Sepp Blatter has been reelected as FIFA president, holding on to the position he has held since 1998, after Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan withdrew prior to a run-off vote.

Blatter's win comes two days after nine current and former high-ranking FIFA officials were arrested on corruption charges in a dramatic early morning raid in Zurich.

Blatter was not charged. Before the election, he said he could not be held responsible for the misdeeds of others within the organization he has controlled for the better part of two decades.

Blatter beat Prince Ali with 133 of the 209 votes in the first round of voting, falling short of the needed two-thirds majority and forcing a second vote that would have needed just a simple majority.

Each FIFA member state got a vote in the election. While the ballots were secret, it's widely assumed that most if not all of the 101 member states in Africa and Asia voted for Blatter. The US voted for Prince Ali, according to US soccer head Sunil Gulati. It's believed that many European countries did as well.

While much of the western world remains baffled that Blatter is still in power, he's still popular among soccer officials in smaller nations because of the way FIFA funding for football development has been evenly distributed regardless of a country's size or infrastructure during his reign. 

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NOW WATCH: FIFA chief Sepp Blatter: You can't blame corruption on the organization

LeBron James is one of the NBA's most feared competitors. Here's how he spends that hard-earned salary. 

Produced by Devan Joseph. Special thanks to Tony Manfred.

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In early January, the Cleveland Cavaliers were on pace to start the playoffs on the road and LeBron James was taking a two-week break to rest his injured knees and back. Over the course of 48 hours, the Cavs took a gamble in shaking up their roster with two significant trades that brought them J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Timofey Mozgov. James returned to the team a week later they have been on fire ever since.

In fact, since the mid-point of the season, a point that roughly coincides with the trades and the return of LeBron to the lineup, the Cavs have been just as dominant as their Finals opponent, the Golden State Warriors, a team regarded by some as one of the most dominant teams in recent NBA history.

During the regular season, the Warriors outscored their opponents by 828 points (10.1 points per game) while the Cavs outscored their opponents by just 367 points (4.5 points per game). However, since game 42, including the playoffs, the Cavs have outscored their opponents by 490 points (8.9 per game), 36 points more than the Warriors (454, 8.1 per game).

Of course, the Cavs had Kevin Love and a healthy Kyrie Irving for most of this run. But this does show that the gap between the Warriors and the Cavs may not be as big as many assume it to be.

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For two days each year, millions of viewers tune in to the Scripps National Spelling Bee to watch kids attempt to spell words like nunatak. 

Paul Loeffler, ESPN's lead spelling bee commentator and analyst, guides viewers through the contest with bizarre tidbits about Latin roots.

Loeffler has been EPSN's go-to television analyst for the bee for a decade. During matches, Loeffler provides context for words that most Americans have likely never heard of, giving insight into what the speller may be thinking based on small visual ticks or the speller's questions.

The day after the Bee, Loeffler told Business Insider his prediction for next year's contest: the back-to-back ties will likely motivate Scripps to rethink the rules of the bee to make ties more difficult.

"I wouldn't be surprised at all to see changes next year," Loeffler said, noting that before the last two contests, no one had tied in almost 50 years. 

"Maybe I'm selfish, but I would've liked to see that battle rage on for a few more hours."

Loeffler has been the bee's main commentator since the contest got bumped up to network TV in 2006. The commentator — who also covers some college football contests for ESPN — was partially recruited because of his own history. He participated in the contest in 1990, finishing in the top 13. Loeffler's sister also competed in the national competition three times and now works for Scripps.

It's a challenge to comment on the bee because the show is essentially split between hardcore fans and viewers who aren't very familiar with the whole spelling bee process. 

"There's the general audience, who hasn't been at that level of competition but is fascinated by it, and I have to make the crazy obscure minute details make sense," Loeffler said. "And then there's also the spelling bee audience that is hyper tuned in to everything going on there and if I say something that rubs them the wrong way, then they're going to be up in arms."

Loeffler doesn't prep much except for getting to know the candidates and studying their bios. He already has an extensive knowledge of how the game works. He has already studied how words are formed, how roots work, and different language rules.

"A lot of it during the competition is just trying to help the viewer understand what might be going on in that speller's head," Loeffler said. "So that's a lot of breaking down the words into what the clues are within the word, why they're asking a certain question, what part of the word might trip them up."

Loeffler said that the contest has improved over the last several years. He was particularly impressed with this year's winners.

"I don't know if you'll ever have a year where you have are two that are that good, that experienced, that knowledgeable, that poised."

"I don't think I would last very long against some of the kids in there," Loeffler said.

SEE ALSO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The successful lives of past National Spelling Bee champions

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Hours after nine current and former FIFA officials were arrested on bribery and corruption charges, the international soccer association announced that it would continue with its scheduled events as planned.

The FIFA presidential election scheduled to take place two days later would go ahead, despite calls to postpone it from Europe's football governing body. The 2018 World Cup in Russia and 2022 World Cup in Qatar were also not in jeopardy.

In a statement that morning, FIFA welcomed the investigation, calling itself "the injured party" in all of this. In a press conference, a spokesman said it was a "good day" for FIFA. In his own remarks, FIFA president Sepp Blatter vowed that corrupt individuals would be "put out of the game" until the organization was "free from wrongdoing."

On Friday, 48 hours after high-ranking FIFA officials were woken up and escorted by police from the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, Blatter was reelected to a fifth term in a landslide. In the aftermath of the most jarring scandal in the recent history of the organization, it's very close to business as usual at FIFA, and there are some simple reasons why.

The corruption charges didn't cover all of FIFA.

When the initial elation that FIFA finally got hammered wore off, we saw that the scope of the Department of Justice's investigation was actually relatively limited.

The DOJ's indictment alleged that high-ranking FIFA officials took $150 million in bribes over two decades in exchange for media and marketing rights for competitions staged by Concacaf (the governing body of North American soccer) and CONMEBOL (that of South American soccer), in addition to two other allegations related to 2010 World Cup bidding and the 2011 FIFA presidential election.

We're talking about corruption related to things like the Copa America, Concacaf Gold Cup, and Copa Libertadores — not vastly more lucrative soccer properties like the World Cup, Euros, or UEFA Champions League. It is widely believed that the indictment focused solely on the Americas because Chuck Blazer — an eccentric, disgraced ex-Concacaf executive who reportedly had a Manhattan apartment just for his cats— worked as an FBI informant and gave investigators key access to the organization's inner workings.

On the one hand, this is staggering. If the allegations are true, every major continental tournament in the Americas going back more than a decade — even minor things like the Concacaf Champions League — spawned rampant bribery and corruption. And if this corruption was so rampant and consistent in the Americas, are we really expected to believe that things worked differently in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania?

This could be the tip of the corruption iceberg.

But on the other hand, the fact that the indictment only dealt with competitions in the Americas gave FIFA and Blatter an out. While US attorney general Loretta Lynch called corruption in FIFA "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted," FIFA has quarantined the scandal, putting it down to some bad actors conducting business over there in North and South America.

"The Swiss authorities, acting on behalf of their US counterparts, arrested the individuals for activities carried out in relation with Concacaf and CONMEBOL business," is how FIFA described the raid in a statement.

When you read between the lines in FIFA's rhetoric, you see what they're trying to communicate: It's not FIFA that's corrupt; it's individual actors within FIFA; don't change FIFA, change the bad actors.

"You can't just ask everybody to behave ethically just like that in the world in which we live," Blatter said in his opening remarks to the FIFA congress.

"We cannot constantly supervise everybody that is in football," he added. "That is impossible."

The coalition that backs Blatter is rock-solid.

In his 15-minute speech before the election, he told voters, "We don't need revolutions, but we always need evolutions."

Fewer and fewer people are buying this argument. The US put its hopes of hosting the 2026 World Cup at risk by publicly opposing Blatter in the election. Most of the powerful European nations flipped on Blatter as well, with the most powerful man in European soccer asking Blatter to his face to resign.

The DOJ's 164-page indictment depicts an organization where corruption is endemic across continents and generations. It's a systemic problem, Lynch said, not an individual one.

But the reality, as FIFA's response and Blatter's reelection shows, is that it'll take more than this to force FIFA to fix the systemic issues that the attorney general said led to $150 million in alleged bribes for some relatively second-tier competitions.

Blatter has been running FIFA his way for 17 years, and while he vowed to clear FIFA's good name in his triumphant presidential victory speech, he's still the guy who said "we don't need revolutions" just hours before.

Getting rid of Blatter isn't simple. While the western world can't believe he's still in power, Blatter is still popular among smaller FIFA member states across Africa and Asia. In FIFA elections, all 209 FIFA members get one vote. England, China, Barbados, Guinea-Bissau, Tajikistan, France, and the United States — they all count the same.

Blatter has built a coalition of these small countries that makes him impossible to beat in an election, and he's done it largely with his developmental funding policies over the last two decades. 

Money from FIFA's two developmental programs, Goal and the Football Assistance Program (FAP), is distributed pretty much evenly regardless of a country's size or football history under Blatter, Carl Bialak of FiveThirtyEight explained in a great post. Of the 209 member states, 90% got between $1.8 million and $2.1 million in FAP funding from 2010 to 2014. For small nations that don't have thriving domestic leagues or strong national soccer federations, this money is vital, and ousting Blatter over corruption concerns isn't worth the risk of electing a reform candidate who would alter that payment structure.

Jack Warner, one of the nine current and former FIFA executives who got indicted, actually had the simplest explanation for why Blatter wins so easily.

"You have to understand, FIFA has 250 members," he told the BBC in an interview after his arrest. "Out of those 250 members, 180 are third-world countries hungry for help [in the form of] FIFA grants. And Sepp Blatter, either willingly or otherwise, has been helping them to build stadia ... and therefore they don't bite the hand that feeds them."

So what changes?

Blatter isn't going to resign and he isn't going to get voted out. He did say this term would be he last, but he said that last time he won an election too. It also doesn't appear likely that the Swiss investigation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process will produce a smoking gun considering FIFA itself submitted the dossier to the relevant authorities that spawned the investigation in the first place.

The $150 million bribery scandal will have far-reaching implications for Concacaf and CONMEBOL, with next summer's Copa America Centenario in serious jeopardy and the president of Concacaf currently under arrest. But are things really going to change at FIFA? If Blatter's belief is that this scandal is about bad actors, and the solution is simply to remove those actors (as FIFA has been doing for years) what really changes?

If the initial hope when news of the arrests broke was that this would lead to a new FIFA — one where bribes aren't commonplace, and World Cups hosting duties are awarded fairly and sensibly — the ensuing days have shown how difficult that's really going to be, and how old systems endure.

"I will be in command of this boat called FIFA, and we will bring it back," Blatter said in his victory speech. "We will bring it back offshore and bring it back to the beach, bring it back to finally where football can be played — beach soccer."

SEE ALSO: The most staggering part of FIFA's $150 million bribery scandal

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NOW WATCH: FIFA chief Sepp Blatter: You can't blame corruption on the organization

The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2007 after sweeping the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference Finals.

While it's been eight years since the Cavs made it, it's LeBron James' fifth-straight trip to the Finals and his sixth overall.

A part of the NBA world believes LeBron only has a few peak years left. Some believe he's already on the backend of his career.

James didn't win MVP this year, yet still averaged 25 points, six rebounds, and seven assists per game while shooting 49% from the field and 35% from three-point range in a "down season." 

The LeBron James effect is this: He's a walking 50-win season. The Miami Heat won 18 more games than the previous season when he signed there in 2010, and the Cavs won 20 more games this year than last year. Even if his championship count isn't as high as some people would like, he's now 24-17 in Eastern Conference Finals games with career averages of 31 points, six rebounds, six assists per game, ESPN's Brian Windhorst notes. Windhorst adds that LeBron has now won 15-straight Eastern Conference playoff series. He's the first Eastern Conference player to make five-straight Finals appearances since the 1960s Boston Celtics.

This postseason, the Cavs lost Kevin Love to a season-ending shoulder injury after four games, and they lost Kyrie Irving to a knee injury for two games while he played injured for six others. James carried the team, nonetheless, particularly in the conference finals, where he averaged 30 points, 11 rebounds, and 9.3 assists per game.

The Cavs also ran into some injury luck — the Bulls lost Pau Gasol for some of the second round, and the Hawks fought trough injuries to DeMarre Carroll, Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap, and a Game 3 ejection to Al Horford. But in fairness to the Cavaliers, all of those injuries were equally as devastating as losing Love and Irving.

And despite the monstrous statistics, LeBron hasn't been all that efficient. His jumper has mysteriously disappeared. He's shooting just 31.7% from 8-16 feet away from the basket, 33.8% from 16-24 feet from the basket, and just 18% from three in the postseason.

He's scrapping the Cavs' offense with isolations— inefficient one-on-one plays that have him averaging just .68 points per possession and 32.5% shooting, despite going to them 22 more times than second-closest player in the playoffs, James Harden, and 89 more times than the third, Stephen Curry.

Despite this ill-timed slump, James is still finding ways to will the Cavs to wins. In a pivotal Game 5 against the Bulls, James overpowered defenders in the post en route to 38 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three steals, and three blocks:

In a Game 3 overtime victory over the Hawks, James finished with 37 points, 18 rebounds, and 13 assists. The one caveat was his poor shooting, 14-37, but if you ignore his 0-10 start to the game, he went 14-27 the rest of the way, better than 50%. 

Even as a one-man attack on offense, he was doing what he wants:

Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer, who was an assistant with the Spurs in 2013 when they lost to the Heat in the Finals, says he can see a difference in James (via USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt):

"His confidence has gone to another level. Having watched and prepared — watching how he orchestrates and has a great command for where he wants his teammates and what's important in the moment and the confidence that he has in himself to make the right play, whether it's making a shot, making the pass. As a leader, he's grown. His confidence has grown."

If James and the Cavs play the Warriors in the Finals (assuming the Houston Rockets don't become the first team to ever overcome a 3-0 deficit in the playoffs), it'll likely be the first time this postseason where the Cavs won't be the favorites. Without a healthy team, Cleveland doesn't seem suited to match the Warriors' depth.

However, that's still not enough to rule them out. Grantland's Zach Lowe noted in his podcast "The Lowe Post" that the LeBron effect is enough to keep you from ever doubting him, saying:

"If Cleveland is playing this way, and they're playing this way with a seven-man team, they shouldn't be good enough to challenge Golden State. They just shouldn't be. Golden State is too good and too deep and too polished, but [the Cavs] have LeBron. And you always wanna say you can't dismiss a team that has LeBron... LeBron is LeBron, and it's scary to just say, 'His team is going to get rolled in the Finals.' It's just, it's too scary."

James is the only player that can find so many ways to leverage his strength over an opponent's. In the midst of this postseason, in which he's playing below par in so many areas, particularly on offense, he's still the focal point of every matchup.

Debating his all-time place is in the NBA is a fruitless task because such comparisons rely on too many variables. For now, LeBron is the most dominant player in the NBA and until he's no longer capable of the performances we've seen this postseason, he's still the biggest deciding factor in the NBA's balance of power.

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NOW WATCH: How LeBron James spends his money

Fans have just assumed that HBO's "Silicon Valley" based its raunchy venture capitalist Russell Hanneman on Mark Cuban, but Sunday's episode pretty much answers the question.

In a scene with the guys of Pied Piper, Russ (Chris Diamantopoulos) says that he has been informed that his net worth had fallen below a billion dollars. The news sent him into a tailspin and he asked the guys to prematurely jump to a revenue-producing model of Pied Piper.

During that conversation, he describes the moment he became a billionaire.

"I remember the second I became a billionaire," Russ said. "I was a-- naked, sitting right there, just clicking and refreshing, clicking and refreshing, watching the stock rise. And when it happened, I popped a [expletive] so fast I went blind for a full minute, [expletive] all over those cushions."

Sound familiar?

Cuban told a very similar story (minus the raunchy, expletive part) in August 2014 during a podcast interview.

"Literally, I was sitting in front of a computer, naked, hitting the refresh because we were close — waiting until my net worth hit that billion when the stock price got to a certain point, and then I kinda screamed and jumped around and then got dressed," the "Shark Tank" co-host said.

When asked about the scene, Cuban simply told Business Insider, "Russ is hysterical. I cracked up when I saw it."

So, Russell and Cuban are both colorful characters. They both brought radio to the internet in billion dollar deals. They both have invested in several companies. And now, both of them watched their money grow to the billion dollar level. Those are some pretty compelling similarities.

SEE ALSO: HBO is talking to a producer from 'Arrested Development' about working on the next season of 'Silicon Valley'

MORE: An entrepreneur says this is one of the most realistic scenes on 'Silicon Valley'

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NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban Reveals Why He Was Inspired To Join 'Shark Tank'

ESPN's Bob Ley ripped up a FIFA press release on live TV Friday morning while discussing FIFA's presidential election, which Sepp Blatter won in a landslide.

After FIFA delayed the start of its presidential election, Ley showed a press release from the organization detailing its agenda for the day, saying, "Only FIFA can do this," then showing how FIFA had strayed off course.

Ley chided FIFA, soccer's international governing body, first by saying: "I'm not frustrated, I just want to make the point. For those who say it is base canard and unfair [to say] that FIFA makes it up as they go along ..." — he then paused to literally rip the press release and continued — "... they are literally making it up as they go along, right in front of our face."

Several high-ranking FIFA officials were arrested on racketeering and corruption charges in Zurich on Wednesday.

Nine current and former FIFA officials are accused of taking more than $150 million in bribes related to tournaments in North and South America.

While the indictment doesn't mention the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and FIFA says the tournaments will go on as scheduled, these charges have revived calls for a re-vote for the heavily criticized 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

The host nations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were voted on by 22 members of FIFA's executive committee in December of 2010. In the five years since the vote, a significant portion of those voters have faced serious corruption allegations.

Two of those 22 voters, Jack Warner and Nicolas Leoz, were were arrested Wednesday on corruption charges. Additionally, three other members of the 2010 FIFA executive committee — Mohammed Bin Hammam, Ricardo Terra Teixeira, and Chuck Blazer — all resigned in disgrace amid corruption allegations since 2010.

The details:

• Jack Warner — One of the nine executive committee members arrested on Wednesday and one of the 22 voting members of the 2010 FIFA executive committee. Warner was suspended in 2011 for offering bribes for FIFA presidential votes, and he was also accused of accepting money for his 2022 World Cup vote for Qatar. The indictment alleges that Warner accepted bribes from a sports marketing company before awarding Conacacaf Gold Cup rights, among other charges.
• Nicolas Leoz— Another member of the executive committee who voted on the 2022 World Cup who was also arrested on corruption charges in Zurich. The incident alleges that he accepted bribes for the Copa America and Copa Libertadores rights.
• Mohammed Bin Hammam— Dropped out of the FIFA presidential race in 2011 after he allegedly bribed 25 Caribbean Football Union members for votes with $1 million, which was distributed by Warner. In 2012, amid investigations of bribery, Hammam resigned shortly before the Fifa Ethics Committee found him guilty of "repeated" violations of the ethics code and banned him for life. In 2014, the Sunday Times claimed that Hammam paid Warner $450,000 in advance of the 2010 vote on the 2022 World Cup and another $1.2 million afterward. 
• Ricardo Terra Teixeira— Was found guilty in 2012 of accepting bribes in the 1990s for the World Cup. 
• Chuck Blazer— A FIFA executive-turned-FBI informant who helped with the corruption arrests on Wednesday. He had previously pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy, money-laundering conspiracy, income-tax evasion, according to a U.S. Department of Justice statement released Wednesday.

In addition to those five, 10 other members of the 2010 executive committee board are wanted for questioning by Swiss authorities as part of a separate investigation into the 2018/2022 bidding process. Those executives: Issa Hayatou, Angel Maria Villar Llona, Michel D'Hooghe, Senes Erzik, Worawi Makudi, Marios Lefkaritis, Jacques Anouma, Rafael Salguero, Hany Abo Rida, and Vitaly Mutko.

Llona, D'Hooges, Makudi, and another 2010 executive member, Franz Beckenbauer, were all probed in 2014 over a corruption inquiry. Hayatou was also accused of bribery over the 2022 World Cup vote.

To pile onto the increased perception that the 2010 executive committee was corrupt, only 22 members of that committee were even allowed to vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups because of corruption charges. There are typically 24 members of the committee, but two of the members, Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu, were suspended and denied votes over corruption charges prior to the World Cup voting in 2010.

The corruption arrests only add to the controversy surrounding the 2022 Qatar World Cup. In addition to scheduling conflicts for players, there are several reports about inhumane working conditions for modern-day "slaves" helping build the infrastructure for the World Cup. A campaign by the International Trade Union Confederation, Play Fair Qatarm and NewFifaNow claims, "more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament."

While the FIFA arrests didn't go after corruption related to the 2022 World Cup specifically, they drew the integrity and legitmacy of the executive committee that picked Qatar further into question.

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The US Department of Justice's corruption charges against nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives is one of the most meaningful steps ever taken to clean up soccer's international governing body.

The most staggering part of the arrests isn't that there is some sort of single, shocking allegation here that will topple FIFA.

It's that these allegations, as broad and all-encompassing as they seem, are related only to a corner of the larger soccer universe.

The scope of the investigation is important. The bribery and corruption charges, which the DOJ says involved more than $150 million over 21 years, are almost exclusively related to tournaments in North America (organized by Concacaf) and South America (organized by Conmebol) that are second- and third-tier competitions in the grand scheme of things.

We're talking about bribery related to Concacaf World Cup qualifiers, the Concacaf Gold Cup, the Concacaf Champions League, the Copa América Centenario, the Conmebol Copa América, the Conmebol Copa Libertadores, and the Copa do Brasil. The host selection for the 2010 World Cup and the 2011 FIFA presidential election are the only FIFA events mentioned that exist outside the Americas.

There are no charges related to similar continental tournaments in Europe, Africa, or Asia, much less the controversial bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. All nine current and former FIFA executives who got arrested are from the Americas, including Concacaf president Jeffrey Webb.

The reason for this, if the reports are to be believed, is that disgraced ex-Concacaf official Chuck Blazer served as an informant who allowed the FBI important access to the inner workings of the continent's main governing body. In a statement, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch called FIFA's alleged corruption "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted." If she is to be believed, it stands to reason that Africa, Europe, and Asia are no more or less corrupt than the Americas.

The DOJ didn't touch the widespread corruption allegations related to the 2022 World Cup, which include an allegation from a whistle-blower who says she witnessed three different FIFA executive committee members taking $1.5 million bribes from the Qataris at a conference in Angola before the vote.

After the arrests, a FIFA representative said it was a "good day" for FIFA. He said the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would go on as planned, as would Friday's presidential election. The implication is that FIFA need only root out its bad apples and then get back to business as usual. But what these allegations depict is a system of corruption, not just a few corrupt individuals. The DOJ points out that "two generations of soccer officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain."

If this is happening across continents and generations in the Americas, it's fair to speculate whether it is happening everywhere.

Acting US attorney Kelly Currie put it best. "After decades of what the indictment alleges to be brazen corruption," she said, "organized international soccer needs a new start — a new chance for its governing institutions to provide honest oversight and support of a sport that is beloved across the world, increasingly so here in the United States."

We've reached out to FIFA for comment.

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NOW WATCH: Here's how Cristiano Ronaldo spends his money

Jack Warner, FIFA's former vice president, was released from a jail in Trinidad and Tobago on Friday.

Warner turned himself in to authorities after US officials leveled a variety of accusations at him related to his 30-year tenure at the international soccer governing body.

The charges include wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and racketeering conspiracy.

The allegations are part of an alleged $150 million FIFA bribery scheme.

Nevertheless, Warner remains undaunted. And he's using a satirical article from "The Onion" to back up his argument.

In a video posted his official Facebook page on Sunday, Warner said he knows the true reason US law has descended on the venerable sports organization:

"I think it is pathetic and sad for me to be accused of deals in FIFA, which I am not guilty of. How do you justify, for example, that after all these, these accusations that the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has been elected for a fifth consecutive term," Warner said.

Warner then asked why FIFA President Sepp Blatter isn't in trouble if the organization is so corrupt.

"If FIFA is so bad, why is it the USA wants to keep the FIFA World Cup? Why is it they began games on May 27th? May 27th, two days before FIFA elections. Why is it the US authorities sought to embarrass FIFA in Zurich? Something has to be wrong."

Indeed, something has to be wrong.

And it's that Warner is referring to an Onion report that FIFA announced a special summer 2015 World Cup would be held in the US.

Warner then cites the report as proof of a US conspiracy to humble FIFA.

"I made the point to you over and over that all these things have stemmed from the failed US bid to host the World Cup," Warner said. "I said before [and] I say again: The US applied to host the World Cup in 2022 and they lost the bid to Qatar — a small country, and Arabic country, a Muslim country.

"I can understand the US embarrassment at a small country as Qatar, with less than 30,000 people … citizens ... could have been able to overcome them this way. I could understand their pain but no one gives them the right to do what they are doing.

"I said before [and] I say again: No one country has any divine right to host the World Cup."

Qatar has a population of about 2.1 million, about 260,000 of which are citizens (while the rest are expatriates).

A report from The Wall Street Journal on Saturday further details Warner's role in FIFA's alleged corruption.

According to the indictment filed by the US, Warner was closely involved in a vote-buying scheme ahead of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa. US authorities allege that $10 million was wired from accounts controlled by FIFA to ones in the control of Warner.

Despite the scale of the charges against him, Warner believes that he, like other figures throughout history, will ultimately be vindicated.

Addressing supporters in Trinidad after his release, he declared, "Nelson Mandela made jail. Gandhi made jail. Castro made jail. So who's Jack Warner?"

Check out the video below: 

 (h/t Robert Mackey)

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Almost 10 years after winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Katharine Close still seems shocked by the experience that took her from her eighth-grade classroom to nationally broadcast TV, talk shows, and the White House.

"I really couldn't believe it, it actually happening was totally surreal," Close, who goes by "Kerry," told Business Insider. "It's really surreal even now to think that all that stuff happened to me."

Close first went to the National Spelling Bee competition as a 9-year-old, after winning her fourth-grade spelling bee "almost by accident," she said. The New Jersey native was then given a list of 3,000 words to prep for the regional bee, which she also won, sending her to the national championship to compete against spellers from around the US.

Once Close got to Washington, DC, though, the "blind luck" that propelled her through the earlier competitions ran out, as she left the national bee in the second round.

"I had come in really confident after winning all these local competitions, and then got blown away by all these intimidating 13-year-olds," she said.

However, she explained, after losing that first year, "I just wanted to come back and do better and better."

Close would return to the national bee for the next four years, doing better and better each time. Every competition, Close said, she would come back with a broader knowledge base, from both studying on her own time and seeing what kinds of words came up during the bee itself.

"From studying, you learn if it's a noun or an adjective it will be spelled a certain way, or if it's from Greek or from Latin it will be spelled a certain way," Close said. "My final year, I just decided to go all out and studied the entire dictionary for six months."

It paid off. Close won in 2006 — her last year of eligibility and the first year the bee was nationally broadcast — by correctly spelling "ursprache," a German word meaning a parent language.

Speaking to ABC moments after she was crowned winner in the 2006 bee, Close said, "I couldn't believe it, I knew how to spell the word and I was just in shock ... I couldn't believe I would win."

As The New York Times pointed out when Close won, she was a notable contestant for "'being a regular kid" who knows "there's more to life than spelling."

Close told Business Insider that, surprisingly, the bee does not have a competitive atmosphere. She remembers how one person told her, "you're really competing against the dictionary and not the other kids."

The difference in who moves forward in the competition, according to Close, often comes down to luck.

"When you get to the top 10-15 kids or even the National Spelling Bee in general, I don't think any one person is better at it then another," she said. Sometimes, though, spellers will get words they don't even know how to approach.

Close got such a word the year before she won, getting knocked out of the final round after failing to spell "laetrile," a cancer drug that was used in Mexico during the 1980s.

"I'm not even sure now if I could pull it together," she said.

Almost a decade removed from the competition, Close is still influenced by her time on the spelling circuit — from her work ethic to the fact that she never needs to use spell check.

"It definitely taught me to how to set goals and work incrementally towards them," Close said. Working through the dictionary, for example, was "taking a large goal and breaking it down into little pieces."

Although it took her several attempts to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Close said she took a lot from the entire experience.

"Even as I was disappointed, I learned that if you put in effort you can see tangible results for your work, and that was really invaluable to me as a child," she said.

Kerry Close graduated from Cornell University in 2014, and she is pursuing a journalism master's degree in Business and Economic Reporting at New York University.

[Author's note: Kerry and I worked together at the Cornell student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun.]

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Lennie Merullo, the last living Chicago Cubs player to play in a World Series game, passed away on Saturday at age 98, according to The New York Times.

Merullo played shortstop on Chicago’s 1945 squad, which beat the St. Louis Cardinals — winners of the three previous National League titles — to take the NL pennant by a margin of three games.

Merullo and his teammates, including Ray Prim, Claude Passeau, Paul Derringer, and Peanuts Lowery, went on to face the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

The Tigers, led by Hank Greenberg and Virgil Trucks, beat the Cubs in seven games, wrapping up the series in Chicago.

Serving as the backup for starting shortstop Roy Hughes, Merullo went 0-for-2 in his plate appearances during the World Series, The Times notes.

The Boston native spent his entire pro career with the Cubs, playing from 1941 to 1947. The Times notes that he received a deferment from WWII because of color blindness.

In his seven pro seasons, Merullo appeared in 639 games, notching a career .240 batting average, a .301 slugging percentage, and 497 hits. 

Merullo is survived by his wife, four sons, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Matt Merullo, Lennie’s grandson, spent six seasons in the Major Leagues, including four seasons with the Chicago White Sox.

Read the full obituary at The Times >

h/t Matt Ford

SEE ALSO: Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant — baseball's 2 big young stars — have been playing against each other since they were 9-year-olds

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The US Department of Justice's charging documents against 14 individuals accused of bribery and racketeering in conjunction with their roles at FIFA, soccer's international governing body, barely mention Qatar.

Nevertheless, the accusations don't reflect well on the oil- and gas-rich Persian Gulf monarchy that won the rights to host the 2022 World Cup.

If the allegations made by DOJ prosecutors are accurate, the hosting rights for the 2010 World Cup, the 2011 FIFA presidential election, and a number of South American soccer tournaments were tainted by nearly $150 million in bribes. It's difficult to believe that Qatar's World Cup bid was any cleaner than the rest of the apparently sordid day-to-day business of FIFA.

Indeed, a 2014 report from former US federal prosecutor Michael J. Garcia found certain FIFA officials were paid $1.5 million each to vote to award Qatar the tournament. FIFA suppressed the publication of Garcia's report, and the organization's only response to the mounting evidence of an illicit sale of the 2022 bid has been to insist Qatar's hosting of the World Cup will not be revoked or even reassessed.

It is possible Qatar's hosting rights will be able to weather the most intense legal scrutiny to which FIFA has ever been subjected. FIFA is obviously loath to strip the Middle East of its first World Cup — if the soccer world's sanctioning body is willing to hold the 2022 tournament during the European club season and tolerate widespread labor abuses during the event's preparations, it seems unlikely its plans will be swayed by accusations that haven't even made it to a courtroom yet.

At the same time, the arrests fit into a larger trajectory for the Gulf emirate. Qatar once represented a fresh alternative to the traditionally staid and stability-minded governments of the Persian Gulf. The Qatari monarchy built Al Jazeera into the most important media force in the Middle East, often shattering the region's state-held monopolies on the flow of information. During the Arab Spring, Qatar supported entities like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia's Ennahda, betting that the opening of the Middle Eastern political space that started in 2011 would result in a wave of elected Islamist governments.

Outside the Middle East, Qatar hosted peace talks over the future of Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, attempted to broker agreements between the pariah state of Eritrea and its neighbors, and agreed to host the political office of the Afghan Taliban. Qatar attempted to make itself politically indispensable through maintaining relations with terrorist entities and pariah states— while also hosting Al Udeid Air Base, one of the most important US military installations in the Middle East.

That balance hasn't exactly held.

The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood governments in Egypt and Tunisia dealt a blow to Qatar's prestige, while Al Jazeera was essentially expelled from Egypt over Qatar's support for the Brotherhood. Qatari officials are widely accused of supporting Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Nusra head Abu Muhammad al Jawlani granted a rare exclusive interview to Al Jazeera Arabic on Wednesday). The peace in Darfur hasn't held, and Al Jazeera's expansions into the US and Turkish markets have floundered.

Qatar's World Cup bid was once an unmistakable sign that Qatari hard and soft powers were one of the major emerging forces on the global scene. The decline of the public's perception of the Qatari World Cup, now considered an ill-gotten humanitarian catastrophe, has mirrored the drift in the country's standing more generally.

Wednesday's FIFA arrests further suggest there was never any sustainable policy undergirding Qatar's unorthodox and outsize global ambitions. The controversy over the bid is the end result of the world's misplaced hope that the apparently pro-American, peace-minded, Al Jazeera-broadcasting regime in Doha would be able to deliver on its desire to be an influential and constructive player on the world stage.

The World Cup bid may have delivered the tournament to Qatar, but with these serious allegations, the games will not necessarily come with the prestige the country once hoped for. Instead the tournament will only expose how unready Qatar was to become a serious global player, and how badly the rest of the world misjudged it.

SEE ALSO: How the fall of the Soviet Union sparked Iran's nuclear program

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Every May the Formula One carnival descends upon the twisty streets of Monte Carlo for the annual Grand Prix of Monaco.

Over the weekend, the narrow streets of the tiny Mediterranean principality are transformed into a full-blown racing circuit.

So far this season, Mercedes-AMG has dominated the series.  The team's duo of drivers  — Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg — have won five of the first six races. However, Ferrari and four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel have been resurgent and are now challenging for race victories. 

As the F1 racing series heads for the small principality, Monaco is transformed into ...

...a grand-prix race course!

Over the years, the yacht-filled harbor has become the place to see and be seen.

Emirates chose cup final day this weekend to confirm that it will be the new sponsor of the FA Cup for the next three years.

The airline's deal will see England's showpiece domestic cup competition become known as The Emirates FA Cup from next season. The value has not been disclosed.

The FA has been looking for a new sponsor since Budweiser ended its three-year association with the competition last year.

Greg Dyke, chairman of The FA, said: “Emirates’ commitment to our sport is evident and securing such an iconic and forward-thinking lead partner for The FA Cup is great news for us, the fans and for the whole game.

"The partnership will help take the tournament to new audiences, inspire interest in football from across the globe and allow us to continue our investment into the game at all levels.”

Emirates Airline president Sir Tim Clark pointed to the FA Cup's "unrivaled heritage" and "global audience of more than 1.1 billion people" in his reasoning for the deal.

It was announced just a few hours before Arsenal beat Aston Villa 4-0 in the 2015 final at Wembley.

SEE ALSO: Why The FA Cup Still Has No Sponsor

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The Golden State Warriors are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time in 40 years.

Smart drafting has played a major part in the Warriors' ascent to the top of the NBA.

While Golden State has been applauded for home-run draft picks in Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, a huge part of its team came from the 2012 NBA draft, in which the Warriors used three picks on Harrison Barnes, Festus Ezeli, and Draymond Green.

To get one of those picks, the Warriors shamelessly tanked the second half of the 2011-2012 season. The pick was top-seven protected, meaning it would have gone to the Utah Jazz if it landed outside the top seven. The Warriors benched their best players and went 5-22 over the final 27 games to finish 23-43 for the year. By doing so, they finished with the seventh-worst record in the NBA and ended up getting the seventh overall pick in the lottery, holding on to their pick by the slimmest of margins.

The Warriors' efforts paid off. They used the No. 7 pick on Barnes. They also had the 30th pick, which they used on Ezeli, and the 35th pick, a second-rounder, which they used on Green. Three years later, all three players have played a part in their championship run.

Draymond Green (No. 35 overall pick)

Despite being the last of the Warriors' three 2012 picks, Green has become one of their most indispensable players.

Green allows the Warriors to function unlike many other teams in the NBA. At 6-foot-7, he is the size of a traditional wing player, but he usually plays power forward next to Andrew Bogut. Green's shooting ability, ball handling, and passing stretches the floor for the Warriors and allows them to scramble opponents as defenses chase Curry and Thompson off the ball. Green has fueled the NBA's desire to find more "playmaking 4s," Grantland's Zach Lowe noted.

Green's versatility is key on defense, as he is one of only a handful of players who can reasonably guard all five positions. He can function as a wing defender, switch onto point guards on screens, and can handle big men in the post. Green was able to handle the 6-foot-10 Dwight Howard in the post and played into the Warriors' small-ball chess match with the Rockets in the Western Conference Finals.

A second-round pick, Green hasn't earned $1 million in a season yet. That will change this summer when he enters restricted free agency, in which many people feel he will be offered a max contract. The Warriors will have to empty their pockets to retain Green, but he's too vital to let walk.

Harrison Barnes (No. 7 overall pick)

The Warriors' quieter breakout player this season has been Barnes. After two unremarkable seasons, he averaged career highs in points per game, field-goal percentage, 3-point percentage, and rebounds per game, with a career low in turnovers per game.

Though Barnes is one of the quieter contributors on the Warriors — he doesn't get the recognition of Curry, Thompson, Green, Bogut, or Andre Iguodala — his presence is still important. He's another long-armed nimble defender who helps the Warriors handle switches at every position, and he's a capable enough scorer that he can feed off the attention defenses are giving Curry, Thompson, and Green.

Steve Kerr took a gamble by making Barnes a starter over Iguodala this season, and it paid off. Barnes has become a good enough player that he can handle the minutes of a starter and enhance the team's depth even more by allowing it to bring Iguodala in as a sixth man.

Festus Ezeli (No. 30 overall pick)

Ezeli isn't quite on the level of Green or Barnes, but he's a bit of an unsung bench player. A raw big man when he was drafted, Ezeli hardly played his rookie year until the playoffs, when he was thrown into the fire because of an injury to Bogut. He spent 2013-2014 in the D-League before being brought back this season, during which he has made strides.

Ezeli's basic stats don't necessarily show his improvement, but using Basketball-Reference's per-36-minute stats, it's clear Ezeli has developed as a player. Per 36 minutes on the floor, Ezeli averaged more points, more rebounds, and more free throws — and he shot better from the field and the free-throw line — this season than during his rookie year.

Ezeli has once again had to play spot minutes in the playoffs because of an injury to backup center Marreese Speights.

That the Warriors have drafted well helps give them a huge advantage over the rest of the league. Eventually, all good players get paid, and one day the Warriors will lose a player to a bigger contract offer from a different team. In the meantime, Golden State has built one of the best foundations in the NBA, and it will be able to keep it together for a long time.

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A Chinese Super League team pulled off a brilliant match-tying goal when the other team's goalkeeper took a break to get a drink of water.

The goal, via the UK Guardian and FailGoal.com, came with Liaoning Whowin trailing 1-0 with just seven minutes to go in their Chinese Super League match against Chongqing Lifan. Liaoning was awarded a free kick just outside the penalty box.

With the fouled player still sitting on the ground and Lifan players arguing the call, Lifan's goalkeeper, Sui Weijie, stepped away from goal to take a drink of water.

Seeing that the keeper was not in goal, Liaoning midfielder Ding Haifeng decided not to wait for the defense to step back and form a wall and instead played the ball as is and shot the ball into the empty net to tie the match.

According to the Guardian, Sui was fined 50,000 yuan ($8,060). He seemingly had no idea what had just happened.

The goal was extremely costly for Lifan. By taking the tie instead of the win, Lifan lost two points in the league table. While they are only about halfway through the season, Lifan now sits in 14th place, just one point out of the relegation zone which would see them demoted next season to the second division.

Here is the full video.

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The New Orleans Pelicans have hired Alvin Gentry as their new head coach.

Gentry is currently the assistant head coach of the Golden State Warriors and is largely considered the architect of their offense, which finished second in the NBA in offensive rating this season.

The Pelicans' coaching job was considered one of the most attractive in the NBA for one reason: Anthony Davis.

The 22-year-old carried the team to the playoffs this season, averaging 24 points, 10 rebounds, and three blocks per game. In three seasons he's improved his biggest weakness and become a great jump shooter, and he's one of three players ever to average 24-10-2 with a PER over 30 in a season. 

Gentry was aware of how special of a player Davis is, and he wanted to let Pelicans management know that he can get Davis more involved. According to Monty Poole of CSN Bay Area, Gentry brought charts and graphs showing how to make Davis more of a focal point on offense next season:

Primarily responsible for the Warriors offense — top-rated for most of the season — Gentry believes the Pelicans have underutilized Davis’ offensive skills. Not only did he express this during his initial interview with Loomis and Demps, but Gentry also came into that session equipped with charts and graphs to illustrate his point.

ESPN's Marc Stein notes that Gentry was looked upon by Warriors staff and players to draw up a shot when needed, and that the Pelicans were intrigued by Gentry to add more pace to their offense.

Even while averaging 24 points on nearly 18 shots per game, Davis could still be used more on offense. According to NBA.com/Stats, Davis only averaged about 59 "touches" per game — less than forwards like Thaddeus Young, Joakim Noah, Derrick Favors, and David West, all considerably less talented scorers than Davis.

Gentry's head coaching record isn't terribly impressive. According to Basketball-Reference, Gentry is 335-370 as a head coach in 12 different stints. However, he's always been a gifted offensive coach, helping the Phoenix Suns to the No. 1 offense in 2009-10 and two top-10 offenses in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

While Davis is an immensely talented offensive player, Gentry could conceivably get him easier looks than this:

Part of this falls on roster construction, which Gentry will hopefully have a say in. It's easy to turn a team with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson into an offensive juggernaut. Turning the Pelicans, who currently lack the spacing and shooters to properly surround Davis, into an elite offensive team is a bit tougher.

The Pelicans surprisingly still ranked eighth in offensive rating this season. With better complementary players to surround Davis and Gentry's more creative offensive schemes, they could become one of the deadliest offensive teams in the NBA next season.

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Running Shoes Guru put Wal-Mart's $16 running shoes to the test. Here's how they hold up to their more expensive competitors. 

Video courtesy of Running Shoes Guru

See more reviews at runningshoesguru.com

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