Happy Fourth of July from the Ladies…

It’s that time of years, folks, when we celebrate the birth of America by stuffing our faces full of barbecue and ogling explosions in the sky.

We here at Ladies…have our own hot date with some marching bands and sparklers. (Not at the same time, kids. Practice safe parading.) As such, we’re taking a bit of a break to celebrate America, apple pie, moms and baseball.

And good looking men doing delightful things involving sports.

Happy Birthday, America. Here, have Mike Rowe singing the National Anthem at a Bowie BaySox game.

NFL Breast Cancer Awareness Auctions – UPDATE

Yesterday I posted about the NFL’s lack of follow-through in their Breast Cancer Awareness auctions. The big sites like Deadspin, SportsByBrooks, Dan Shanoff, Larry Brown Sports, and MJD’s The Debriefing over at the Fanhouse picked up on the story and helped spread the word that maybe the League should do more than just throw pink on coaches and fulfill their promise to do some fund raising.

Not that we have anything to do with it, but overnight NFL Auctions has placed a few more items up for bid. (Buried on page three, but they are there.)

Take the time to check out and hopefully bid on towels, hats, and mini-helmets from Mike Holgrem, Marcus Trufant, Deion Branch, Julian Peterson, Lofa Tatupu, Patrick Kearney, and Matt Hasselbeck.

Would have been nice to have this all up when the pink ribbon campaign was up, but late is better than never. We’ll keep updating you as more items – hopefully – go up.

1 in 8 Ladies Will Develop Breast Cancer in Her Lifetime – UPDATE

The NFL heavily promoted their Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, but what did it add up to other than coaches and officials wearing pink ribbons?

One of their highly touted initiatives was the use of the special pink towels by the players in games on October 7. From the press release, “Pink Gatorade Towels: Players will use special-edition pink Gatorade towels on the sidelines during the games. Players will autograph these towels and other pink merchandise, which will be put up for bid on NFL Auction, with proceeds going to breast cancer organizations.”

And this was the picture on NFL Auctions all month –

But where were the items? All month I waited to see what went up. You know what was auctioned off? Two towels. Two. A Peyton Manning signed towel and a Vince Young signed towel.

Two. Towels.

Now, I don’t want to accuse the League of window dressing and lip service, but in researching exactly what each team was doing for Breast Cancer Awareness Month (The word “awareness” always infuriates me, who is not “aware” by now?) at least a dozen or so teams mentioned this auction. So what happened? Where are the rest of the items? Isn’t fundraising just as important – if not more so – than making sure all the refs are wearing pink wristbands? I took that screenshot on Monday and yesterday the pink ribbon was taken down. So was it really all a bunch of hype for very little?

UPDATE: Overnight NFL Auctions finally put more items up for bid.  Check out our post here for a full listing.  Thanks to SportsbyBrooks, Deadspin, Dan Shanoff, and MJD at the Fanhouse for helping spread the word yesterday. 

Each team also participated to varying levels with a few glaring omissions. (We know Brady and Belichick are all about the boobies, so the Pats not even doing anything with their cheerleaders or with the ZTA sorority this season is shocking.) Let’s look at the complete rundown.