A few weeks after it was revealed that Bear Stearns would be acquired by JP Morgan Chase, the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Evans reported on the unwritten fate of Bear Stearns champion lacrosse team.

"Among the remaining questions hanging over Bear Stearns Cos. is this: What happens to its lacrosse team?" Evans wrote. "Bear Stearns players are trying to keep the team together even though the firm."

Last year the Bear Stearns team defeated rival Lehman Brothers in triple overtime. It followed this with an upset victory over Credit Suisse to the inaugural Gotham Lacrosse tournament for the Wall Street league. Now Bear Stearns has been extinguished in the world of finance, while Lehman Brothers faces challenges that have forced it to go an extraordinary fund raising spree.

The first pages of the post-acquisition fate of the Bear Stearns team will be written tomorrow. For more details, follow the jump.

Craig Robinson has gone from trading bonds for Morgan Stanley to coaching basketball at Oregon State, widely considered to be one of the toughest jobs in college basketball. The job was offered to at least three other top coaches before Robinson finally agreed to leave his spot as head coach at Brown.

Robinson graduated from Princeton, where he was a basketball star, and got an MBA in finance from the business school at the University of Chicago. After a stint at playing professional basketball in Europe, Robinson was a bond trader at Continental Bank, Morgan Stanley Dean Whitter and Loop Capital Markets, a minority owned investment banking firm.

Turning around Oregon State's team will be a challenge for Robinson, perhaps harder than a bond trader trying to dig his way out of a portfolio heavily invested in adjustable-rate mortgages. Robinson, however, comes from a family with grand ambitions. His brother-in-law is Barack Obama.

The Unlikely Candidate [SI.com]

Former Yale basketball captain Josh Greenberg tapped former teammates and fellow Merrill Lynch analysts to build the city's top white-collar basketball team, New York Magazine reports. Last week, the team won its fourth championship in the New York Corporate League. A team of Madison Square Garden employees went down to the Wall Street ballers 73-58 on the floor of Madison Square Garden.

Here's the scorecard for that game.

As regular readers know, we're big fans of celebrity stock picking. This afternoon's little spark of sunshine comes from the news that former Raider and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Brown, will have a stock-picking column on at TheStreet.com. True to form, he is picking stocks like a slightly addled sportscaster, highly impressed by a team that he thinks sounds confident going into the game. He even has a catch phrase: "Keep moving the chains!"

Booya, Tim. After the jump, we reveal Tim's first pick.

We're generally amused by the efforts of Fox Business to package anything and everything as a business story ("The Britney Economy!" "The Business of Blow Jobs! More Time Effective Than Using Your Hand = Bigger Profits For You!" and so on and so forth). Like, we laugh at the clips and want to shake these idiots. But today, for the very first time, after watching a segment on Rock-Paper-Scissors, and other "non-traditional" sports like pillow fighting, all I want to do is give someone at that network a hug, for RPS is my all-time favorite game/activity/pastime. I don't even care that the anchor refers to it as a couch potato sport, though I would point out that FBN probably shouldn't knock couch potato sports, since that is the only reason the 6,300-odd people tune in to the network. Kind of the business news equivalent of watching Nascar for the car wrecks, except they happen all the time here.

Eph you, purple cow. We always liked Trish better, anyway. (Nice use of the Fox tagline, though.)

College Gameday Goes DIII [CNBC.com]

Thank god, the money managers have weighed in and decided: A-Rod was entirely justified in opting out of the final three seasons of his contract with the Yankees. According to Daniel Alpert, a partner at Westwood Capital, a boutique investment bank in New York that specializes in mortgage and related securities, “there’s nothing cold blooded about it.” And what’s Balestra Capital founder James L. Melcher’s take on the situation? “Not only do I have no problem with it, I’m cheering him.”

Can you imagine what would happen if these guys didn’t stick together? When you’re trying to rip people off, the moral support of your peers really counts for a lot. (Investors in) Absolute Capital know what we're talking about.

Rodriguez Not Greedy by Standard of Wall St. [NYT]

Isn’t it nice to know that Stanley O’Neal didn’t have any trouble fitting in time to play golf while his firm was busy losing billions of dollars? Bespoke Investors notes that while the MER chief may be horrible at making money, he’s actually got the best handicap of all his peers, which can probably be attributed to the fact that he’s apparently a fan of the Jimmy Cayne style of management, wherein you play games instead of coming into the office, and has plenty of time to practice. Pretty cool that in the very near future, he’ll be able to stop faking sick whenever he wants to hit the links, seeing as how he’s probably going to be unemployed.

Stan O'neal Gets Better Under Pressure [Bespoke Investment Group]

The SEC implied yesterday afternoon that Dwight “Sean” Jones, former defensive lineman for the Raiders, Oilers, and Packers blocked regulators from examining the business records of his investment advisory firm, Amaroq. Jones allegedly evaded requests for information, and then told the SEC that the records were no longer available, because

(There’s nothing else to add, because this story is hilarious as is. But maybe just don't give your money to football players-cum-money managers, with the exception of OJ Simpson. He got away with murder. Investing should be easy, by comparison.)

Former NFL Star Sacked By Feds [New York Post]

Umbro, the sponsor of six English Premiership teams and the majority of suburban gym classes in the 1980s and 1990s, reported steep declines in sales and profit, sending shares down 17% today in London. Pretax profit for the first half of FY07 dropped 45% on a 49% drop in sales over the same period last year. Umbro also makes England’s national team jersey, but with England currently blowing it in Euro 2008 qualifying, Umbro’s prospects continue to be bleak in 2008.

With the rise of competing sports apparel manufacturers like Under Armour and the penetration of the major shoe companies into the athletic apparel space, the real hit to Umbro is the decline of the brand’s use in suburban gym uniforms. Realizing that Umbros are often embarrassingly short, and see-through in most colors, suburban kids started concealing full-on views of their tighty-whiteys from sexually ambiguous gym teachers by making the switch to another pair of (ours were red) colored shorts in increasing numbers. While the creepiness of the mass bend-over that is a mysteriously timed “posture and spinal cord examination” has decreased, Umbro's sales have suffered.

Besides, Under Armour constricts blood flow and accentuates your middle-school pythons, like that ad with that kid leading that chant on a school bus. That kid scares the crap out of us. We still like to imagine that without donning a ridiculously tight marketing gimmick the dude would have spaghetti arms that barely find their way out of a large white T-shirt with the kid’s name on it. Also, nothing says, “my dad is living vicariously through my Little League leading 11 doubles, unaware that his genes will render me relatively un-athletic after puberty” than the latest sports equipment.

Umbro is aiming for the bottom half of the net, attempting to be at least the number three soccer brand in every market in which it operates under its new strategic plan which is to sell more stuff.

Umbro's profit drops, warns of tough sales [MarketWatch]

Now that Labor Day has passed, it's officially time to think about real sports - college and pro football, NBA pre-season and baseball pennant races (baseball up until Labor Day is merely a way to pass time). Moving to the top of the worst division in baseball (which I say begrudgingly, being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, if that's been possible the last 13 losing seasons), is the Chicago Cubs, 1.5 games up on the Brewers, also barely over .500. When the Cubs blow it somehow, either in the regular or post-season, new owners will seek different losing strategies, from Dan Primack's PE Week Wire:

A very interesting M&A battle could soon heat up on the North Side of Chicago. Various news reports say that if/when Sam Zell finishes buying Tribune Co., he will put the Cubbies up for sale. Two of the expected bidders are Madison Dearborn chief John Canning and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. A contrast in styles, to say the least…

We've heard the Cuban rumblings (which is even more annoying in that he'd probably buy the Pirates if they were smart enough to sell), but the John Canning rumors are relatively newer. Does it really matter?

By the way, does anyone know the current whereabouts of former Hewitt Associates employee and infamous Moises Alou interferer Steve Bartman? Is he still in the scintillating world of BPO consulting? Did he ever take the Florida asylum offered by Jeb Bush?

PE Week Wire

Who needs the best striker in the world (Thierry Henry) when the real power in English Premiership football is in getting backed by a Russian oligarch? From DealBook:

Russian mining magnate Alisher Usmanov has acquired a stake in Arsenal from David Dein, the club’s former vice-chairman and a close ally of manager Arsene Wenger. The sale of the 14.6 percent stake for 75 million pounds ($152 million) may fuel speculation that Mr Usmanov, who has made much of his fortune in the steel industry, may eventually mount a takover bid for the north London club.

English football is becoming like Battle-Bots (or one giant pissing contest) for Russian magnates, as Chelsea has been annoyingly good since Roman Abramovich bought the team in 2003.

(Pictured - The Arsenal SLR-105, a Bulgarian AK variant)

Russian Steel Magnate Buys Arsenal Stake [DealBook]

Lehman may have dominated day one of the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge, but day 2 was more bearish for bankers, and bullish for GlaxoSmithKline. Day 2 also featured faster times overall.

GlaxoSmithKline was responsible for two explosive runs on the women’s side, courtesy of over the counter diet drug Alli, and the fact that the top two finishers, both from GSK, did not bring a pair of dark running shorts. Jessie Webb ran a 20:03 and Christa Meyer ran a 20:24, losing an impressive 7 pounds.

The only banker in the women’s top five was Sumitomo’s Katarina Melville who finished in third with a 20:27. Only a financial services employee, accustomed to much longer periods of getting shat on, was able to draft the GSK girls so closely.

Andy Bishop from GSK finished in fifth for the men with an 18:40.

The top two male finishers from last year squared off in the same race this time, and finished in the same order. Karl Dusen from AIG ran a 17:25 and John Traugott of Credit Suisse ran a 17:48. Dusen finished with the top overall time (too early to start “Dynasty” talk?), while Traugott’s time was 6 seconds off yesterday’s top finisher, placing him in third overall.

Click here to take a photographic journey of the race.

2007 New York results [JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge]

DB Park Ranger Scott Bressler ventured to Central Park last night to snap some shots of the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge. Many of the participating organizations had tables set up to offer food, propaganda or team motivation. The News Corp table was perched right next to the Dow Jones table, probably so News Corp could scare off potential bidders with extremely unfair and unbalanced tan lines (although both organizations swear the table placement was unintentional, and a little weird).

Pictured here are Dow Jones newswire editors Nick von Klock and Geoff Rogow, who said that the race this year was “Amazing sprinkled with awesomeness,” clearly referring to the one month run up in the value of their employee equity plan. Another Dow employee said the race was very “relaxed” this year. Another did an interpretive song and dance piece to the theme song from Rainbow Brite.

Dow Jones uses the race to run an inter-firm competition each year between the “old” and “young” employees (they wouldn’t comment as to where the cutoff was), usually with some golf implement at stake (last year it was a 7-iron). The young guys won this year.

Guys in the networking group of Lehman, jealous of the performance of Lehman’s female squad, mentioned that they were hindered by the crowd, most while pretending to have hamstring injuries. Regarding the horde, one employee suggested, “If it continues to be so packed in future years they should really split it up.”

Take a photographic journey of the race after the jump…

The unofficial JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge results for race #1 are in, and times were predictably slower than last year, as bankers got much fatter. The top five finishers on the men's side included only one bulge bracket BSD (that was taped to avoid drag). Mike Guastella from Morgan Stanley ran the 3.5 miles in 18:02 and finished 3rd.

Lehman girls dominated the women's race, aided by the lower body strength developed from wearing aggressive shoulder pads in business formal attire. Lehman lady Kelly Chin led the pack with a 21:01 and close behind was co-worker Elizabeth Williamson with a 21:27. Diane Kenna from Merrill finished 4th with a 21:51.

DealBreaker Anti-Chaffing Specialist Scott Bressler attended the event and the requisite candy photography is forthcoming.

2007 New York results [JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge]

The JPMorgan Corporate Challenge kicks off tonight in Central Park at 7:00pm with the first of two 3.5 mile races. The event, which started in New York in 1977, is now held in 12 cities on five continents with over 200,000 participants from 7,000 organizations.

The banks make up a large portion of the 15,000 race registrants. Here are the registration numbers for the top five:

Morgan Stanley – 1,605
JPMorgan – 1,450
Lehman – 800
Goldman – 550
Citi – its own version of the 1980 Olympics, boycotts on principle

Goldman limited its roster to 550 after almost 800 employees tried to register, according to the bank’s fitness center manager. Does anyone know why Goldman had to limit its registrants (and please tell me they had tryouts or cuts to determine who made the final 550)?

Last year, of the major banks, CSFB has the most outstanding individual performer - ’03 Harvard alum and track captain, John Traugott, who is an associate in the equity capital markets group. Traugott had the 2nd fastest time overall in the men’s division over the two races with a 17:48.

Karl Dusen of AIG posted the fastest overall time in the second race with 17:05 and Joseph Mcveigh of Morgan Stanley posted the 3rd best time with 18:18.

If anyone has any fun corporate challenge stories, or is planning to pull a Jeff Gillooly on John Traugott, please comment or drop a line to 'tips at dealbreaker dot com.'

Wall Street Rivals Run for Charity, Bragging Rights and Beer [Bloomberg]

For once an English Premiership Team isn't going to be bought by a foreigner. British sportswear mogul Mike Ashley is set to buy Newcastle United, home of Alan Shearer's ghost, Michael Owen's injured legs, several notable losses in FA Cup finals and one cracking 5-nil victory over Man U, for $267mm. Mike Ashley is the owner of Sports Direct, the UK's largest sports retailer, and ready to realize huge uniform cost savings ("Why are we wearing a Thierry Henry away kit? It's a top seller, shut it."). Since 1904, Newcastle's sartorial strategy has been to blend in with American football refs/foot-locker employees with its token zebra-forms.

The Newcastle purchase bucks the trend of top flight English football teams going to overseas investors, including Liverpool, West Ham and Aston Villa last year, and Malcolm Glazer's purchase of Man U and Roman Abramovich's swindling of Chelsea (do Russian oligarchs do anything besides swindle?).

Sportswear tycoon to buy soccer club Newcastle Utd [Reuters]

Bill Hambrecht, founder of I-banking substitute WR Hambrecht & Co. wants to start a football league with Tim Armstrong at Google and Mark Cuban. Aspiring NFL competitors have a history of staying afloat for about as long as the Lusitania at a U-boat party, and Hambrecht has been a proud co-captain of at least one of these sinking ships – as a minority partner in the Oakland Invaders of the USFL (United States Football League), which folded after three years in 1985.

This time, the United Football League (Uniting Football rather than States this time) is bound to be successful, because it plans to focus on non-NFL cities and feature a public ownership structure. Buy your share of the Poughkeepsie Angry Pirates today. Hambrecht’s blistering chain of logic was basically that the Green Bay Packers are publicly owned and have an extremely loyal fan base willing to wear dairy products as accessories (something the 12 NFL championships (9 league championships before Super Bowls started and 3 Super Bowls) clearly have nothing to do with), so public ownership in small places must be an instant key to success. At least part public ownership, as teams will have a tripartite ownership structure between owners, the league and fans. Specifics from the New York Times:

Each owner will put up $30 million, giving him an initial half-interest in the team; the league will own the other half. But eventually the fans themselves will become shareholders — because each team is going to sell shares to the public. Then the owner, the league and the fans will each own a third of every franchise. Hambrecht and his executives believe that the initial public offerings will raise, on average, another $60 million per team, giving it about $90 million in working capital. They also hope that the stock sale will create intense fan loyalty.

So Billy H. has seen Rudy a couple of times and remains optimistic about the ability of guys with “heart” to provide footballtainment. After all, Tom Brady was a sixth rounder and Bill Walsh said the talent levels of the people cut from an NFL roster don’t differ much from the talent levels of the people who just make the team (in that you can say with equal conviction, “He’s no Jerry Rice”). This is actually part of Hambrecht's marketing spiel (or at least the denial portion of his stages of grief).

According to some random guy the New York Times asked (a “sports economist” at Stanford, which must have “sports economics” classes, which must be like the physical kinesiology of the econ department (and I only say this because it sounds cool and I’m jealous)), the real barrier to entry in terms of competing with the NFL is getting stadium deals in larger cities and not providing a watchable game of football with the world’s best players (think he may have over-thought that one).

First and Long — Very Long [New York Times]