What's in a name?

Okay, not that Dane Cook.
By MATT TAIBBI  |  February 4, 2009

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LAUGHING STOCK: Ball State's Dane Cook — no, not that one — was arrested for not paying cab fare. What a hack!
Hey, look everybody: Dane Cook got arrested! Okay, not that Dane Cook. Not the Dane Cook who’s so unfunny you want to plunge a corkscrew into your brainstem every time you see him. Not the Dane Cook who surely sold his unfunny soul to Satan in exchange for the monstrously profitable career as the new Bob Hope and is now destined to spend the next five or six decades torturing all of us with his schmaltz comedies, before spending his golden years receiving fake awards, playing golf in Arizona, and doing the occasional Pennzoil commercial.

No, this Dane Cook plays free safety for Ball State. It isn’t known if he is funny, but it’s a safe bet that he’s funnier than the other Dane Cook, who — incidentally and to our great shame — is from Boston. The Ball State Dane Cook got busted recently for, get this, not paying a cab fare. The story is a little vague, but authorities in Muncie, Indiana, are slapping him with a theft charge, which is a class-D felony in those parts. Like the Michael Bolton character in Office Space, the poor bastard now faces losing his job, in addition to being stuck with that shitty name for all eternity.

Let’s be generous and give him just four points for this one. Not that taxi drivers should ever have to put up with crap from hulking jocks, but when you have a name like that, you get at least one mulligan.

Yet another
Meanwhile, on the heels of this past week’s child-support case involving former Oakland A’s first-baseman Troy Neel, we have another. This time the cad is Jason Caffey, who once played for the Chicago Bulls as an only very occasionally effective reserve big man.

According to new reports, Caffey owes one Lorunda Brown more than $200,000 in child support and legal fees. Caffey apparently has 10 kids with eight women, and Brown is one of the latter. In October, an Atlanta judge rejected his appeal for bankruptcy, clearing the way for an arrest warrant on the child-support charges, which was issued this past week.

These new revelations, incidentally, move Caffey up the list of famed deadbeat jock dads. Previously, he was just below Evander Holyfield, as the former heavyweight champ has long been known to have nine illegitimate children, while previous reports had Caffey with just eight (by seven women). Apparently he continued procreating after his career ended.

Fifty points for Caffey — it should be noted that the only time the public ever hears about these athletes who have multiple illegitimate children is when they fail to pay support and that information ends up in a court complaint. So who knows how many Caffeys there are out there? This stuff is getting out of hand.

It develops character
Here’s a weird one. A young man who a decade or so ago helped Mexico win the Little League World Series was arrested this past week on kidnapping charges.

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Related: Dane Cook is funny, Dane Cook does suck, Scammer solstice, More more >
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