Campbell’s Chunky soup, purchase the Official Soup Sponsor of the NFL, viagra sale is bringing back its “Mama’s Boy” advertising campaign this season.

Campbell Soup Company selected Victor Cruz, New York Giants wide receiver and Super Bowl XLVI champion, as the new face of the campaign, which was first introduced in 1997. By reprising the successful campaign, Campbell is strengthening the brand’s connection with the core Chunky soup eater and fully leveraging its NFL sponsorship.

“The ‘Mama’s Boy’ campaign taps into the important relationship guys share with their moms and helps make a star athlete like Cruz more relatable to men who love football as well as the amazing women in their lives.”

Cruz will be featured in a series of TV and print ads as well as social media that kick off this week to coincide with Week One of the 2012 NFL season.

Known for having a close relationship with both his mother and grandmother, Cruz was a natural fit for the “Mama’s Boy” campaign. A rising star in the NFL last year, Cruz captured the attention of football fans nationwide with a breakout NFL season and revealed his fun-loving personality with his signature “Salsa Dance” touchdown celebration. A native of Paterson, N.J., Cruz is not only an amazing athlete on the field, but is also very active in his community.

“When guys watch an NFL player like Victor Cruz they may admire his athletic abilities or his accomplishments, like winning a Super Bowl ring, but they typically don’t think about the influential people who helped him get to that point – like his mom,” said Mark Materacky, Senior Brand Manager, Campbell’s Chunky Soup. “The ‘Mama’s Boy’ campaign taps into the important relationship guys share with their moms and helps make a star athlete like Cruz more relatable to men who love football as well as the amazing women in their lives.”

In addition to the ads, Campbell is serving up three new varieties of Chunky soup that are sure to appeal to guys who are looking for bolder flavors: Chipotle Chicken and Corn Chowder, Kickin’ Buffalo-Style Chicken and Jammin’ Jerk Chicken with Rice & Beans.

The “Mama’s Boy” campaign, created by Y&R New York, reminds guys that Campbell’s Chunky soup can help them stay on top of their game both on and off the field. The Chunkysoup brand has been fueling the NFL and its fans since 1998; and, with the help of Cruz, the brand will appeal to a new generation of guys who are looking for flavorful, satisfying and hearty soups.

Cruz follows in the footsteps of numerous high-profile NFL players who were previously involved with the “Mama’s Boy” campaign; including Hall of Famers like John Elway, Terrell Davis and Jerome Bettis and other well-known players like Kurt Warner, Donovan McNabb and Michael Strahan. The campaign originally ran from 1997 to 2008 and has featured both actresses and real moms alongside the NFL players. For the current campaign the role of Cruz’ mother and grandmother are played by actresses. In the first television spot, titled “Mascot,” Cruz is called to the sideline by his stand-in mom, disguised as a team mascot, to serve him a bowl of Chunky soup. The print ads will appear in sports and men’s magazines.

NASCAR has joined Beyond Sport, a global entity that promotes, develops and supports the use of sport in effecting social change.

As the first motorsports organisation to join Beyond Sport, NASCAR follows the lead of a coalition including Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)

Beyond Sport’s global network is a movement that allows sporting bodies to share best practices on community involvement.

It will also provide a platform for NASCAR to promote the work of drivers, race teams, track operators and other industry members to improve communities around them, including the NASCAR Foundation, NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity and NASCAR Green.

NASCAR will be able to network with leagues and their partners across the world and its Chairman and CEO Brian France is delighted to be involved.

He said: “We’re obviously very honoured to be a part of what is going on at Beyond Sport. The idea is that leagues, teams, athletes come together to share best practices in what they’re doing.

“We are very proud of the contributions our entire industry makes on a daily basis to better the lives, living conditions and futures of people from all walks of life, and especially kids.

“From our green initiatives, to the work of the NASCAR Foundation, to the innumerable good works of NASCAR drivers, teams, tracks and our marketing partners, our industry is a leading example for giving back. We’re thrilled to align our commitment with that of our peers through Beyond Sport.”

NASCAR’s chief marketing officer and senior vice president Steve Phelps said: “If you look around our sport, and you consider all that our drivers do — the teams, the tracks, and our sponsors — collectively, the impact that they make in giving back to the community is really amazing.”

Beyond Sport Founder Nick Keller said; “We are very excited to welcome NASCAR to Beyond Sport and look forward to promoting and supporting the NASCAR community’s collective efforts to make a difference in the world.

“Sports are one of the most powerful platforms in any culture to promote good, and the combined strength and collective commitment of these leagues is coming together to drive important change. NASCAR makes the movement even stronger.”

Since 2006, the NASCAR Foundation has donated more than $13 million to charitable organizations and helped provide medical treatment for more than 24,000 children annually as well as helping school children to engage in science and engineering programs.

A cost-cutting agreement between Formula One teams has hit problems with the top teams unwilling to control their spending according to Mercedes GP principal Ross Brawn.

Each f1 team ratified the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA) to help smaller outfits to survive at a time of global financial crisis in 2008 and early 2009. It expires in 2012.

It has been widely, and regularly, speculated some teams are not abiding to the rules or are finding ways to disguise their real spending.

Brawn, whose  team has made  high-profile technical signings recently and have Michael Schumacher as a driver, said: “I think it’s at a crossroads because it’s now starting to bite those three or four teams who have to control their resource to comply. I think there’s seven or eight teams for whom the RRA means nothing because they’re always going to be below the limit.”

Brawn stated the problem with the agreement was that it had not been structured well enough to include sufficient checks and reassurances in place.

Brawn believes the system leads to innuendo and accusations.

He said: “We’re total supporters of the idea of RRA, but for us it has to be much more robust in how it’s controlled, how it’s monitored, how it’s policed, because it’s a performance differentiator.

“You can’t deny that a team spending five million more each year will have an advantage over a team that doesn’t.”

The Olympic Park will see competitive sport today at its first ever test event in the shape of London International Basketball Invitational that takes place at a temporary arena built for the official games in 2012.

The test event will feature six teams with Australia, China, Croatia, France, Great Britain and Serbia all in action.Each day will feature three games scheduled for 3.30pm, 6pm and 8.30pm in the Basketball Arena which is one of the largest temporary venues ever used for an Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The tournament will run on five of the six days from August 16 until 21 with Friday (August 19) scheduled to be a rest day.

The majority of the teams will feature top NBA stars, including Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls, who will lead Team GB in their pursuit of victory on home turf.

The sport will show supporters and organisers what to expect leading to the showcase event in 2012 while testing many parts of its operations including the field of play; results, timing and scoring systems; how teams work together and how people move around venues.

Debbie Jevans, London 2012 Director of Sport, said: “Having our first test event on Olympic Park makes the Games seem even closer and excitement is building.”

“We are looking forward to hosting our first ever tournament in the Basketball Arena and testing our operations which will include transport into Olympic Park as well as the venue operations and of course the sporting field of play.”

Patrick Baumann, FIBA secretary general and International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, said: “This invitational tournament will be a very interesting and competitive one, with six of the best teams in men’s basketball.”

“The Olympic Basketball Arena is a wonderful and world-class venue.”

The venue was the fourth Olympic Park venue completed by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) earlier this year.

It has 12,000 seats with a black and orange design to represent the colours of a basketball while it is 35 metres high and 115 metres long.

It will be dismantled to be reused elsewhere at other UK and overseas events.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has banned Indian players participating in the upcoming Sri Lankan Premier League (SLPL) Twenty20 competition.

The BCCI has also elected to classify the SLPL as a private tournament, despite the tournament receving official sanction from all other cricket boards. 

The winning team from the SLPL will represent Sri Lanka in this year’s Cricket Champions League, a Twenty20 event jointly-organised by the cricket boards of India, Australia and South Africa.

The BCCI refused to budge on its stance to ban its players from participating in the tournament, despite the Sri Lankan Cricket board offering bank guarantees to safeguard the Indian players’ contracts.

Sri Lanka sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage said: “It is their decision and we cannot force them to change their position. We knew that India was not going to change its stand. That was the reason why we did not go to India. We made an attempt to convince them but the BCCI told us that it cannot reverse its stand. They seem to have some apprehensions over the tournament.”

The absence of Indian players will have a huge impact on the television revenue for the SLPL, and a broadcaster of the competition is yet to be finalised.

Twelve Indian players were due to take part in the 16-day tournament, which will run from July 19 to August 4.

A potential collective bargaining agreement (CBA) being reached between the National Football League (NFL) and Player’s Association (NFLPA) still seems very far away after the league filed an unfair practices complaint against its player’s union to the National Labour Relations Board.

The NFL claim that the NFLPA isn’t bargaining in good faith on a new contract, using delays to “run out the clock” on talks before disbanding the union and suing the league under antitrust law for colluding to restrict players’ pay.

With the current deal expiring in just over two weeks time on March 3, the union has stated it expects the league to lock out players after saying that the NFL’s claim had “absolutely no merit” .

In yesterday’s filing, the NFL said the union’s threat to decertify is “a ploy and an unlawful subversion of the collective bargaining process, there being no evidence whatsoever of any (let alone widespread) dissatisfaction with the union by its members.”

The US Soccer Federation is being sued for $US50 million ($51.5m) by a former promoter of professional games in the US.

The lawyer behind the legal action said that he had asked a US court last week to compel FIFA executives in Switzerland to disclose their dealings with the USSF on the suit.

Soccer powerbrokers in the US say they were confident they could beat the lawsuit and fend off any threat to their bid for the World Cup.

The US is the frontrunner for the 2022 event, ahead of Australia, Qatar, Japan and South Korea. A European bid is certain to win the 2018 World Cup.

A judge in Chicago gave heart to the litigants in July by ruling that the federation had a case to answer on claims that it was involved in racketeering, extortion and anti-competitive behaviour when it forced promoters to pay large fees for the right to hold matches in the US between foreign professional clubs, including Manchester United and Barcelona.

The promoter, ChampionsWorld, paid $US3m to hold such matches between 2003 and 2005, and sold more tickets than the US Major League Soccer competition.

ChampionsWorld claims those fees pushed it into bankruptcy in 2005 and its creditors are suing the USSF for $US50m damages.

A court ruling that the USSF and FIFA had no right to demand the fees would knock a hole in the federation’s revenue and set a legal precedent that could allow other promoters to demand repayment of millions more in fees.

Supporters of the lawsuit said the USSF could be bankrupted, compromising its ability to host the World Cup, if the court decided ChampionsWorld was driven out of business by predatory behaviour by the federation and FIFA.

Soccer United Marketing, an MLS spin-off, does most of the promotion of international soccer matches in the US. Its revenue has helped MLS to survive its growth years and fund the World Cup bid.

Alan Rothenberg, president of the federation when the US hosted the 1994 World Cup, said he expected the federation to defeat the lawsuit, and even if it lost it had a strong enough balancesheet to avoid bankruptcy.

The federation’s revenue stream from international matches ranked well behind its earnings from television rights and gate receipts for US national team matches, he said.

In the year to 2009, the federation made $US2.9m from fees on international matches, and this year it is likely to have taken more than $US3m from more than 40 international matches involving clubs such as Real Madrid and Manchester City.

Jamie Brickell, the lawyer representing the creditors, said he hoped to be in court by the middle of next year and he was confident of success after a ruling in July by Circuit Court judge Harry D. Leinenweber.

“The judge agreed with us that there is no statute in American law that says the federation has authority over all professional soccer, or that FIFA has the power to give anybody the right to govern professional soccer,” Brickell said.

He hoped Judge Leinenweber would next week direct FIFA to provide information about its role in the matter.

The USSF tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing US legislation on sport, and internal decisions by FIFA, had given it the right to impose the fees on promoters, but Judge Leinenweber said the case should go ahead.

He ruled that the federation had no right to govern professional soccer except in the Olympics.

“ChampionsWorld has sufficiently alleged a pattern of racketeering activities,” Judge Leinenweber wrote.

US laws did not appear to give the federation monopoly control over professional soccer in the US, he said, and if it had that control, USA Basketball, which ran the amateur sport, would also have control over the NBA.

“It is extremely difficult to conclude from a reading of the plain text (of the relevant legislation) or its legislative history that Congress intended such a result,” he wrote.

“The court holds that, as a matter of law, the act does not give the USSF authority to govern professional soccer in the US, except to the extent necessary for USSF to govern the participation of professional players in the Olympic Games and related events.”

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have announced that Finance Director and Company Secretary Brian Havill will become Acting Chief Executive following the announcement that David Collier is to retire at the end of the current cricket season.

Mr Havill has been at ECB since August 2000, herbal joining them from Pentland Group (owners of Speedo, arthritis Kickers, clinic Ellesse and several other sports and fashion brands) where he was Commercial Director of Pentland Sports Group.  

On a voluntary basis, he served on the Council of the Lawn Tennis Association between 2008 and 2013 and he is currently an independent member on the Audit Committee of the Sport & Recreational Alliance. 

His appointment allows retiring CEO David Collier the time to conclude specific projects for both ECB and the ICC.