Dawn Fraser won the Olympic 100-meter women’s freestyle in 1956, 1960, and 1964. And just the other day, at age 71, she fought off and helped capture some ass that tried to rob her.

“This guy came out of the gate and grabbed me and I grabbed him by the ear and I kicked him in the groin,” she told several Australian television stations.

“So he had to let me go. He threatened my life and I got really annoyed about that and just grabbed him by the ear and the hair.” via.

And then she said, “G’day mate,” because they do that down there. But yeah, I never thought of a threat on my life as being “annoying” before, but I guess that would qualify. Since retiring from swimming in 1964 after being accused of stealing a Japanese flag (seriously,) she went into politics and then did their version of Dancing With The Stars. What a life. Other than writing a memoir and taking a weekend trip to Singapore, I’d say she has that bucket list knocked out.

Todd Haley has had it with Chan Gailey’s foolishness; the Kansas City Chiefs head coach fired his offensive coordinator today, two days after Matt Cassel suffered a ligament sprain in his knee scrambling out of the pocket in the first quarter of the team’s third preseason game. They’re 0-3, and I’ll mention that like it really matters.

The Chiefs said head coach Todd Haley would address Gailey’s status with the team after Monday’s practice.

The Chiefs had retained Gailey when Haley was hired in the offseason. via.

There’s no indication whether or not Gailey will take another position with the team, but even if he did get Haley’s quarterback dinged up, it would be downright cold to throw a coach out on the street less than two weeks before the season started. But Haley knows he’s fighting against the current and must take drastic measures to get his team on track. These head coaches are under so much pressure these days; that’s why I tend to be sympathetic whenever these guys fire assistants, punch out assistants, or dress up as clowns to terrify schoolchildren. Not that any coaches have dressed up as clowns yet, but when they do, I’ll be waiting with open arms, ready to forgive.

With everyone ready to hand Florida the national championship before the season even kicks off [partially because of their 19 returning starters and their relatively easy schedule], we should probably just look ahead to 2010, where Tebow is expected to be drafted somewhere in the first round of that year’s NFL Draft (depending on who you ask; ESPN’s Todd McShay did not drink the Kool-Aid at communion, so to speak). And if you think the fellatio of God’s Quarterback has been stomach-churning on the college level, you might lose your mind when you learn that someone has already compared his career track to that of Steve Young.

Hmmm, let’s see: a left-handed quarterback who sees a larger purpose than football in this life, and the one (we hope) after.

Except: he may not have the arm to make it big in the NFL and runs too much, which is going to get him killed at the next level. –Chris Dufresne

Granted, there are plenty of pros for Tebow going pro: Come next April, he will have been a three-year starter with a completion percentage likely over 65%, playing under one of the more meticulous offensive minds in college football. But one has to wonder how the Tebow’s Sister Act will go outside of the rah-rah campuses of the college game. But if a guy can go celibate in Gainesville, damn, he can go celibate anywhere. The rest of his game might be under debate, but success breeds success. Unless you’re Tim Tebow and you don’t breed at all. I’d say that he’s screwed but really it’s just the opposite of that.

ASYLUM POLL: Are Tim Tebow And The Gators Unstoppable This Season?

I’m kinda surprised that Jay Cutler making his first trip to Denver as a member of the Chicago Bears is getting the attention it is from the sports blogosphere. For a few reasons:

• Sunday’s tilt was, after all, a preseason game.
• Denver is hardly the cultural apex of anything, so who really cares how they feel about Cutler, or for that matter, how they feel about pleated pants or the fiat standard. Oh, you can ski in Denver? Great. The snow’s better in Utah, anyway. The only downside is that I’m pretty sure Utah is still a slave state.
• It was a preseason game. Wait, I already said that.
• I probably didn’t need bullet points for this. Or blockquote.

Long story short: Cutler played well, Orton got a bloody finger, and one team had more points than the other. I guess that America’s hardon for football is insatiable. And sure, these teams won’t play each other all year. And yes, Broncos coach Josh McDaniels has already decimated that team with nothing to show for it. But are we that worked up over a preseason game? We are? Oh.

New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who was an imposing force on NFL offenses and spell-checkers alike, has called it a career. Yeah, it’s a career. Instead of playing for a 14th NFL season this fall, Bruschi announced his retirement this morning at a press conference, which is a good place to do that, because typically lots of people in the press are there.

The 36-year-old inside linebacker was part of all three of the club’s Super Bowl-winning teams and returned from a mild stroke suffered in February 2005 to play eight months later. via.

In hindsight, I really didn’t give Bruschi a lot of credit for being a badass. Maybe because he played on one of the biggest bandwagon teams of the millennium, with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. Maybe because he looks like Erik Estrada with a bowl cut. But give credit where it’s due: dude came back from a muthafuggin’ STROKE and played three more years in the NFL. And he was a great guy; he was like the NFL’s Italian-Filipino version of Tim Tebow, except without all the Jesus stuff. Not mentioning God goes a long way these days, especially with prostitutes. I guess getting that tattoo of the nativity scene on my ass was a bad call.

Here’s Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner appearing with Brenda Song in a promotional photo from this week’s Entertainment Weekly for The Suite Life which is either some series on the Disney Channel or a reality show about a Taiwanese brother on the Discovery Channel. Hey, it was either that or have shark week ten times a year, and honestly it kinda loses its luster after, uh, the first day. But that’s just our nature, I suppose. We love things that are capable of imposing such inhumane levels of death in the water. That’s probably why everyone loved Ted Kennedy…