According to a new book, five-star recruit Ricky Seals-Jones left a $600,000 offer on the table to go to Texas A&M, and was also offered tickets, suites, and one school offered "double the highest offer."
Meanwhile, NCAA investigators met with A&M QB Johnny Manziel for nearly six hours over the weekend. We are not likely to get many answers on the subject from the school, however, as they just issued a team-wide rule not to discuss the Heisman Trophy winner.
Silas Redd will miss USC's opener due to injury.
Gonna hurt to not travel with my squad tomorrow but I know y'all gonna handle business in a few day! I'm working to get back 100% #FightOn!
— Silas Redd (@Coast2CoastSii) August 27, 2013
Alabama players showed their humble side, dismissing talks of a three-peat.
Former Detroit Lions WR Titus Young is due in court in California today.
Serena and Venus Williams cruised through their first-round matches at the US Open, losing a total of four games between the two of them. Serena's opponent needed a hug to get through it.
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez shared a field for the first time all year, but the Yankees fell to the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-2. A-Rod hit his 650th career home run.
The NFLPA filed a grievance against the New England Patriots on behalf of Aaron Hernandez.
Bills RB CJ Spiller left the team indefinitely following the suicide of his step-grandfather.
Floyd Mayweather is cranking up his training with just three weeks until his fight against Canelo Alvarez.
Santonio Holmes returned to Jets practice for the first time in 10 months. Mike Goodson returned to the Jets and was immediately suspended for four games by the NFL.
Tony Parker injured his knee in an exhibition game against Spain and will need an MRI.
Here's a video of T-Mac's 13 points in 35 seconds in honor of his retirement.
FLASHING LIGHTS
Danny Brown freestyles on Sway In The Morning.
?uestlove found J. Cole's iPhone at a gas station the other day.
DID YOU REALIZE?
Ever wonder what WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is doing holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy? Making music videos, obviously. (Skip to 3:30)
The Yosemite wildfires have burned over 160,000 acres and are approaching the San Francisco reservoir.
Google is planning a robo taxi service.
Remember the debt-ceiling fiasco that triggered the sequester earlier in the year? It's back.
The Taliban killed 12 Afghani civilians and aid workers.
A party of 25 black people were refused seating at a Wild Wing Cafe in South Carolina.
Chicago schools reopened on Monday with beefed-up security for kids along the way to prevent potential violence.
EVERYTHING I AM
The New York Times has a haunting description of the gas attack in Syria:
Thousands of sick and dying Syrians had flooded the hospitals in the Damascus suburbs before dawn, hours after the first rockets landed, their bodies convulsing and mouths foaming. Their vision was blurry and many could not breathe.
Overwhelmed doctors worked frantically, jabbing their patients with injections of their only antidote, atropine, hoping to beat back the assault on the nervous system waged by suspected chemical agents. In just a few hours, as the patients poured in, the atropine ran out.
To avoid contamination, medics stripped new arrivals down to their underwear and doused them with water before taking them inside.
New patients kept coming. One doctor from the town of Kafr Batna likened the scene to a horror movie, with cars bringing in entire families — fathers, mothers and children — all of them dead. The doctors soon faced a new problem: where to put the dead. Some were covered with blocks of ice to fend off the summer heat, others were wrapped in white sheets and lined up in rows so family members could identify the victims.
It would be hours before officials in Washington woke up on Wednesday to learn the extent of the massacre. President Obama, who had recently returned from a weeklong vacation and planned a quiet day at the White House before departing for a two-day bus tour across New York and Pennsylvania, was told of the attack in the Oval Office that morning during his regular intelligence briefing.
GOTTA HAVE IT
Eminem is back.
