match what they say he can do? There’s a lot to him. I think his best quality, by far, is that he’s big and strong and he’s going to be able to move and run in the NFL. There’s no question. I mean, this guy is strong. The throwing? He manages a game. I see all that.

“But the one thing I don’t see, I just don’t see big-time NFL throws. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ve watched a lot of him. He never takes it and rips it in there. And you can say what you want but, man, you’ve got to be able to crease that ball every once in a while. We see it every week in these games. Hey, he can develop it but even in the USC game, you know, he’s very careful with it, guides it a lot. That’s what I see. 

“There’s not a lot of rotation on the ball and there’s not a tremendous amount of power. Not that you need to have that power arm. I’m not saying you’ve got to have that exclusively but, man, it sure helps when you can do that because there’s four or five plays a game it is about arm strength. And sometimes quarterbacks who don’t have it, they pass those plays up. Why? Well, they go, ‘I don’t know if I can make that throw,’ so they throw it short. That’s why I’m a little more reserved in my judgment than everybody else.”

So … basically, Simms isn’t on board the Andrew Luck train because of a few plays he apparently can’t make in a game? Well, the numbers seem to run to the contrary, especially when you factor in Luck’s extraordinary accuracy. Right now, Luck ranks fifth in the NCAA in yards per attempt (9.2 YPA, tied with Michigan’s Denard Robinson), and he’s improved his YPA every season he’s been in college.

Another aspect of the college game Simms is either ignoring or obfuscating is that in certain offenses, the idea is for the quarterback to make high-percentage throws out of a more advanced route tree. Luck doesn’t throw out of a typical spread offense with a bunch of option routes or a three-vertical system; he’s more of a West Coast-style thrower with the ability to make and process multiple reads quickly. We may very well find out that in the pros, depending on the kind of offense he’s in, Luck will be asked to display more of the deep arm he does show from time to time.

Ruben Echemendia is a clinical neuropsychologist and the NHL’s neuropsychological consultant. He chairs the NHL/NHLPA concussion working group.

Jeffrey Kutcher is an associate professor at the University of Michigan and a consultant to the NHLPA. He chairs the Sports Neurology Section of the American Academy of Neurology.

Chris Nowinski co-founded the Sports Legacy Institute to advance the study, treatment and prevention of the effects of brain trauma in athletes and other at-risk groups.
(Getty Images)

Chris Nowinski co-founded the Sports Legacy Institute to advance the study, treatment and prevention of the effects of brain trauma in athletes and other at-risk groups. He is a co-director of the BU CSTE and is pursing his doctorate in behavioral neuroscience.

QUESTION: How does Boston University define chronic traumatic encephalopathy?

From BU’s website: “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head.

“CTE has been known to affect boxers since the 1920s. However, recent reports have been published of neuropathologically confirmed CTE in retired professional football players and other athletes who have a history of repetitive brain trauma.

“This trauma triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes in the brain can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia.”

[Related: Brain disease claims divide hockey doctors, researchers]

Q: Does everyone agree that repetitive brain trauma causes CTE?

Echemendia: “We don’t know what’s causing that. There is at this point speculation and hypotheses about what’s causing that, but the data do not support any causal statements. For example, the data do not the support a statement at this point in time that repetitive blows to the head cause CTE. What we know is that some players have CTE that have been examined that we don’t know what the cause is. Now it’s possible it’s repetitive blows to the head, but we don’t know that in any scientific sense at this point in time.”

Kutcher: “If we take the first assumption, that multiple head traumas cause long-term brain injury or brain dysfunction, does that happen? Yes. That’s something that has been described for a long time, especially in boxers. That’s not a new concept. … I think we suspect that, and there’s a reasonable sort of anecdotal evidence that trauma causes tau. So far that has not been shown experimentally to be true. But I know there’s some research ongoing.”

[Related: Experts break down chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) debate]

Jeffrey Kutcher is an associate professor at the University of Michigan and a consultant to the NHLPA.
(Getty Images)

Q: Do we know what tau does?

Echemendia: “The presence of CTE and the extent to which that automatically implies behavioral changes, the types of behavioral changes, that link has not been made scientifically at this point in time.”

Kutcher: “Tau, to be clear, is a very common protein … It’s a common problem for many neurological diseases, degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, where it’s assumed tau deposition in the neurons messes with their ability to work at some point. … Tau is a protein that’s around. It’s in you normally. But we’re talking about sort of conglomerates of tau, kind of stuck together that become a problem. … The short answer is, no. We don’t know what tau does to the brain.”

Nowinski: “There are a lot of diseases with tau deposition. This is a specific disease which to our knowledge after studying 60 brains of it in the last few years – different age groups, different backgrounds – is that it progresses in a specific way [in the brain]. We can define the way it progresses – where it starts, where it goes next. That’s defined. … You cannot control the rate of progression. We do not know the rate of progression.”

Q: What is the risk of an athlete developing CTE?

Echemendia: “We don’t know who is susceptible to this. We don’t know who is not susceptible to this, and we don’t know the combination of factors that then lead to CTE at this point in time. My hope is that we will in the near future, but at this point in time, we don’t have that information.”

Kutcher: “How often does that happen is the question. What’s the risk of that in the average population? What’s the rate of it? There’s a sense that that is an individual number depending on the genetics of the brain and how that brain responds to trauma.”

Nowinski: “It’s an unknown risk. We’re finding it in more athletes who played a long time than we’d like. We’re finding it in young athletes who didn’t play a long time, which is concerning, but we have no idea again what the percentage is. But it’s a real risk, and we should change our behaviors.”

Q: How is CTE different from other brain diseases?

Kutcher: “Degenerative neurological processes are for the most part predictable. Alzheimer’s is pretty predictable. Parkinson’s, predictable. These are predictable diseases that tend to start in an age group and they go a certain way. Yeah, they’re different patterns, but I can tell you what they are. What is the CTE pattern? There isn’t one. According to people who look at these brains, it’s happening to 17-year-olds, it’s happening to 80-year-olds, it’s causing depression, it’s causing dementia, it’s not [causing dementia]…”

Nowinski: “Well, it’s certainly not defined like other diseases that have been studied by dozens of institutions over decades. [Alzheimer’s is] moderately predictable. I’ve give him that. Not everyone’s Alzheimer’s disease course is the same, by any stretch of the imagination, and again, remember that the drug industry is focused on presymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease, because that’s the best place to intervene. Once tissue is gone, it’s much harder to bring it back than it is to stop a disease progression.”

Tinsley has sent in the needed paperwork to enter Thursday’s NBA Development League draft, sources told Yahoo! Sports. Tinsley, 33, averaged 9.8 points and 6.6 assists per game through eight NBA seasons while starting 366 of 436 career regular-season games. He last played in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2009-10 season. The deadline to enter the D-League draft is Tuesday.

Jamaal Tinsley
(NBAE/Getty Images)

The Los Angeles D-Fenders have the first pick in Thursday’s draft. Top pick candidates include former NBA center Jamal Sampson(notes), former Villanova forward Curtis Sumpter(notes), former DePaul forward Mac Koshawl, former Dayton forward Chris Wright and former Texas A&M-Corpus Christi center Chris Daniels. The Reno Bighorns selected former NBA forward Nick Fazekas with the top pick in last year’s D-League draft.

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