Former NFL starting quarterback and ESPN NFL analyst Ron Jaworski believes that Tim Tebow’s path back to the NFL could go through the Arena Football League. The former Philadelphia Eagles signal-caller has offered Tebow a chance to join the Philadelphia Soul, an AFL team that he is part owner of.

When asked about the offer, Jaworski claimed he was serious and that he loved Tebow and would want him with the Soul for his leadership alone.

Tebow is coming off a disastrous season with the New York Jets where he attempted just eight passes (completing six) for 39 yards. He also ran the ball 32 times for 102 yards, but accounted for zero total touchdowns.

Jaworski related why he thinks the AFL is the right place for Tebow now:

“I know Tim’s in a funk right now. But I think he’s got to have a career path. What’s he going to do to get back?”

Tebow’s long delivery has been a big problem in his development as a passer, but Jaworski thinks that would change with some time in the Arena League:

“You’ve got to learn to get rid of the football, quick. You’ve got to process information, quick. If those are challenges Time has, that’s it. If you get reps and you’re dropping back 40-45 times, with people in your face, you get better. He needs to play. He needs to be on the field.”

The Orlando Predators are another AFL team that has expressed interest in Tebow.

Honestly the AFL does seem like the best place for Tebow to develop his game right now, though the Canadian Football League might be his best chance to actually put up some solid numbers based on the style of play north of the border. Either way, he doesn’t belong in the NFL at this point.

Yuichiro Miura, an 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer, became the oldest man to reach the top of the world’s tallest mountain on Thursday. Miura reached the summit of Mount Everest (which stands 29,035 feet tall) in the early morning hours.

It is the third time Miura has summited the peak three times now. He previously accomplished the feat at ages 70 (in 2003) and 75 (in 2008). In fact, the previous oldest climber to do it was Nepal’s Min Bahadur Sherchan, who summited Everest at 76 years old back in 2008. That occurred just one day before Miura reached the top at age 75.

Sherchan is now 81 years old and will attempt to summit the mountain again next week, which mean’s Miura’s record may not last long. The oldest woman to summit Everest is also Japanese. Tamae Watanabe was 73 when she reached the top last year.

When he reached the summit at 9:05 a.m. local time in Nepal, Miura and his son Gota (who accompanied him on the climb) called down to his support team to announce the news. Miura’s daughter Emili talked to her brother and father via speakerphone in Tokyo when they finally reached the top.

The crazy part of all this is not just Miura’s age, but the fact that he broke his hip in an accident two years ago and also underwent heart surgery in January. That he even attempted to climb Everest after those health issues is simply insane.

To prepare for his ascent, Miura walked three times a week with 55 to 65 pounds on his back.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay becoming the first men to reach the top of the mountain. They accomplished the feat on May 29, 1953.

An MRI on Wednesday revealed that New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony has a small tear in his left shoulder. The 28-year-old reportedly suffered the injury – classified as a torn labrum – late in the regular season and decided to play through it.

The Knicks are hoping Anthony can avoid surgery on the injured shoulder. The team plans to allow the league’s reigning scoring champion to rest for three to four weeks before making a determination on what to do about the injury. If it is not healed at that point in time, surgery will be considered.

Anthony has said he suffered the injury on April 14 against the Indiana Pacers, and that it hampered him throughout the postseason. The six-time All-Star also claimed the shoulder would pop in and out after Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett tugged on his arm during the teams’ first-round playoff series.

Anthony shot 40.6 percent from the floor in 12 postseason games. He averaged 28.8 points in 40.1 minutes per game, but also shot just 29.8 percent from three-point range.

Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital, said the injury could sideline Anthony for up to four months. Roth specializes in sports medicine, but has not treated Anthony.

The Knicks and Anthony have to be praying surgery isn’t necessary. If it is, his recovery could last into the early part of the 2013-14 regular season.

Anthony turned in one of the best seasons in his professional career during the 2012-13 campaign. He averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists and 37.0 minutes per game in 67 contests.

The NFL’s owners voted on Tuesday to award the 2016 Super Bowl to the Bay Area (Santa Clarita to be exact), where the San Francisco 49ers will have a new home starting next season. When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced the 2016 decision, the San Francisco bid committee erupted in an outburst of approval. They then followed that with a champagne toast.

The Santa Clarita venue will be called Levi’s Stadium, and will host the Bay Area’s first Super Bowl since 1985 when Stanford Stadium hosted the big game.

The stadium is being billed as the most technologically-advanced venue in the world which is interesting because on Tuesday the NFL made a $400 million deal with Microsoft to “upgrade the fan viewing experience.” Levi’s Stadium will likely be the first cashless, ticketless venue in NFL championship history and it will also have WiFi capability for 75,000 people.

Super Bowl L, was just one of two big games awarded on Tuesday, Houston also won the bid for Super Bowl LI in 2017. Both bids were selected on the first ballot, the first time in a decade that has happened.

San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York also announced that 25 percent of the proceeds from the game will go to fight poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The big loser on Tuesday was Miami, which was trying to get Super Bowl L, but it was not to be. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has claimed Sun Life Stadium needs $350 million in renovations, but he doesn’t want to pay for them. The 26-year-old stadium has fallen far behind it’s competitors in the eyes of the NFL and it needs work.

But San Francisco and the 49ers won big on Tuesday, scoring what should an exciting opportunity to show off their new stadium.

Well, we’ve got another entrant on the list of dumbest sports injuries of 2013. Washington Nationals reliever Ryan Mattheus broke his pitching hand while punching a locker after a terrible outing Sunday afternoon. He didn’t inform Nationals officials of the injury until just before the team’s game at AT&T Park in San Francisco Monday night.

Mattheus allowed five earned runs in one inning during Washington’s 13-4 loss to the San Diego Padres on Sunday (highlights from that inning can be seen here). According to Nationals manager Davey Johnson, he then went into the locker room and “banged his glove against his locker with his hand in it.” So basically he punched a locker with his glove as a slight barrier to the impact.

Johnson continued:

“He didn’t say anything to anybody. His hand didn’t swell up, but when he went out to throw today his hand swelled up and he couldn’t throw the ball.”

The right-hander then underwent a series of tests on Monday and an X-ray revealed the damage.

Mattheus is a 29-year-old in his third big league season and while this may be kind of funny, dude has to be smarter than that. His right hand is his money-maker. Ryan, my man, if you’re going to punch something, do it with your left hand. Crash Davis taught us all that lesson in “Bull Durham.”

So far this season Mattheus has racked up a 4.96 ERA and a 1.53 WHIP in 16.1 innings over 14 games.

To add insult to injury, the Nationals fell to the Giants 8-0 Monday night.

Seattle thought it was getting its Sonics back — for a moment, anyway — until a group led by rich Seattlites Chris Hansen (not the pedophile catcher) and Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer was totally c-blocked by a vote of the NBA’s ownership. The decision was not a vote against Seattle, per se, but a vote for small-market Sacramento and a way to stick it to the douchebag Maloof brothers as they attempted to sell the Kings.

However, not all hope is lost for Sonics fans.

Commissioner David Stern’s future replacement, Adam Silver, indicated he is open to the possibility of expansion when the league’s current TV contracts expire following the 2015-16 season.

“We want to wait and see what happens in our next national television negotiation, but we’re very appreciative of the fans in Seattle,” Silver said in the Seattle Times. “We’ve regretted having to leave the market the last time, and we fully expect we’ll return there one day.”

If the league does go the expansion route in Seattle four years or so from now, it would leave the NBA with 31 teams. And as we all know, no one likes odd numbers. So if the NBA decides to make it an even 32 teams, which city should come into the fold along with Seattle?

Here’s a look at the pros and cons of some viable candidates:

St. Louis: The largest media market without a team is the place the Hawks called home from 1955-68. They won the franchise’s only title there in 1958 led by one of the NBA’s all-time greats in Bob Pettit. The city also had an ABA presence with the Spirits of St. Louis, but there always seem to be questions as to whether St. Louis is quite big enough to be a four-sport town. It would also take away my only comeback to Cardinals fans, which is, “How’s your basketball team this year?”

Pittsburgh: It’s never been a pro basketball town, outside of a few attempts at ABA teams and the movie “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh” (I can’t possibly urge you enough to watch this clip). The Steelers own the city until at least January — halfway through the NBA season — and the Penguins have a pretty good hold on things after the Steelers are done. A group on Facebook, “Bring the NBA to Pittsburgh,” only has 69 likes. You don’t get the idea that demand is overwhelming.

Kansas City: The Sprint Center is a nice, shiny new arena with no professional tenant. It was built with the hopes of attracting an NBA or NHL team, but so far KC has come up short. Kansas City has had a shot at the NBA before — it was the Kings’ most recent home before moving to Sacramento. Basketball is big in Missouri and Kansas, so you’d think there would be enough fan interest to get behind a potential franchise.

Columbus: A basketball team most people don’t know exists would be a fine counterpart to Columbus’ hockey team most people don’t know exists. Seriously, though, with Ohio State’s domination of this market I’m pretty sure Columbus is meant to be a one-team town — and it’s barely been capable of doing even that.

Louisville: A basketball city in a basketball state. The Kentucky Colonels were a franchise for all nine seasons of the ABA, but did not make the cut when the NBA agreed to merge four teams into its fold after the 1976 season. Some would argue NBA crowds are at their best when it is the only game in town — Oklahoma City, Memphis, Salt Lake City and Sacramento (when the Kings are actually good) all lend credence to that theory.

The only argument against a Louisville team would be the concern that the NBA would struggle to compete for entertainment dollars against U of L and UK. But again, the University of Memphis and the Grizzlies both seem to be doing fine.

Las Vegas: I don’t think I need to explain what makes Vegas awesome. But every pro league has an aversion to putting a team in a city with legalized sports gambling available. Would the NBA be willing to be the first to make a dip into that pool? Seems like this is a disaster waiting to happen. In the Internet Age tales of wild parties on road trips to Sin City could be a serious embarrassment to the league.

Virginia Beach: The third-largest metropolitan area without a team in the Big Four sports (Vegas and Hartford being the others) was one of the cities the Kings were rumored to be considering last year when the Maloofs first looked into selling the team. There’s no major college in the city, so residents are likely hungering for any kind of sporting entertainment.

That said, there is nothing about Virginia Beach that screams excitement to potential free agents. Of course, the same thing could be said about a few places on this list.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have a $217 million payroll and currently sit at 17-25 and occupy last place in the National League West. They are seven games behind the first-place Arizona Diamondbacks and according to several reports, it will be a miracle if manager Don Mattingly lasts the week.

The Dodgers were swept over the weekend in Atlanta, and were outscored 16-8 by the Braves in the process. The team’s bullpen allowed 12 of those 16 runs. On Sunday night Los Angeles suffered a 5-2 loss in which Atlanta scored four times in the eighth inning off of relievers Kenley Jansen and Brandon League.

In short, the Dodgers are an absolute mess, and with a ton of bad contracts on the docket, the front office can’t just dump players. The only move the team can make is to fire Mattingly.

Mattingly has a laid-back personality and the Dodgers are a laid-back, veteran team. That can be an awful combination.

The team has a ton of high-priced egos, with guys like Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Kemp, Carl Crawford, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Andre Ethier and Josh Beckett. Those seven guys alone are making $118.25 million this season. When guys are making that much money, oftentimes they get complacent.

The fact that the Dodgers currently have the sixth-worst record in baseball is absolutely unacceptable. Sometimes when you have to send a message to a roster, the only way to do it is by dumping a manager.

Mattingly’s contract is up after this season, which would make firing him a whole lot easier.

With new ownership who didn’t hire them now in place, don’t be surprised if Mattingly and general manager Ned Colletti both get the boot. Colletti probably will get the rest of the season to prove his worth, but Mattingly is almost surely on his last legs.

Matt Moore is making quite a name for himself early in the 2013 season. The 23-year-old lefty improved to 8-0 on Sunday as the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Baltimore Orioles 3-1.

In doing so, Moore became the youngest left-handed pitcher to start a season 8-0 since Babe Ruth did it as a 22-year-old in 1917. Fun fact: Ruth made just $3,500 that year, and went 24-13 with a 2.01 ERA.

Moore went seven innings and allowed one run on five hits, with one walk and three strikeouts. For the season Moore boasts an ERA of 2.29 and a WHIP of 1.09. He has allowed 34 hits, 26 walks and seven home runs, while striking out 54 in 55 innings. Perhaps the most remarkable statistic is that he’s earned a decision in each of his eight starts.

The former eighth-round pick’s eight wins also lead all of baseball.

Any time someone does something that hasn’t been accomplished since before World War I ended, it’s absolutely worth discussing. In just his second season Moore is already leading up to the hype that developed around him during his days in the minors.

As a rookie in 2012 Moore turned in a decent season. He made 31 starts and posted an 11-11 record, with a 3.81 ERA and a 1.35 WHIP. He threw 177.1 innings, and struck out 175 while walking 81. He also allowed 158 hits, 85 runs (75 earned) and issued 81 walks. Considering the competition he faced in the American League East, that’s a pretty solid rookie campaign.

Now Moore has morphed into a reliable guy who, when paired with 2012 American League Cy Young Award winner David Price, gives the Rays an outstanding one-two punch at the top of their rotation.

While Price has struggled to open the season (1-4, 5.24 ERA) he’ll eventually come around. Until then, Moore is holding things down as the team’s ace.

The Los Angeles Kings pulled off a playoff miracle on Thursday night, grabbing a 4-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks from the jaws of defeat with two late goals. But the Kings almost didn’t have their best player on the ice for the big finish, as center Anze Kopitar took a puck to the face early in the third period, opening up a serious cut that needed to be closed.

After a trip to the locker room for stitches, Kopitar came back on the ice a few minutes later to a rousing ovation from the home fans. His return buoyed the Kings, who trailed 3-2 when he re-entered the game. Los Angeles wound up scoring two goals in the final two minutes of the game, to snag a win and take a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinal series.

Kopitar was nailed in the face with a shot off the stick of teammate Dustin Brown that was slightly deflected by San Jose’s Dan Boyle. Video of the play is after the jump.

On Thursday afternoon the United States men’s national soccer team announced its roster for its upcoming slate of five games, and Landon Donovan was left off of it.

Jurgen Klinsmann’s team will play two friendlies against Belgium and Germany, then jump into three important World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica, Panama and Honduras. Donovan, the nation’s all-time leading scorer will not be with the squad.

Donovan has fallen a bit out of favor with Klinsmann following his brief hiatus from the sport this past winter. He returned to his club team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, on March 30 of this year and has been in excellent form since. But he has yet to earn his way back onto the national team despite a desire to continue playing internationally.

While this seems like a big deal, it probably isn’t. Klinsmann obviously wants to see more of the 31-year-old Donovan before he brings him back into the national team fold. He will eventually be back. After all, the man has been capped 144 times and has scored 49 international goals.

Klinsmann had the following to say about Donovan:

“I think Landon is catching up. He’s just working himself back into shape and back into a playing rhythm. He will get sharper and more confident with every game he’s going to play now. So we’ll watch that, we’ll monitor that and we’ll decide then when to bring him back into our picture. It’s not going to be for these upcoming games, but maybe later on we’ll definitely expect him back in the team.”

Klinsmann called up 29 players for the upcoming stretch of games, and the roster is relatively healthy, especially considering how banged up it was for the last round of qualifiers.

Here is the full list of players called up:

Goalkeepers: Brad Guzan, Tally Hall, Bill Hamid, Tim Howard, Sean Johnson, Nick Rimando.

Defenders: DaMarcus Beasley, Matt Besler, Geoff Cameron, Edgar Castillo, Omar Gonzalez, Clarence Goodson, Fabian Johnson, Michael Parkhurst.

Midfielders: Michael Bradley, Joe Corona, Brad Davis, Maurice Edu, Stuart Holden, Jermaine Jones, Sacha Kljestan, Brek Shea, Danny Williams, Graham Zusi.

Forwards: Jozy Altidore, Terrence Boyd, Clint Dempsey, Herculez Gomez, Eddie Johnson.