November 2006 Archives

When you crunch all the numbers, it adds up to a brilliant, albeit, shortsighted method of madness.
Teaching math to a bunch of high school students using NFL Fantasy Football as a basis ... well, is that just advancing the idea of gambling, or turning it into an educational opportunity?
A story in Monday's San Jose Mercury News tells the tale of John Hagen, a math teacher at Foothill High in San Jose, who uses NFL rushing, passing and scoring stats to teach algebra to a bunch of students who otherwise wouldn't know how to apply their knowledge to something more productive.
Hagen's "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" tactic certainly make his job easier, and makes him kind of the cool teacher on campus. But there's the big picture to look at here: Fantasy football isn't just a nickle-and-dime pasttime.
Said 17-year-old Jessica Zamora in the story: ``You don't really look at it as math that much because you're doing sports."
We can appreciate thinking outside the box when teachers look for ways to connect to students.We did a story awhile back about Dr. Timothy Gay, a physics professor at the University of Nebraska who used situations from a football game to explain things like force, inertia, speed and thrust. That makes sense.
We just wouldn't be comfortable if our daughter came home and spent all her Sundays in front of the TV wondering how Peyton Manning did and told us it was part of her math homework.
ESPN's "Outside The Lines" will tackle this subject on Sunday (6:30 a.m., with a replay at 9 a.m. on ESPNEWS), citing a study conducted by the federal government that shows 83% of the eighth-graders in large U.S.
cities are not considered proficient in math.
“Their attitude about school is just a lot better," says New Jersey eighth-grade teacher Robert Creamer in the ESPN story, which you can also view online by clicking here. "I’ll come in here nine in the morning I’ll have six kids lined up
outside my room: 'Can I get on your laptop to see how so and so (my player) did?'�

By ARNIE STAPLETON
AP Sports Writer

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. (AP) - Though it's snowing like crazy in Colorado, several members of the World Cup ski family are focused on global warming and its effect on their sport.

"When we look at the glaciers back in the '70s and now, we cannot say this is just a short-term phenomenon or a question of fickle weather," said Guenther Hujara, director of the men's World Cup. "The meteorologists have been telling us over 15 years of the risks coming up. Whoever believes we are going into deep weather problems is wrong _ because we are already in the middle of it."

Even on a day when the men's downhill World Cup training was canceled after a storm dumped 2 feet on snow on the course, triggering threats of an avalanche, Ted Ligety's thoughts were on global warming.

The Olympic combined gold medalist from Park City, Utah, is worried that greenhouse gas emissions will eventually eliminate skiing altogether and rob future generations of the thrills of winter sports.

Three World Cup events already have been canceled because of warm weather, and skiing's governing body has called the situation "critical."
"We already see this year the effects of warm weather. We're supposed to be going over to Europe next week and everything is canceled," Ligety said.

The season-opening races in Soelden, Austria, in October were wiped out because of heavy rain, and the women's events set for St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Dec. 9-10 were canceled because of lack of snow and warm temperatures. The men's races in Val d'Isere, France, on the same weekend were scrapped on Wednesday. The photo above is from an empty ski lift in the region of Sudelfeld in southern Bavaria on Wednesday, where the weather is too warm to do anything on skis.

Because of good snowfalls in North America, ski officials are working with organizers in Aspen and Beaver Creek to hold some of the abandoned events in Colorado.

Worrying about weather early in the season has always been part of the World Cup. Only, it used to be mid-October to November that had skiers sweating it out.

"But now we go November and into December," Hujara said. "The spring has hot temperatures, too, now of course. We're more concerned as a winter sport with the lack of snow. But there have been dramatic changes in summer weather, too."

Ligety, who is working with the World Wildlife Fund to create more awareness about the issue, wants people to contact their politicians to urge them to create policies to curb global warming.

For those who see the irony in Ligety talking about global warming on a day that he schlepped through 24 inches of snow to train in the technical events at Keystone -- here's a picture of a Beaver Creek ski patroler going over a bridge in the Colorado city on Tuesday after the snowfall cancelled the World Cup downhill training race -- he noted that races in his hometown were canceled a few years ago because of warm weather.

"This year we have snow, next year we may not," Ligety said. "At this point, I don't think there's many people who can deny there are effects to global warming."

Fellow Utah native Steven Nyman, an Olympic downhiller, said global warming is a hot topic among others on the U.S. Ski Team who are worried about its effect on skiing. He and combined coach John McBride have had several conversations about it after reading Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

"It's scary," Nyman said. "And we travel around to Chile (for offseason training) and we're deep in the Andes and we see these glaciers every year. We, even being there for three or four years, can watch them deplete. They're going away. And that's very scary because our love is on the snow."

Yet, Nyman said the top professional skiers are "probably the worst" offenders and don't really practice what they preach.

"We're staying in hotel rooms, changing the linens, we're flying here and there and we're driving everywhere. We are using amazing amounts of fuel and resources," Nyman said. "So, it's tough for us to talk as skiers traveling the world."

Ligety said he's doing what he can: He just bought a new fuel-efficient furnace and will travel in a hybrid vehicle instead of a gas guzzler whenever he can. "Little things like that can definitely help," he said.

Ligety said he believes the sport is in grave danger, especially in Europe, where the races are held at lower elevations, where even man-made snow isn't an option.

Hold onto your joy stick for a second, Arena Football League fan who can't wait to get your season seats for the 2007 campaign. That Playstation 2 version will be all you get for a little longer than usual.
The season now starts on March 1 -- about six weeks later than usual, when there was a big NBC TV contract and it wanted it fired up the weekend before the Super Bowl. You know, to gain that huge NFL fan base. That never happened.
That pushes the annual ArenaBowl to July 29, which may now conflict with some ice show or circus, but what they heck. They can play around it.
The AFL will have 19 teams for this, its 21st season, including your Los Angeles Avengers, who still call Staples Center home and will use it on Sunday, March 4 to open their 16-game season against the San Jose SaberCats. With New Orleans back and a realigned division -- the Avengers go down to N.O. for Game 3 on March 24 -- it should be one memorable season of kickoffs-into-the-net, rug burns and field goals hitting the overhanging scoreboard.
Can you name the defending champion? It wasn't Jon Bon Jovi's Philadelphia Whachamacallits. Or John Elway's Colorado Thingamagigs. Didn't Mike Ditka own a piece of the Chicago Beerfarts? Anyway, that last team ... they won it.
With the realignment, the Avengers are in the Western Division, along with Arizona, Las Vegas, San Jose and Utah. The Central has Chicago, Colorado, Grand Rapids (which is in the state of ... denial?), Kansas City and Nashville. In the Eastern division, it's Philly, Columbus, Dallas (that's pretty east) and New York; in the Southern, it's Austin (is that more east than Dallas?), Georgia, New Orleans, Orlando and Tampa Bay and ... that's it. The South is loaded. No wonder Dallas had to relocate.
So, without NBC's deep pockets (they decided last June not to renew), the league will mostly be a cable phenomenon until Sam Baker's dad (aka, The Whammer) finds someone willing to advance him some premium TV time. FSN has many of the individual team deals, and Versus signed the national deal to do 11 games and one playoff game. Maybe ESPN/ABC or the NFL Network will be enthusiastic enough to come on board for either the season openers or title game. Did you know ESPN actually carried the Arena Bowl title game from '92 to '97, with such luminaries as Tom Mees, Todd Christensen (with Kirk Herbstreit on color and Mike Golic on the sidelines) and Mike Adamle doing the play-by-play?
Oh, for those good ol' indoor days of the war on the floor. And for the days when Carl's Jr. gave out those super Avenger toys that didn't look at all like any player we saw down on the field.

You hate to see a great sporting event such as forcing a bunch of dogs to lug a human being on a sled across 1,150 horrible miles of snow, but the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is getting hit in the wallet because, of all things, it's having trouble selling raffle tickets and the drain of its website.
According to the Associated Press, the organization that runs this thing is facing a $600,000 shortfall in its $3.8 million budget because of the Iditarod Insider Web site and too few winter raffle tickets sold, according to the Alaska Journal of Commerce.
The Web site has daily video clips and updates throughout the race, which is important for those of us who want to know how many dogs have fallen ill and just been left for dead along the way. It also had live streaming of events, including the start and finish, virtual trail fly-bys and the option to view video archives of the race for a whole year.
The Iditarod Trail Committee typically sells 2,000 raffle tickets for a summer drawing and 4,000 for a winter drawing, bringing in $600,000. Last winter, ticket sales fell 450 short, knocking $45,000 off estimated revenues.
According to the Website, 97 dog drivers, including 36 rookies, were signed up to start for the March race. They're also holding an auction to become an Idita-Rider: That is, you get to ride the first 11 miles through downtown Anchorage, Alaska with your favorite musher, providing you start with the minimum $500 bid.
Shouldn't that be enough to keep this tradition from just melting away?
Or why not sell a few more copies of Disney's "Snow Dogs" with Cuba Gooding Jr., at the Iditarod Web store?
Or, they could just cut back on the food they buy for the pooches...

If you missed the second half kickoff of Saturday's USC-Notre Dame, don't fret. Nothing happened.
Which completely sucked for Burbank's Brian Batter.
He won the internet vote on KSPN-AM 710 to make the live call of that play, based on an audition phone call he made to the station during its "You Make the Call" contest leading up to the big game.
And when it came time for Brian to actually make the call at the Coliseum booth with play-by-play man Pete Arbogast and colorman John Jackson ... well, we'll let him tell the story:

"The whole experience was great. We had to run the stairs up to the press box since the coaches were using the elevators, which made things a little lively. I made it into the booth just as halftime started, and had a few minutes to gather myself before I was introduced. After going over the highlights JJ gave up his headset to me, and Pete continued to talk for what seemed like an eternity. Waiting for the intro I thought that Booty’s Jekyll and Hyde performance in the first half would make good chatter so while the teams lined up for the kick I recapped JD Booty’s up and down 1st half. Before I could exhale, the kick was off, I called the play, and it was done."

What happened was the Notre Dame kicker did some kind of lame pooch, sending the ball out of bounds on the Irish sideline at about the Trojans own 30, so that ended the play as USC took the ball at the 35 yard line to start the second half. If it was the other way around, surely USC kicker Troy Van Blarcom would have kicked it through the end zone.

Sure, it was our dream that this whole promotion blow up in everyone's face -- that's just our sick way of dealing with live radio -- but even we felt badly about how Batter's 15 minutes of fame was cut to about 15 seconds.

On Monday's Steve Mason and John Ireland show, Batter said joking that he "got jobbed" by that kick. Arbogast summed it up after his live call by saying it was "a little anti-climatic, but what the heck."

As for how Arbogast received him, Batter told Steve and John: "John (Jackson) was nice, but with Pete, it was like a cold breeze blew through the room. The engineer was helpful and the producer was nice ..."

But Pete.... A tough guy to warm up to. Go figure.

Since Batter only got a few seconds of airtime on that call, Mason and Ireland have invited him to come on their show sometime soon and read the questions for the "Big Show Interruption" segment. Batter has agreed.

"Maybe then I’ll get more than 35 seconds!" he said. "I can’t thank the folks at 710 ESPN enough for putting this whole thing together."

You booze, you snooze, you lose. That pretty much sums up the past weekend in a Irish-colored nutshell.
So when Sunday night came a callin', I was no where near the TV set to watch Fred Roggin play nine questions with me on the KNBC Channel 4 "Challenge." I was tucked away under the covers. Dreaming. Of winning "The Challenge." But not this week.
Man, I'm too old for this sh................
And we'll do it all over again next weekend for the UCLA-USC game. And I already have plans for Sunday night, so I'll miss the show again.

At least Fred did explain to me how his wife was able to finish in fourth place last week. He said she had some friends over to help shout out the answers. I shoulda thought of that after week 1. But I have no friends who want to come over to my house on a Sunday night.
Again, I lose. Maybe I should offer more booze.

I TiVo'd the show, watched it Monday morning (amidst a few power outages brought on by the rains) and I think I would have finished with about 175 points. Bill Ruehr ruled the week with 245 points; Patrick Alog vaulted past the DeSaegher entry into first for the overall standings, leading 2,670 to 2,645. Congrats to them to having the focus, tenacity and no life to have been available to play each week so far.

I dropped into a tie for 107th in the overall standings with a 0 points week. And I don't feel all that bad about it because I got to hear coach John Wooden recite a poem as Roggin's special guest on the show Sunday.

For those who missed it, here's how it went from the man just inducted into the NABC College Basketball Hall of Fame.
And this isn't just any poem. This one called "God's Hall of Fame", is something did a search for, found it online and was surprised to discover the author: Abraham Lincoln

This crowd on Earth, they soon forget
the heroes of the past
They cheer like mad until you fall
and that's how long you last

But God, He never does forget
and in His Hall of Fame
by just believing in his Son
enscribed you'll find your name

I tell you, friends, I would not trade
my name however small
enscribed up there beyond the stars
in that cellestial hall

For any famous name on Earth
or glory that they share
I'd rather be an unknown here
and have my name up there

Here's how the quizshow went Sunday:

It was Burbank's Brian Batter who won the contest to make the live call of the horribly anticlimatic second-half kickoff at Satuday's USC-Notre Dame game from the Coliseum that went over the KSPN-AM (710) airwaves.
Got a chance to meet him at the 710 tailgate party beforehand, and he didn't appear intoxicated enough to perform as we anticipated. I, however, had one too many Bloody Mary's, and apparently thought that Brian, who had the nice, polished delivery, was named Mike Owens, the Charlton Heston impersonator from Huntington Beach who I wanted to win. In an earlier blog on this, I misidentified him.
Anyway, Brian will be on today with John Ireland and Steve Mason for their 3-7 p.m. show to talk about his experience and replay that call. And if you saw the second-halfboot -- that kinda pooch kick from the Notre Damers that sailed about 35 yards and went out of bounds -- Brian's call probably wasn't as memorable as the Anthony Davis return in '74 that launched a legend.

Meanwhile, a replay of the Daily News High School Sports Live show that we did Friday night (7-10 p.m.) from the Calabasas studios will be up soon (they tell us) at NowInLA.com. Gerry Gittleson and I had a blast doing it -- especially taking calls from students in the stands at some of the best high school football playoff games around the area. Thanks again for Channel 4's Fred Roggin for coming on to help set the table; to Chris "Geeter" McGee, the FSN high school play-by-play man for his update while he was covering the Notre Dame-Long Beach Poly game, and to John Hefner, the producer at Vootage. com who was covering the Mission Viejo-Santa Margarita contest.

Not to start tossing spitwads at the competition, but when I picked up the front page of the Los Angeles Times on Thanksgiving Day, a painful juxtaposition jumped out.
At the top of A1, there's a picture of a 3-year-old girl getting a turkey dinner served to her at the Los Angeles Mission. (The story wasn't worthy of putting on the cover; it made B1, but the picture said it all). Then down at the bottom of the page was a story about people whining because they don't get the NFL Network, and couldn't watch last night's Denver-Kansas City contest.
Boo-freakin'-hoo to you.
Anyone who's been caught up in this greed-vs.-greed contest between Time Warner Cable and the NFL is completely missing the point. No one wins. Everyone gets hosed.
The NFL wants you to keep logging on to its website and cry, cry, cry to your cable system to add its channel. The cable system says its looking out for your best interests by not including it on their basic sports tier.
Enough already.
Or as Off Wing Opinion.com says: This isn't a news story, it's a full employment act for flacks and media beat writers. Wake me when it's over.
And when media beat writers are done acting as puppets for either side.
By the way, during that Chiefs' 19-10 victory, here's what you missed: John Fogerty looking goofy during a halftime show.

-- Last year's USC-Notre Dame may still be etched in everyone's minds, but for another look at it, NBCSports.com has put up a replay of it on its Notre Dame site. It's also broken down into quarters so you can skip to the end. The recent Notre Dame win over UCLA is also up on the site.

--Dick Enberg discusses his first NFL radio broadcast in 30 years -- back when he was doing L.A. Rams games -- in Jay Posner's San Diego Union-Tribune column today.

-- FSN Prime Ticket tried to get one of the CIF Southern Section playoff games today to move to a 4 p.m. kickoff so it could be televised live since it has both Kings and USC basketball broadcasts tonight. Even though St. Bonaventure-Hart has a 3:30 p.m. start on KHTS-AM (1220) at College of the Canyons, FSN decided to put the Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks-Long Beach Poly contest on tape delay starting at 10 p.m. Chris McGee, John Jackson and Lindsay Soto report from Long Beach's Veteran Stadium. KTHS also has the Saugus-Moorpark game at 7 p.m., also at College of the Canyons. Both will be called by Dave Caldwell and are streamed on the station's website. Time Warner's Channel 36 will air the St. Bonaventure-Hart game at 4 p.m. Monday and Wednesday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

-- Don't forget to surf over to NowInLA.com to find the Daily News-sponsored High School Football show from 7-to-10 p.m., hosted by me and Gerry Gittleson. If you're out at a prep football game and want to call or email in, go for it. Or if you're camped out at home rying to find scores, ry it out. This is the first time we're launching this thing to see how it goes.

The annual "Dubious Dozen" of the sports media can only have 12 finalists -- hence, the name -- so here are some that were worth noting again, but couldn't quite stumble their way into the big time:

NOT ENOUGH FLUFF:
The culprit: "ESPN Hollywood"
The crime: In Aug., 2005, ESPN2 launched a "signature show" with a $15 million budget, calling it "Entertainment Tonight" meets "SportsCenter." Co-host Thea Andrews (pictured) said of the show's content: “I’m blown away by how much great material we’ve had during rehersals. The only problem we’ll have isn’t sustaining it, but what we’re going to turn away.��? Former "Saved by the Bell" actor Mario Lopez was the other co-host.
The aftermath: By January, 2006, the show ran out of steam and was canceled. “Our research and the ratings clearly suggest that a daily show may have been to much,��? said John Skipper, ESPN’s vice president of content.

DON'T HIT 'SEND' SO FAST:
The culprit: Eric Govan, Golden State Warriors public relations assistant.
The crime: In February, he forwarded an e-mail to about 100 national media outlets entitled "Ghetto Prom," which featured 17 pictures of African-Americans students dressed in various formal skin-tight clothes, with comments about their appearances. Govan accidently forwarded the e-mail to the team's weekly distribution list. He e-mailed that list again about 20 minutes later to apologize.
The aftermath: The team fired him, citing an "extreme poor taste and completely unprofessional" action, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

WHEN YOU ASSUME ...
The culprit: Jim Kleinpeter.
The crime: Last week, the college football writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune was dropped from voting in the Associated Press Top 25 poll because someone noticed that he curiously dropped Oklahoma from No. 15 to No. 24 on his ballot, even though the Sooners (8-2) defeated Texas Tech 34-24. Kleinpeter, covering the Alabama-LSU game that weekend, said as he was mulling over his ballot, he couldn’t find the Oklahoma-Texas Tech score. Someone told him Oklahoma lost. He couldn’t find a result the next day in a local paper. So that’s the info he went with.
The aftermath: “It was my fault,��? Kleinpeter said. “I probably had other avenues I could have gone to get the score, but I usually rely on the morning paper here in Baton Rouge. And for some reason, they didn’t have the score. I looked all through it.��?

TRY STUB-HUB NEXT TIME:
The culprit: The Ventura County Star managing editor Richard Luna.
The crime: He reportedly pressured a staff sports reporter to obtain a press credential for him to attend two Final Four college basketball games in March, even though Luna wasn't covering the event. Publisher and president Tim Gallagher admitted to Editor & Publisher magazine that the paper was investigating.
The aftermath: Luna told E&P: "I did accept a credential for an event that I wasn't covering, and that was wrong. I'm very, very sorry for what has happened." He resigned from the newspaper in May.

STU'S TOO COOL:
The culprit: ESPN's Stuart Scott
The crime: ABC recruited him to host the David Blane special (see the YouTube video above), where the illusionist tried to stay underwater in a bubble. In Scott's regular column in ESPN The Magazine, a reader asked him if he thought Blane would have set a record for holding his breath? "Yes, I did," Scott wrote. "But imagine what a challenge it was, after he’d been underwater for a week and then had to escape from chains. One of the gutsiest things I’ve seen. He didn’t go nine minutes, but anyone who says Blane failed would have the warped view that an Olympic silver medal is failure, too. Not another person on earth could have done what Blaine did."
The aftermath: In June, ABC recruited him again, to host "America's Funniest Home Videos: Sports Edition," as a lead-in to him co-hosting the network's coverage of Game 4 of the NBA Finals between Miami and Dallas.
In a somewhat related response, SI.com’s Peter McEntegart wrote on July 7 what he’d do if he was commissioner of sports TV: "Show game highlights on SportsCenter. Remember when this show recapped the day in sports rather than provided 60 minutes of Stand-Up at the Improv? This means no more Poetry Jams, no Budweiser Hot Seats and no Fact or Fiction from two ex-jocks stuffed into suits who pretend to argue. Instead, how aobut we see the key plays from the games played that day without the omnipresent hard sell for ESPN Mobile? Boo-yeah? Boo-no."

TOO FAST, TOO FURIOUS:
The culprit: Amazon.com
The crime: Before the UCLA-Florida NCAA men's basketball championship game, the online retailer sent out an e-mail to customers offering Bruins championship caps and other goods. Florida won the game.
The aftermath: An Amazon spokesperson, Patty Smith, speculated the mistake may have been made by some Bruins fans with a case of wishful thinking, the Associated Press reported.

A PAINFUL ENDING:
The culprit: Keith Mills, a sports anchor at WMAR-TV, Baltimore's ABC affiliate.
The crime: Was arrested in January and charged with stealing perscription pain killers from his neighbor.
The aftermath: In May, Mills was sentenced to nine months house arrest. During that time, he was hired as a freelance reporter on a local radio show and, in July, was hired by a public relations firm that handles Cal Ripken Jr.'s endeavors.

COTE VS. CUBAN:
The culprit: Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote.
The crime: In his June 19 column during the NBA finals between Dallas and Miami, Cote reported near the end that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, upset that his team was behind 3-2 in the series, went to referee Joe DeRosa after the Heat's Game 5 loss and screamed profanities, before turning to NBA comissioner David Stern and other NBA officials seated at the scorer's table "and was overheard to shout venomously in the jubilant din, '[Bleep] you! [Bleep] you! Your league is rigged!''
Cuban replied in his blog: "Apparently the Miami Herald is reporting i screamed at the NBA comissioner after the game the other night. Didnt happen. Didnt say a word to the man. Not a single word. And that was absolutely by intention. Apparently this “reporter��? has written he has several “sources��?. Well they must be the same sources the tabloids use to find two headed babys and aliens, because it didnt happen. Ive already blogged about and been fined for the source of my displeasure in these playoffs and there was absolutely no reason for me to say another word about it and i wont ... Chalk up some more great reporting to the Miami Herald. The source of phantom comments."
The aftermath: Cote responded on a local radio show that his source was “impeccable." But why then was it burned in his column?
Cote later blogged: "Someone near the scorer's table who said he heard Cuban say what I quoted him saying passed the information to someone I trust who informed me. My source in turn trusted the person who reported hearing it. For the record, I never believed Cuban actually believed the fix was on. I believed then, and do now, that, in context, an outspoken owner was venting in the heat of the moment at a raw, emotional time. In any case, however, I was wrong to use the quote. That doesn't mean the words were never said, denial notwithstanding. I was wrong, journalistically, to put quotation marks around words I did not personally hear. I would be wrong even if Cuban had not denied having said it."

'WEST WING' MEETS THE KENTUCKY DERBY:
The culprit: NBC Sports.
The crime: A freelance writer plagerized two passages from a 2002 episode of the NBC series "West Wing" during a short feature on Michael Matz, the trainer for Barbaro, jockey Alex Solis and Brother Derek's trainer, Dan Hendricks, during the network's Kentucky Derby coverage in May. The similarities between the Derby feature script and the script for the episode of "The West Wing," written by Aaron Sorkin, were discovered by a reader who sent an e-mail message to The New York Times.
The aftermath: Ken Schanzer, the president of NBC Universal Sports, told the N.Y. Times that the plagiarism had occurred. He would not identify the writer but said, "He won't work here anymore."

FOR REAL?
The culprit: Rusty and Leann Real of Biloxi, Miss.
The crime: In October, they named their new baby boy ESPN.
The aftermath: The middle name is Montana, after Joe Montana. The full name: ESPN (pronounced Espen) Montana Real. And this is hardly the first time a baby has been named after the all-sports station. In 2005, there was Espn McCall in Pampa, Tex.; Espn Curiel in Corpus Christi, Tex.; and Espn Blondeel in Michigan. "We were the talk of the hospital," Rusty Real told the Associated Press. "The nurses kept asking my wife if she was really going to let her husband name him ESPN. She said, 'Oh, yes.'"

AND IF YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT THE FIRST TIME ....
Those sportscasters who couldn't help but put their foot in their mouth, we have these to thank, in addition to Steve Lyons, Lamar Thomas, Keith Hernandez, Rick Sutcliffe and Bert Blyleven:
Tom Jackson: During a live September episode of ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,��? colleague Michael Irvin went on a rant about the opening night game played between Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts and Eli Manning’s New York Giants. Finally, Jackson blurted out: “Are you retarded?��? ESPN and Jackson apologized.
Jay Bilas: During a January college basketball broadcast on ESPN, he suggested that the Kentucky team, after a visit from a sports psychologist, might next be taken to see the film “Brokeback Mountain��? and “have a good cry.��? One viewer complained: “I hope (Bilas) was not suggesting that a lack of toughness is somehow analogous to being homosexual. I found the remark not only tasteless but remarkably offensive.��? Bilas apologized.
Jason Stark: During the World Baseball Classic in March, the ESPN baseball analyst wrote in an online story about Japan’s win over Cuba that Cuba manager Higinio Velez, who used three pitchers in the first inning, “spent the first inning managing like his raft was on fire, and it didn’t work out too caliente.��? Stark apologized.
Ray Dunlap: A pit reporter for Speed Channel was taping a show segment with Nextel Cup driver Michael Waltrip and took issue with a claim that 10 percent of NASCAR fans were Hispanic and made a joke about it. He was suspended for one NASCAR Truck Series race for “making comments on-air that the company found inappropriate,��? although the comments never aired.
Brian Kinchen: A college football analyst for ESPNU, during a game in October between Iowa and Northern Illinois, was explaining how receivers need to catch with their hands because they are “tender��? and can “caress��? the ball. He then paused and said, “That’s kind of gay, but hey .��? Kinchen apologized and was suspended for one game.
Andy Furman: The longtime WLW-AM Cincinnati radio commentator called Bengals wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh a “racist��? on Oct. 6, a day after the player failed to make a scheduled paid appearance on his show. Furman also accused Houshmandzadeh of calling him a “punk-ass white boy,��? according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Houshmandzadeh denied the remark, but admitted: “I told him, ‘Andy Furman, you can f—- yourself.’ That’s the bottom line. And he twisted it into all whatever he wants to.��? Furman was fired by the station a month later.
Craig James: The ABC college football studio analyst, during halftime of the Penn State-Wisconsin contest on Nov. 4, said that Penn State coach Joe Paterno must have been upset at halftime because “his Geritol kick(ed) in.��? He also referred to Paterno as an “old fart.��? James later apologized on the air.
Michael Irvin: On Monday’s edition of Dan Patrick’s ESPN Radio show, the former Cowboys receiver and ESPN NFL GameDay analyst tried to joke about how Dallas quarterback Tony Romo, who is white, became such a great athlete: “(There must be) some brothers in that line somewhere . (maybe) his great, great, great Grandma ran over in the hood . (she) pulled one of them studs up outta the barn (and said) ‘Come here for a second’ back in the day.��? So far, no apology or comment from ESPN. Or a comment from Tom Jackson.

By CHRIS TALBOTT
Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. -- When Michael Oher sits down to Thanksgiving dinner, there will be turkey, dressing, potatoes and all the other traditional trimmings, including family.

Five years ago, the Mississippi left tackle couldn't count on either.

One of thirteen children born to a crack-addicted mother and the son of an absentee father who was murdered, Oher was a ghost with no permanent home, little education and no hope for a future.

Today, his is a life transformed. Oher's a member of a rich family, a high-profile future NFL Draft pick, a student who takes education seriously and the subject of a bestselling book.

Oher grew up in Memphis, where he attended Briarcrest Christian and first met the Tuohy family. When Leigh Anne Tuohy saw him walking down the street wearing shorts in winter, she bought him new clothes and a jacket. She fed him and began to help with school work. Before long, he was living with the family. By his senior year, the family adopted him and wrote him into the will.

"Without her I wouldn't be here today," Oher said. "She was the first one that loved me, the first one that cared about me, the first one to take me in. I owe a lot of stuff to her. I love her. She's an amazing person. She's just incredible."

Sean Tuohy, whom Oher refers to as "Pops," said the amazing transformation depicted in Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side" reminds him just how far his adopted son has come.

"It's impossible to imagine," Tuohy said. "It is absolutely. And if you deal with it every day, you don't see it."

Lewis had a hard time believing the Tuohy-Oher story, too.

Already interested in the changes in the NFL that have made left tackles some of the sport's richest and most-coveted players, Lewis discovered Oher through former grade school schoolmate Tuohy.

"The contrast was so stark," Lewis said from his Berkeley home. "I guess he could've been adopted by Donald Trump or Madonna. But apart from that he went from about the bottom to about the top. That was really to me very appealing."

Read more ...

So by now you've likely seen the weekly snippets of Pete Arbogast's blog from WeAreSC.com (haven't I promoted that site enough over the last few months?) For the most part, we still run them because it's like that proverbial accident on the other side of 405 while you're driving through the Sepulveda Pass. We're in somewhat amazement that he a) continues his undignified begging for fulltime work, b) gives backhanded compliments to fellow workers (including referring to Rory Markas as one of his great friends in the business while he openly campaigns to do USC basketball broadcasts) or c) rehashes the life and times with his current girlfriend and her kids. But that's how he's decided to fill the space. Bless him for that.

(And as far as that picture of him and Paul McDonald we found on valleytrojan.com ... not sure where it came from, but it looks like some high school production of "Guys and Dolls.")

Anyway, his blog posting from Sunday deserves a little more direct response.

Fifth paragraph:

Years ago, a local writer wrote some pretty awful things about Fred, and then called me a week later to ask if I would help him with an interview to fill up his column on how I (and UCLA’s Chris Roberts) went about preparing for the big game. He had already interviewed Chris, and now wanted to talk to me, but I told him I was in no way interested in helping him after the yellow-journalistic hatchet job he done to this fine man and outstanding professional broadcaster. The writer seemed taken aback by my strong dedication to my partner and friend. He apparently continues to be hurt by this perceived “snub� on my part. This writer has never spoken to me again. I am still waiting for an apology from him to Fred.

Now, let's deal with the facts.
When I called Pete to do a phone interview way back when about how he and Chris Roberts prepare for their week of the USC-UCLA game, Pete in no way, shape or form said he was upset about something I wrote about Fred Gallagher the week before. He simply said: "I"m not interested." And sure, I was taken aback. Why? Because he gave no explanation. He just said again, "I'm not interested." OK, fine.
I had done a few interviews with Pete in the past, so this caught me off guard. I remember once I wrote that before a USC football game up at Washington, viewers would be wise to turn down the sound on the ABC telecast and listen to Pete do the call on the radio. And during that radio broadcast, Pete even gave me a pop for saying that. That was kinda cool, but I appreciated it.

But because of the fact he clammed up this time, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. This happens from time to time with other radio or TV personalities I deal with. It's simply part of the stuff that comes with writing the media column now at the Daily News since 1992, and for five years before that the Daily Breeze in Torrance.
Unless you completely water things down and try to be nice in your criticism of everyone in return for favors, you just end up like .... never mind.

Anyway, I took that conversation for what it was. Today, this honestly is the first time I've heard Pete's reasoning for not wanting to be interviewed. I've heard rumors of the fact, but it didn't make any sense to me. And when guys don't want to be interviewed, I generally leave them alone. Why aggitate the situation more? There are many on that list at this point in my career -- guys (and girls) who I don't bother to talk to any longer because of something from the past that still has their panties in a bunch. Some come around and we end up talking out what's been going on. Others ... that's how it goes.

So if truth be told, I'm not at all hurt by this "snub." And, as I've come to learn from others who have had to deal with Pete on a more regular basis, this is pretty much the way he operates: never confrontational, just a passive-aggressive method of getting his point across, whether it's mailing letters to the editor under an assumed name, or having a go-between deliver his message. If that's his character flaw, I'm fine with it.

So should I apologize to Fred and end this whole thing? I'm not even sure what I'd be apologizing for. If I had to write something now about Fred, who then was a sports anchor at KNX-AM (710), I'd have to say that I thought that with USC's rich football history, the school could have found an ex-player who could probably do a better job at explaining what was going on down on the field rather than someone trained to be a news deliverer. I knew Fred did his homework and was a good reporter. But he just wasn't the right fit for that job. Is that a harsh yellow-journalism slam?
(The irony is, now that Paul McDonald has had the seat for awhile, I'd probably wish they'd go back to using Fred. At least he wouldn't just cackle away like Ed McMahon at all of Arbogast's jingoistic calls).

I'm only sorry I hadn't heard this explanation before until now. I guess it now makes sense. I admire Pete's loyalty to his partner. I just, as usual, don't agree with Pete's methods.

And as long as he uses his blog to try to further twist the arms of USC fans to help him gain employment opportunities -- especially with this latest campaign for a job that he has yet to even apply for at 710-AM, co-hosting with D'Marco Farr) -- I'll continue to pass it on here on the blog and in my Friday media column.

It just seems like you give Pete enough blogspace, and he'll continue to make himself look foolish. Even when he gets the story wrong. And for what it's worth, I'll email this blog entry directly to Pete. I won't expect a direct answer, of course, but it'll be interesting to see what alias he uses next.

Nike has announced on its website that it will not take orders of hand-stitched soccer balls from a Pakistani company because of labor violations.
Nike decided to end its contract after a six-month investigation of Saga Sports, which makes hand-stitched soccer balls in private homes. Nike has a policy against home-based settings because of the potential for underaged workers and the inability to ensure safe working conditions, the company said.
"This contract factory has persistently broken its commitments and irrevocably breached its trust with us; most importantly, the factory has failed its employees," said Nike CEO and president Mark Parker in a company press release.
Nike said its investigation uncovered "serious allegations by trade union representatives and other Saga employees of worker harassment, wrongful termination and inaccurate payment of wages."
The company said the Fair Labor Association, in an unannounced audit of Saga unrelated to Nike's investigation, found similar violations. Nike said it held repeated meetings with Saga executives to correct the problems, but "Saga did not make needed changes."
The balls were made inside private homes in Sialkot, Pakistan, where Saga is based.
Hannah Jones, Nike's vice president of corporate responsibility, said that in support of workers the company strives to work with its contract factories to remediate compliance violations and create continuous improvement in contract factory conditions. However, in this case, the company said it exhausted all options and was left with no alternative but to cease orders, despite the potential impact to workers and the near-term affect on Nike’s soccer ball business.
On a related note, have you seen this Nike ball vending machines?

Sometimes, readers get angry. And they email me. And I respond. Why shy away? But then the whole thing blows over. We agree to disagree.
But lately, I've been getting emails from someone named Tyler Harris. Good kid, probably. But somewhere in our past, our emails crossed.
I didn't know until recently that Tyler is a BYU student. That's not his picture, by the way, working on his laptop. I found it on the BYU website and, for now, that'll be my image of him.
My educated guess is he probably was upset with something I wrote about ... who knows what. He found it online. He emailed me to complain. I wrote back. Then my email address got stuck in his address book.
I hate when that happens.

Until this week, the only other person I knew from BYU was Robbie Bosco. I covered his 1984 game, when the Cougars knocked off Michigan in the Holiday Bowl and eventually claimed the national championship. I then covered Steve Young for a couple of years when he played for the L.A. Express of the old USFL. Pretty cool guy.
But anyway.

Fast forward to last week.
Tyler CCd me on an email he wrote to some of his school pals, informing him that he had "some bad news. I got a grade 2 kidney tear on Saturday ... I've been in the ER and having cat scans and blood drawn and all that stuff that's associated with hemorrhaging. I peed blood and stuff, so basically I haven't been feeling all that well" ...
Hey, hey, big guy. Too much information. You coulda stopped at kidney tear.
The reason for his worries, it turns out, is he had a paper due for his Biology 100 class, but since he was recouping at his parents house in Centerville (I didn't make that name up), he emailed the essay to Annie to finish up.
"I"m really sorry about all this," Tyler said.
Hey, bud. Take it slow. We need you later for that intramural cornhole tournament.

This morning, I got another misguided email from Tyler's computer. The paper was done. "Sorry it is soo late it was the earliest i could get done," he wrote. "I should be awake around an hour before class, so if you think something absolutley needs to be changed call me after 9 A.M. and I'll see what I can do."

OK, man. I think we're cool with it.
Below is the paper Tyler cranked out while in a lot of pain. You'll know there's another co-author named "Tom," who probably was supposed to be CCd on this email, but it came to me out of Tyler's address instead. I only wish I could get the "real" Tom this paper. He's probably pretty upset with Tyler right now for hanging him out to dry the last week.

So, what's the lesson in all this?
Be careful who you email ... Naw, too easy.
Make sure your address file is cleaned out because you never know what jerky, insensative, too-much-time-on-his-hands Los Angeles sports writer will get your school essay and then put it on his blog?
You're getting warmer.

My guess is that if any college kid out there needs a paper on the virtues of hydrogen fuel, he could easily ... uh ... borrow this. There's nothing I can do about it. It's a good, tight, well-written. Gets right to the point. Unlike this top of the blog.

Whatever I can to do help higher education. And sorry, but I have no experience in repairing torn kidneys.

Sean Avery, the Kings' hit-'em-where-the-are enforcer, made an in-studio appearance on Fred Roggin's "The Challenge" Sunday night and claimed that he was definitely a lover, not a fighter.
Or, more specifically, "I'm a Buddhist."
We pray, for Elisha Cuthbert's sake, he was kidding.
That was a very Avery appearance, and we're glad he can joke about the fact he's a masher.
Like we almost mashed -- again -- on this week's quizshow. We didn't do bad -- we were right on with the first four questions, and five of the first six to get the maxium points (at least what we could get with the DirecTV delay) and ended up scoring 195 points, but it only got us tied for 50th place in the head-to-head competition, far behind winner Chi Cheng with 335 points. And did you notice that Mrs. Roggin was fourth with 280 points? Wow, does something smell here?
Like she needs the prize for the week: Warner Brothers DVDs.
For the season, we've climbed back from 105th into 83rdth place -- all alone -- with 1,425 points. Far ahead of Mrs. Roggin, we suspect. But not enough to catch the new leader, Sonia DeSaegher (or Steve DeSaegher, who leads Patrick Alog by 15 points).

Watch this YouTube highlight show of Avery's greatest hits, then check out how Week 10 shook out for the Rogginfest:

No one will ever break Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, according to those who seem to know such things.
So where does it rank among the most "unbeatable" records that matter?
According to the World Almanac and Book of Facts 2007 -- that big, fat paperback that tries to be the expert reference guide to anything from entertainment, science, technology, history and cultural trends -- they're taking a stab at generating interest in their new publication by making the Top 10 list of the "Most Unbreakable Sports Records" of interest.
Nope, there's no hot-dog shoving involved here.
Instead, these are the ones they find untouchable:

1. Most points in a single NBA game: 100, by Wilt Chamberlain (March 2, 1962).
Kobe Bryant tried, and the best he could do was come within 19.

2. Most touchdown passes in an NFL season: 49, by Peyton Manning (2004).
And Dan Marino's career mark is reachable? Sure, by Manning.

3. Most points in NHL career: 2,857, by Wayne Gretzky (1979-99).
With Mario Lemieux out of the way, who'll stick around long enough to challenge this?

4. Consecutive Tour de France titles: 7, by Lance Armstrong (1999-2005).
How about someone win seven lifetime first.

5. Career tennis singles titles: 167, by Martina Navratilova (1974-94).
Hard to imagine anyone hanging around long enough, but it could be done.

6. Oldest person to win an Olympic medal: 72, Oscar Swahn of Sweden, taking silver in the "running deer double-shot team" at the 1920 Antwerp Games.
There's got to be some coxswain on a rowing team that'll break this one.

7. Most NASCAR victories in one season: 27, by Richard Petty (1967).
Ricky Bobby would be happy with 27 for a career.

8. Consecutive games without a loss: 103, by North Carolina's women's soccer team (September 30, 1986- September 17, 1990).
That's just sick. But there'll probably be some Division III field hockey team that breaks this.

9. Most career strikeouts in Major League Baseball: 6,714, by Nolan Ryan (1966, 1968-93).
A pitcher will blow out his arm before coming close to 5,000.

10. Longest hitting streak in Major League Baseball: 56 games, by Joe DiMaggio (May 15-July 16, 1941).
Oh, here you are. Still think this is the toughest?

More media notes that didn't make it into today's L.A. Daily News column or notebook:

-- Posted too late Thursday to include in the "Chokes" section of today's print edition -- and maybe that's now done on purpose -- the latest blog entry on WeAreSC.com from USC play-by-play man Pete Arbogast reverts back to him begging for fulltime work, this time again on the radio station, 710-AM, that carries Trojans games.
Here's the best nugget of the Thursday posting:

I actually got asked for the very first time this year, to appear on the Gary and Demarco show, this was a request made last Tuesday. First time I’ve been asked to appear on any show on the USC flagship station. Then, the next day, Gary Miller was released/quit left to enjoy other endeavors in his career. So I have applied to become co-host of the show. Since I am otherwise unemployed, and certainly qualified to do an all-purpose talk show, not to mention close sales, do updates, report from game sites and do commercials, it seems that I might be a reasonable fit. Farr says he would welcome the partnership. My fingers are crossed. Anyone else besides me would like to hear the Voice of the Trojans on full time on the Trojan station? Okay, then, it’s almost unanimous. Heck yeah I’m campaigning!

-- Of all the excerpts from Bob Miller’s new book, “Tales From the Los Angeles Kings" (with Randy Schultz, $24.95, Sports Publishing LLC), the one that had a natural link to us involves a time in the mid-1980s when the Kings’ play-by-play man was contacted by a writer doing a story on Jack Kent Cooke for Los Angeles Magazine. Miller admits he had a rather stormy relationship with the former Kings owner, referring to him in the book as someone who could be “tyrannical, overbearing, shrewd, impressive, intelligent and dynamic.� And one who always would have the last word. After the magazine story came out, the author contacted Miller and asked if he thought he’d been quoted accurately. Miller agreed. But Cookie had called the writer to say “Miller was a disgruntled employee and he’s spreading lies.� The writer then used many of Miller’s quotes in a similar story for Washingtonian Magazine – Cooke, who owned the Washington Redskins at the time, lived in the DC area of Virginia. Miller picks up the story: “A few weeks later, I got a call from my former broadcast partner Dan Avey. He told me Cooke had called him while in Los Angeles and even though Dan had not spoken to Cooke for some 12 years, Cooke didn’t say hello … but just started: ‘Dan, what is Miller up to? He’s spreading falsehoods.’ Cooke at the time owned the Los Angeles Daily News so I decided to … phone the newspaper and was told that he was leaving California that night, but he would call me back. The Kings were opening the 1988-89 season that night and were playing games on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. By Sunday, I had not heard from Cooke. I had made a list of points I was going to make during our phone call, and since I no longer worked for him, I was determined not to be intimidated. After the weekend games I was home on Monday morning having almost forgotten about the call to Cooke when the phone rang and a woman said, ‘Mr. Miller, please hold for Mr. Cooke.’ I panicked. My notes were upstairs, and I was downstairs. Cooke came on the phone and bellowed, ‘You called me!’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Cooke. I understand you’re upset over the magazine articles.’ He said: ‘I’m more than upset. I’m mortified, that you would spread such lies … Goodbye.’ And he hung up. A week later, I told the story to Kings owner Bruce McNall, who got a laugh out of it and then I said, ‘Bruce, don’t ever sell the team back to Cooke, or I’m the first one to go.’�

--For those who can’t decide which college bowl game they’ll watch until they know the announcers, the assignments were formally announced this week: Thom Brennaman, Barry Alvarez and Charles Davis are the motlely crew doing the Jan. 1 Fiesta Bowl and then the Jan. 8 BCS title game on Jan. 8, both in Glendale, Ariz. (home of the new Dodgers spring training site); Terry Donahue and Pat Haden join Matt Vasgersian for the Jan. 2 Orange Bowl on Fox; Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long are the analysts for Kenny Albert’s call the Jan. 3 Sugar Bowl for Fox; Brent Musburger, Bob Davie and Kirk Herbstreit will be assigned to ABC’s coverage of the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl (which could include USC and a sequel to Pete Carroll’s disguist with Musburger’s signal stealing.

--Vootage.com, the high school football website that launched this season, will cover the Long Beach Poly-Mater Dei playoff opener tonight (7:30 p.m.) using KDOC-TV's footage. Former USC broadcaster Tom Kelly does play by play and Gary Paskwietz is the colorman.

--Part of the 10-game high school basketball schedule that ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU plan to start on Dec. 7 include new USC recruit O.J. Mayo (pictured) and his Huntington, West Va., team against New Jersey’s St. Patrick on Feb. 22 on ESPN2.

-- We hate tossing around ratings, since we don't trust 'em, but the fact Fox decided to unload on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" package makes this note relevant: Fox reports that in the first week of "flex scheduling," the Fox national game (featuring New Orleans and Pittsburgh), one that the NFL "hand picked" to be put on the network and moved from 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. (PDT), delivered a 13.6 rating and 25 share (21.8 million viewers). Meanwhile, the New York Giants-Chicago game that the NFL took from Fox and gave to NBC, had a 12.4 rating, 10 percent lower than Fox.

--GrindTV.com, an El Segundo-based Website that focuses on extreme and action sports, sent its entire staff to the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii for six weeks to cover the entire Vans Triple Crown of Surfing Series (which runs through Dec. 20). GrindTV.com plans to cover each contest through video and audio clips, news, stats and interviews.

--NHL Interactive CyberEnterprises President Keith Ritter said that the NHL’s new deal to create its own channel on YouTube.com “will launch either next week or shortly after Thanksgiving, depending upon how quickly technical issues can be sorted out," according to the New York Daily News. The thought behind this is to air more uncut, behind-the-scenes action that didn't air during national Versus telecasts, and generating revenue for the league really isn't a key consideration here. You'd think, however, if the NHL really wanted better exposure, it would have taken this technology and put it on its own NHL.com site.

-- During an online chat Tuesday on Dodgers.com, Vin Scully fielded questions from fans, one who asked: "Has 57 years (on the air) caught up to you at all?" Said Scully: "I think what's happened is that I know I have to take better care of myself than when I first started. The rigors of the season are tough enough on the players, but they're also difficult for the broadcaster. The all-night flights and the three-time zone changes, the extra-inning games. I really have to make sure I get plenty of rest, eat properly, etc. I think that's the biggest difference. Just the awareness that it's not quite as easy as it used to be. But otherwise, thank God, I'm in good health and still love the job."

-- The Golf Channel says it will be in nearly 75 million homes by the end of this year as it is about to launch the first of its 15-year rights agreement to cover PGA Tour events. DirecTV, which has 15.5 million subscribers, is moving it into its upgraded sports tier to its “Total Choice� basic programming package.

--NBA TV has expanded into China to cover an NBA Development League contest between the Albuquerque Thunderbirds (coached by former Lakers guard Michael Cooper) and the Chinese National Team from Ningbo City, China. The second of a two-game series airs Saturday live at 4 a.m., repeated at 2 p.m.

--The Champ Car World Series will air on ESPN beginning in 2007, returning to the network that used to broadcast its
races. ESPN announced the multiyear agreement with the open-wheel racing series to do at least 11 races next season and a full schedule in 2008 on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC.

-- George Michael's “Sports Machine,� the syndicated highlight show on NBC Sunday nights that some say established the template for ESPN's "SportsCenter," will go off the air in March after 23 years when host George Michael retires. Michael began the show in 1980 as a late-night local feature on WRC Channel 4 in Washington. NBC recently announced layoffs and staff cuts for the show. ,“I told them, that if I have to lay anyone off, if I have to get rid of any of my staff, then I’m going to take the first bullet,� Michael told the Associated Press. In 1984, “Sports Machine� became the first nationally syndicated sports highlight show. It’s now shown in 194 U.S. markets and 10 foreign countries. Current TV personalities such as David Aldridge, Bonnie Bernstein, Tony Kornheiser, Joe Theismann and Michael Wilbon are among those who did their first on-air work alongside him.

-- Exactly 22 years after his 48-yard "Hail Mary" touchdown pass to Gerard Phelan gave Boston College a 47-45 victory over Miami and secured his Heisman Trophy, Doug Flutie will join Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call of the B.C.-Miami game that ESPN televises on Thanksgiving at 5 p.m. (PDT)

BEIJING (AP) -- China will use mice to test the safety of food for athletes competing in the 2008 Olympic Games, state media reported Thursday.

“Milk, alcohol, salad, rice, oil, salt and seasonings will be tested by white mice 24 hours before they are used in cooking or served to athletes,� Xinhua News Agency quoted Zhao Xinsheng of the Beijing Municipal Health Inspection Bureau as saying.

Zhao told a meeting on hygiene measures for the games that the mice would develop an adverse reaction to any food poisoning within 17 hours, sooner than test methods such as bacteria cultures.

China has seen a string of food poisoning incidents in recent months. In October, more than 200 students and teachers fell ill at a school in southern China. There have been at least eight other food poisoning incidents, but officials say they don’t appear to be connected.

Zhen Xiaozhen, of the medical team of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic
Games, told the meeting that most of the food for the Olympic athletes would be Western style, complemented by Chinese dishes.

Health inspectors were to receive training in management and inspection of Western food preparation starting this
month, said Liang Jin of the inspection bureau.

MIAMI (AP) -- Goody’s Headache Powders, a staple in NASCAR since 1977, will be replaced by Tylenol next season as the sport’s official pain reliever. It’s yet another break the stock car racing series is making from its longtime, but regional, partners.

“NASCAR has been trying to align itself with the leaders in their category, and those that have a national footprint,� Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s chief marketing officer, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Doing so obviously requires some tough decisions, and Goody’s is one of the toughest — if not the toughest.�

Goody’s were formulated in Winston-Salem, N.C., by pharmacist Martin “Goody� Goodman in 1932. The formula was sold in 1936 to A. Thad Lewallen Sr., who marketed the powders by passing them out to factory workers during their shift changes. It created a dedicated following throughout the South and was touted for its speed of relief.

That led the company to partner with NASCAR in 1977, becoming one of the first non-automotive sponsors in the sport. Seven-time series champion Richard Petty became the official spokesman, and Goody’s became “The Official Pain Reliever of NASCAR.�

But Tylenol cracked into the sport last season by signaling out individual drivers, creating a “Team Tylenol� ad campaign with Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Elliott Sadler. The commercials are comical, and because Tylenol is the best-selling pain reliever in the U.S., NASCAR felt it was a better fit.

“It’s not even about the money, about what Tylenol could pay vs. what Goody’s could pay,� Phelps said. “It really is about the marketing activation that Tylenol can bring.�

Goody’s, meanwhile, remains a Southern staple. Phelps said the company planned to stay involved with Petty
Enterprises and continue its relationship with Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, where Goody’s sponsored a Busch Series race this season.

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- A Columbus woman said the Internet auction site eBay shut down the sale of two tickets to Saturday’s Michigan-Ohio State game that she and her husband had hoped would help raise money to adopt a boy from Guatemala.

Kristie Sigler and her husband, Ken, have season tickets about 10 rows from the field at Ohio Stadium. They put the tickets up for auction, hoping the payout would help defray the $12,500 cost for adoption paperwork.

But Sigler said eBay canceled the sale Wednesday because it violated its policy on charitable auctions.

“They took it off and said because we were using the auction as fundraiser for the adoption, it violated their policy,� Kristie Sigler told The Repository.

According to its Web site, eBay has specific guidelines for charitable fundraising because that area is subject to state and federal laws.

Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, said Thursday that when people use the auction site to raise their own money for a charitable cause, the company has no way of knowing how the proceeds are spent. She said people either need to use a certified nonprofit agency that can work with eBay or not say what the money will be used for.

Kobe Bryant and Donald Rumsfeld have some explaining to do.
Tuesday, Bryant, the misunderstood Lakers superstar, was sued by a guy who claims he received an unprovoked elbow at a game last year.
Also Tuesday, Rumsfeld, the departing Defense Secretary, was sued on behalf of 12 abused war prisoners.
Who has the better chance of getting off scott-free?
We'll break it down:

The accusation:
Bryant: A Memphis Grizzles fan, Bill Geeslin of Arkansas, said he was in the stands last Nov. 14 when the Lakers played at Memphis. He said Bryant came off the court during play, landed on him and "without provocation" committed assault and battery when he hit him with an elbow.
Rumsfeld: Civil rights activists in Germany claim Rumsfeld approved harsh methods of questioning against 12 alleged torture victims -- 11 Iraqis held at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and Mohamad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Al-Qahtani was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Rumsfeld already told Congress about authorizing those questioning tactics.
Edge: Rumsfeld. Seems he's already confessed, but it's tougher for them to prove that it's true. It's not like there's TV cameras all over the place, like the ones that probably saw Kobe deliver the blow.

The length of the lawsuits:
Bryant: 3 pages.
Rumsfeld: 220 pages.
Edge: Bryant. Less evidence to sift through.

Demands:
Bryant: Geeslin seeks $75,000 in damages for unspecified injuries.
Rumsfeld: No monetary damanges announced.
Edge: Bryant. A quick phone call to his jewler and it's taken care of. Rumsfeld just saw what they decided to do to Saddam Hussein for his war crimes.

Reaction:
Bryant: Not available for comment.
Rumsfeld: A Pentagon spokesman had not yet seen the complaint, but said, "from the press reports, it certainly sounds frivolous to me."
Edge: Bryant. When he does eventually talk, using the word "frivolous" won't be part of his answer, based on recent experiences.

A key piece of information:
Bryant: Memphis won that game in question, 85-73.
Rumsfeld: The war in Iraq hasn't ended yet. Winner TBD.
Edge: Bryant. Rumsfeld might want to find a hotel in Eagle, Colorado to hide out for awhile.

Item No. 8 in one of the recent "Media Circus" columns by Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch was kind enough to mention our "Farther off the Wall" blog in his October "Media Power Rankings" as one of the "recent and worthwhile discoveries" as more newspapers encourge their writers to blog away in their "off" hours.
We certainly appreciate the props. But it also gives us cause to wonder how relevant we are in a world of instant analysis and regurgitation of information.
Our purpose as observers of the sports media each week is to collect information and try to make it entertaining enough in a column-sized weekly space every Friday. Opinions vary on how much opinion should be included in these ventures. But it seems more and more is needed at the back end, as the every-day "news" of the media becomes blog fodder for instant access and immediate consumption.
Do we canabalize our Friday media columns by releasing a tidbit here and there along the weekly journey? Sometimes, but that's because it's becoming the nature of the constantly snacking beast.
I'm hashing this all out while reading the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. Its cover story on the 100 Most Influential Americans of All Time is the marketing eye-catcher (by the way, the list starts with Lincoln at No. 1, followed by GWashington, TJefferson, FDR and Alexander Hamilton in the top 5 ... and Jackie Robinson at No. 35). But there's also the piece in the back on a "modest proposal for reinventing newspapers for the digital age."
As newspapers continue to cut back, and blogs like these continue to stretch the boundaries of exposure, author Michael Hirschorn has determined that "Online news, microchunked, consumed on the fly, is fast food; the newspaper, fed by its newly invigorated journalist-brands, is the sit-down meal. ... Original news begins online, while print offers an intelligent digest/redaction that readers can pursue at their leisure."
Some of you may be lost by now because the ADD is kicking in, but that's what we as creators of these daily paragraphs struggle with each week, each Friday -- what to put in, what to keep out, what to pursue now, what to think about and analyze later.
What do you want to read now, and do you care by the end of the week what's there to sit down and munch on?
You make the call.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The NFL is about to start airing live regular-season games on its own network, and that has Congress a bit curious.

"We're intrigued, to put it mildly, what the NFL has in mind," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., (pictured) said Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter grilled NFL executive vice president and general counsel Jeffrey Pash during the 90-minute hearing on sports programming. The hearing focused on how live games on the NFL Network could affect cable and satellite rates and whether the games raise any antitrust issues in connection with the Sports Broadcasting Act.

The NFL Network will air eight live games this season, starting Thanksgiving night when the Denver Broncos play the Kansas City Chiefs. Some broadcast companies, including Time Warner, have balked at paying the higher fee the league is charging to carry the network because of the games.

Time Warner chief operating officer Landel Hobbs (pictured) testified that the NFL Network's rates are "out of whack" when compared to viewership ratings.

Pash responded that the NFL Network has indeed increased its fees, but he cited the popularity of the league's product as justification. He said other NFL Network carriers _ including DirecTV, EchoStar, Comcast and Cox _ have not passed along the price increase to their customers. However, Comcast wants to start offering the network as part of a premium sports-tier package, which has sparked a legal challenge from the NFL.

Pash also noted the NFL is the only major pro sports league that broadcasts all of its games on free, over-the-air television in participants' local markets. The NFL Network games will be aired by local stations in the participating teams' markets, using the same arrangement that exists with ESPN telecasts on Monday nights.

"There's been a mass migration away from broadcast television with one exception _ the NFL _ and we still have every game on broadcast television," Pash said.

Pash said the NFL Network's offerings do not run afoul of antitrust laws because they are "pro-competitive" and expand choices for consumers. As for Specter's concern about "what the NFL has in mind" for the future, Pash said it will be several years before there can be another significant change in how games are broadcast.

"For the next six years we've got contracts with the broadcast networks," Pash said. "We've got a contract with ESPN that goes out eight, so it's not like we're going to do this, this week, and next week we're going to do three times as much. This is where we are for the foreseeable future. We'll see if it works or not. We'll see if there's consumer acceptance. We'll see if there's consumer response. If these games don't get wide distribution, if they don't get good ratings, ratings commensurate with what our other games get, if they don't get strong advertiser support, we'll have to look at an alternative."

Among the usual assortment of Mickey Mantle trading cards, Babe Ruth signed baseballs and Muhammad Ali litographs are a few very interesting L.A.-centric items that have turned in the latest online auction sponsored by Sotheby's and SCP Auctions.
Take the Lakers' 1979-80 championship banner that once hung on the wall at the Forum. Now they can be yours.
It just doesn't seem right. But it's true.

Lot No. 729: The Lakers' 1979-80 yellow championship banner from Magic Johnson's first title. "The nylon banner measures an impressive 11.6 by 17 feet. It is ultimate symbol of basketball's greatest achievement. It is a piece of history, the likes of which seldom reach private hands. A letter of provenance from the Los Angeles Lakers accompanies."
Opening bid: $5,000.

Oh, there's more:
Lot No. 728: Wilt Chamberlain's No. 13 jersey that once hung on the Forum wall. "Offered here is the actual jersey unveiled that day (Nov. 9, 1983) ... Wilt's massive mesh jersey, one of seven ultimately retired by the Lakers, measures 9.6 by 7.2 feet and is mounted to a black felt covered board. Rarely are pieces of this nature made available to the public. A letter of provenance from the Los Angeles Lakers accompanies."
Opening bid: $3,000.

Lot No. 731: A 2001 Lakers championship ring. "An actual Championship ring produced in comemmoration of that title that was presented to a family member of one of the players. Crafted in 14k gold, the top features numerous white and yellow diamonds. It's design elements include the words "Back to Back" under the Lakers logo on one shank. This exclusive prize comes in its original custom mahogany presentation box and appears to have never been worn." What it doesn't say is that on the side, the name engraved is "Papa Steve."
Opening bid: $2,000.

And then there's Lot No. 752: Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl XXXIV Lombardi Trophy in presentation box.
That would be difficult to pull off, since the Rams were in St. Louis when they won this one in Jan., 2000. "Offered here is a rare 16 1/2 tall version of the most recognizable trophy in all of sports that was one of a very limited number issued to key St. Louis Rams personnel. The award is inscribed on the neck Vince Lombardi Trophy and Superbowl (sic) XXXIV Champions The St. Louis Rams. The considerable weight of the trophy is appropriate, considering the significance of the Super Bowl and the award itself. The trophy comes enclosed in its original presentation box along with a printed "Thank you" card from Rams owner Georgia Frontiere."
Opening bid: $1,000. And you can throw away the Frontiere sentiments when you purchase it.

The bidding started today and runs through Nov. 30 at www.scpauctions.com

Not that we aim to find any flaws in the NBA All-Star ballot, which officially was released today.
We're not even sure which players are on what teams any more, so thanks for giving us all that time to sort things out.
But really, isn't two weeks of a regular season enough to tell which of the 120 players on the ballot deserve to make it to the Feb. 18, 2007 mid-winter hand-gun convention in Vegas this year?
Deserve is a strong word. Just being on the ballot has to be an achievement unto itself.
Take Lakers center Chris Mihm.
He's one of 12 postmen listed for the Western Conference. He not only has missed the first two weeks, but the other day, they've said he's going to miss the rest of the regular season with more ankle surgery. He's doing more fishing these days than squats and leg lifts.
Big deal? Vote him in. Apparently, it was either him or Nick Vanos for the last spot on the ballot.
Mihm, incidentally, is one of only three Lakers to make the ballot (along with Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom). No Smush Parker? No Aaron McKie?
The Clippers have all five on the ballot, including one sub (Corey Maggette). What does that say about the state of hoops in L.A.?
Again, we're not being nitpicky, but ... Sacramento's Kevin Martin (15th in the league with a 23.8 points per game scoring average) didn't make the ballot. It kinda makes you think this was all printed up before the season even started, and the ballot officials just looked at 'em and said, "Ben Wallace is on Chicago, not Detroit, right? OK, we're good to go!"

For the record, those ballots were selected by a "panel of media experts who regularly cover the NBA," according to the league press release. This year’s panel included Steve Aschburner (Minneapolis Star Tribune/ President, Professional Basketball Writers’ Association), Ric Bucher (ESPN the Magazine), Ernie Johnson (Turner Sports) and Sam Smith (Chicago Tribune). Apparently, The Amazing Kreskin was left out of the process again.

There are many confusing ways to vote this year, also, thanks to T-Mobile being the ballot's main sponsor.
Aside from punching the tabs in the paper ballot around the arenas (and 13 teams will carry them in English and Spanish), NBA.com has the ballot in 20 different languages. It's also on AOL.com/nba. And at T-Mobile stores. And at the Las Vegas Convention Center. And up and down Freemont Street in Vegas.
And you can vote via mobile phones.
For the players, we can only hope there'll be ballots located next to the suggestion box at the Shady Lady Ranch just outside Vegas (voted best small brothel for four consecutive years...)

Voting ends Jan. 15 for paper ballots, Jan. 21 for online. And Nov. 14 as far as we're concerned. Just watch how the voting goes in Florida.
And please, vote for Mihm. At least once a day on line. Them's the rules.

Here's the complete ballot:

Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell is hoping baseball fans take a historical journey with him by listening to his four-hour, four-CD audiobook.

"Ernie Harwell's Audio Scrapbook" includes interviews with former stars such as Ted Williams along with some of Harwell's famous calls.

"(It) is kind of like a personal journal, a newsreel without the pictures, about baseball during my career," the 88-year-old Harwell said in the AP story. "I sat in a studio without a script, talking about all kinds of topics, and there's a lot of neat audio of things ranging from Bobby Thompson's clubhouse interviews to a football game I broadcasted in 1956 between Baltimore and Los Angeles."

The audio book can be purchased at http://www.eharwell.com and costs $19.84.

1984 ... Isn't that the last year the Tigers won the World Series?

Harwell retired in 2002 after a 55-year career in broadcasting, including 42 years with the Detroit Tigers after stints with the New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers (where Vin Scully eventually replaced him) and Baltimore Orioles.

Dick Van Patten, the actor/dog lover,was part of a promotion on Oct. 21 called "Dine With Your Dog Day," mostly to promote this dog food he's developed that's supposed to be so good, humans can eat it as well as the pooch.
Nicollette Sheridan wasn't that desperate.
The "Desperate Housewives" actress might have been willing to drop a towel for Terrell Owens, but not drop your nose in a bowl of kibbles and bits at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.
"This is not 'Fear Factor,'" Sheridan said.
So she passed. A well-deserved pass.
Just like we did Sunday night. Meaning, "The Challenge," no matter how challenging, didn't make the cut in our busy schedule.
That's the problem with live television. We've become so programmed into TiVo-ing stuff that doesn't fit into our schedule, we know we'll get around to it eventually.
For Sunday's episode, that "eventually" was Monday morning.
We could have used the extra points to help in the overall standings, but what the heck. More important things to do. Not important what it really was. Just superceded Fred Roggin.
Like a can of Alpo.
As a result, we dropped big from No. 54 overall in the standings to No. 105, behind leader Patrick Alog (2,215 points, 10 ahead of Sonia DeSaegher, who has to be related to the former 1540-AM sports update guy Steve DeSaegher ... isn't it really him doing all the dirty work here?).
Oh, well. By our guess-timation, we'd have had collected about 190 points from last night's show. Respectable, but about what we average anyway. Far below eventual winner Chris Tan with 310 points.
Here are the questions (via TiVo, how we would have answered had we watched live) and the answers:

Kathy Ireland then (1989):

And then (1994):

And now, as she poses with LPGA Tournament of Champions golf tournament winner Lorena Ochoa after the final round Sunday in Mobile, Ala. Ochoa won by 10 strokes. Ireland looks as if she could be having a stroke.

A reversal of a vasectomy reversal wouldn't have taken this long.

It was about 10 p.m. Saturday night at the Coliseum when Oregon quarterback Brady Leaf threw a fourth-and-goal pass, watched it get tipped, then land in the hands of Jonathan Stewart in the back of the end zone for a 7-yard touchdown that cut USC's lead to 28-9 early in the fourth quarter.

(We interrupt this report for a short nap, dreams of the days before instant replay ever was part of sports).

It's about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, and Ducks kicker Paul Martinez converted the extra point, and it's 28-10.

Sorry, but we must have blacked out for those 15 minutes. Any way to get that time of our lives back?
About six of those minutes were to review the play and determine it would be reversed.
A minute later, they decided they had to review it again.
About eight minutes later, after another review, the play stood as the refs on the field called it in the first place.
And, according to replays, they still got it wrong.

On USC's radio post-game show, Trojan play-by-play guy Pete Arbogast said that he and Paul McDonald should be named "Pac-10 players of the week" for having to fill that 20 minutes (not quite that long) during all that review time.
Here's how Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis explained things without sounding as if they were killing time during the FSN telecast:

10 p.m.: Tompkins: "What a catch! Stewart catches it after it went off the fingertips of the intended receiver, who I believe was (Jordan) Kent. And it is a touchdown."
First replay is shown.
Papadakis: "And you see the crowd reacting (to the replay), not to whether Stewart was in bounds when he made the play but whether he came from the back of the end zone, he might have been out of bounds."
10:01 p.m.: Referee Jack Wood announces the play is under review.
Another replay shown. Papadakis: "And it looks like he was out."
Another replay, from behind the quarterback.
Tompkins: "You can't tell from that angle."
Another replay, from high above the end zone.
Papadakis: "If anything, his heels might have been out."
10:02 p.m.: Tompkins: "It's certainly not going to be conclusive."
Papadakis: "They're not going to turn this over. This will be a touchdown."
Another replay, from the side
Tompkins: "That's the best angle we've seen and it didn't look like he came beyond the end line. ... I doubt that they will change this."
Another replay, from high above the end zone.
Papadakis: "Right there, it looks like his left foot was out a couple of steps before that (catch) happened."
Another replay from the side.
10:03 p.m. Three-way screen showing referee, USC coach Pete Caroll and Oregon coach Mike Bellotti.
Tompkins: "The longer this goes on the more chance they will reverse this."
Papadakis: "With the deflection involved, I'm not so sure."
Tompkins: "It's not just a matter if he was out of bounds, but it's a rules interpretation also."
Papadakis: "He was definitely out of bounds, but does it matter with the deflection? I don't know"
10:04 p.m.: Another replay, from the side.
Another replay, from behind the end zone.
Tompkins: "I was reading earlier that the average review time is just 2 minutes, 8 seconds." (At this point, it has been 4 minutes according to a graphic)
10:05 p.m.: After 5 minutes and 35 seconds, Wood announces: "There is a reversal of the ruling on the field. The receiver who caught the pass voluntarily stepped out of bounds prior to touching the ball. Therefore, there is a foul for illegal touching on the offense. The penalty for that illegal touching is a loss of down at the previous spot. Therefore it will be first down USC at the 7 yard line."
Another replay, from high above the back of the end zone.
A stat graphic of instant replays in the Pac-10 this year: 71 review stoppages, 25 reversals, average time 2:02.
10:07 p.m.: A shot of Belliotti arguing with the official.
Tompkins: "He may be arguing about the tipped ball, whether all bets are off (with the catch and penalty)."
10:08 p.m.: Oregon challenges the review in the booth.
Papadakis: "Let's back up here: So the guys who made the call are being challenged again? Are they going to bring new review guys into the booth?"
Another replay of that same high-end zone angle.
Tompkins: "The question now is that the ball was tipped, are all bets off?"
10:09 p.m.: Another replay of that same high-end zone angle.
Papadakis: "The question we're asking, and to be honest, I feel a little stupid asking because I should know the rule, but it's the question that Belliotti, Carroll, the review booth and every official on the field is asking. Jordan Kent touched the ball first (on the tip) but on this review, it also looks like he stepped out of bounds (in the back of the end zone). So either way, whether it's Jordan Kent touching the ball first or Stewart catching the ball second, they both stepped out of bounds."
Papadakis: "Is there an alternate official, like the guy who comes in for the guy who gets hit or something, could can settle this for everybody?"
Tompkins: "What if Kent didn't step out of bounds?"
Papadakis: "This whole field is looking like a grassy knoll, everything is shrouded in mystery. Back and to the left."
10:10 p.m.: Another replay of that high end zone angle.
Tompkins: "Watch Kent pushed out of bounds on the bottom of the screen."
10:11 p.m.: Papadakis: "This has got to be some kind of record. Belliotti has used his challenge. If they flip it back, is Pete Carroll going to use his challenge?"
Another replay, a tighter angle following the quarterback, shows Kent deflecting the pass.
10:12 p.m.: Another replay of the same replay just shown.
Papadakis: "We're trying our best to have a discussion about a play we've seen now at least 20 times ... can you imagine the discussion between the booth and white hat on the field? What are they talking about?"
10:13 p.m.: Crowd begins booing.
Tompkins: "I'm sure there's a lot of leafing through rule books right now."
Papadakis: "I think it's more like frantic flipping."
10:14 p.m.: Wood returns to the field: "After further review, we have a reversal of the previously announced ruling. The ball was tipped by a USC defender, therefore the receiver regained his eligibillity to catch the pass. The result of the play is a touchdown."
Tompkins laughs as a shot of Carroll mouthing the word, "What!" is shown.
Tompkins: "That tells you everything you need to know."
Papadakis: "Is Carroll going to challenge it? If we've gone this long we might as well make it an even half hour. Somebody could have flipped away and watched a sit-com while we were doing this."
Shot of Carroll mouthing the words: "F--- you, f--- you, f--- you" to the officials.
No mention of the fact that on any of the replays did it show at USC defender deflecting the ball.

Tompkins: "Well, so be it, it is an Oregon touchdown. Meantime, most of the Oregon players have graduated."
Martinez tries the extra point, and penalty flags fly. Offsides Oregon.
Oregon's drive: 11 plays, 80 yards, 2 minutes, 48 seconds.
Tompkins: "But in fact, it took about 17 minutes."

After the game, Carroll said:
"I thought it was just terrible that it had to go on that way. Just make a call and stick with it. It is times like this that I really hate replay. It is not supposed to work that way. They should have got it right the first time."

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) -- His name is Hack Albertson, but you can call him "The Machine." A hunter since childhood, the 44-year-old from Pekin, Ind., brims with confidence in his ability to bag bucks more skillfully than the next guy.

And what does he think of Michael Kernen of Walled Lake, his opponent in this weekend's competition sponsored by the fledgling World Hunting Association?

"The only reason he's killed big deer," Albertson says of Kernen, "is going on these outfitter trips and having some kind of special property where he can bait 'em up here in Michigan."

Kernen, 36, a.k.a. "The Colonel," isn't backing down -- after all, he's killed more than 30 big-game animals. "Second place," he proclaims, "is not an option."

Smack talk is commonplace among boxers. Basketball and football have their share of colorful characters who aren't shy about predicting victory and taunting the opposition.

But hunting?

This is Madeline King, a sophomore cheerleader at Aberdeen Roncalli High, leaping into the air as her school's football team takes the field against St. Thomas More in the Class 11B South Dakota high school football championship game on Friday in Vermillion, South Dakota.
Didn't want y'all to miss it.

USC's bid for a national title was diffused by someone who couldn't figure out which wire to plug into the TV set.
Or something like that.
According to a story on Yahoo.com Sports, the replay officials at the 2006 Rose Bowl couldn't review the Texas touchdown that could have overturned because the wrong television feed was plugged into a TV monitor.
Big Ten and national coordinator of officials David Parry told The Associated Press that he went to the replay booth during the game between USC and Texas to ask about Selvin Young’s 12-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. It appeared on replays that Young received a pitch from Texas’ Vince Young after the quarterback’s knee touched the ground.
Parry said replay officials told him one of the TV feeds they were receiving while trying to review the play had shots of fans in the stands. They did not see a shot from the camera angle that definitively showed the wrong call was made on the field until it was too late.
The problem was fixed after that play.
Oh, and Texas went on to win the game 41-38 and the national championship.
The assistant replay official from the Rose Bowl, Dick Honig, told Yahoo.com that the feed problem might have affected the review of an earlier play involving Reggie Bush losing a fumble while trying to lateral the ball.
Bush had gotten deep into Texas territory with a screen pass when he tried to toss the ball to a teammate. Parry said after viewing the play several times in very slow motion, it appeared Bush’s pitch went slightly forward, which would have been an illegal forward pass, resulting in a dead ball and a penalty on USC. Instead, the lateral was ruled sideways, and Texas was able to recover the fumble.
Parry said he doesn’t believe officials on the field or in the replay booth made an egregious mistake, just a difficult judgment call.
“It was a very close call, and they did not have indisputable evidence to overturn it,� he said.

And actually, we're OK with that.
Associated Press photographer Bernat Armangue is convinced he'll get the perfect overhead shot of Maria Sharapova before she falls by the wayside in this week's WTA Championships in Madrid. Wednesday, we showed his first-day efforts, which weren't bad. Friday, this was the collection he sent to his editors, who in turn posted them for use by all AP subscribers. We can imagine some of them actually weren't used because they caught a body part of two that wasn't fit for publication. But we can also imagine they'll eventually show up somewhere on the internet.
And we can also imagine the guy sees visions of purple when he goes to bed at night.
For now, enjoy these angles Mr. Armangue has managed to slip past the censors:

What the doom and gloom of today's Los Angeles Daily News media column didn't have room to include:

-- Just so you know, Dick Vitale’s contract with ESPN has been extended through 2012-13, and his first appearance for the family of networks will be on the Monday’s Butler-Notre Dame college basketball game, teaming with Dan Shulman for the ESPNU coverage. Vitale starts his 28th season with the network.

-- As for Pete Arbogast's weekly foot-in-mouth rants on the WeAreSC.com blog, he has managed to take another backhand slap at his days working at 1540-AM doing the morning drive updates as it relates to the new “Roggin and Simers Squared� 6-to-9 a.m. show that just launched on 570-AM, and then realizing he may burn another bridge, throwing out the fact that he’d actually do that shift again if any radio station somehow wanted him fulltime: “I have done that shift. It’s no fun, and it never even comes close to BEING fun. And the money wasn’t that good in the bargain. … I wish them luck. I won’t listen much. Not because I don’t like them, just cuz it’s too darn early. Unless I get a job one of these days and need to be up to go to work or some other sort of miracle.�

-- Although it’s only ESPNU, at least the first Maggie Dixon Classic will be covered nationally, honoring the late Army women’s basketball coach from North Hollywood who died last year. The men’s game, with Pitt (coached by Maggie’s brother, Jamie) against Western Michigan, starts at 9 a.m., followed by the women’s matchup of Army-Ohio State at 12:30 p.m., both from West Point. The coverage will include a ceremony of Maggie Dixon’s coach of the year banner at noon. Beth Mowins calls both games with analyst Doug Gottlieb.

-- The season-ending NHRA drag racing event from Pomona gets five hours of coverage on ESPN2, starting with Saturday’s qualifying (7 p.m., delayed) and three hours of elimination Sunday (4 p.m.).

-- HBO (Saturday, 7 p.m.) would be wise to add Borat Sagdiyev to the broadcast team (with Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Lennox Lewis ) as it carries the live heavyweight bout between Kazakhstan’s Wladimir Klitschko and 31-year-old underdog Calvin Black from New York’s Madison Square Garden. Leading into that, it will replay Floyd Mayweather’s defeat of Carlos Baldomir that was seen on HBO pay-per-view last Saturday. Meanwhile, Laila Ali, who is on the Klitschko-Black undercard, has told the New York Daily News that she’s miffed her bout against Shelly Burton won’t be included on the live telecast. An HBO spokesman said the network has never aired a women’s boxing match except on a pay-per-view telecast at a promoter’s request.

-- If tonight’s Evander Holyfield-Fres Oquendo bout in San Antonio has you wondering about a $44.95 pay-per-view price tag, so be it. FSN’s pay-per-view company, Special Order Sports, is putting on the event but has added for the first time an online element. FoxSports.com will have the fight live as well on its site internationally Friday, then have it available for two weeks of viewing (for the same price). Barry Tompkins and Rich Marotta are on the call, with former “Monday Night Football� director Craig Janoff calling the pictures.

-- Confirming what maybe the Nielsen TV auditors probably already know but can’t seem to do a thing about it when spitting out their weekly ratings, the Arbitron Portable People Meter data released this week indicates that as many as 89 percent of male viewers 18-to-34 watched a post-season baseball game from somewhere outside their homes during last month’s MLB playoffs and World Series. A sports bar? Go figure.

-- ABC finishes off its 11th season sticking with Major League Soccer by covering its title game Sunday (12:30 p.m.) from something called the Pizza Hut Park in somewhere called Frisco, Texas, in a matchup between the Houston Dynamo and New England Revolution. Dave O’Brien has the call with analysts Eric Wynalda and Bruce Arena and Brandi Chastain on the sidelines. The highlight could be L.A.-based pop-rock group Under the Influence of Giants performing their song, “In The Clouds,� during the halftime musical show.

-- Online voting is still part of the process that the Baseball Hall of Fame is using to determine the next recipient of the Ford Frick Award, which inducts a broadcaster annually along with players and contributors. The ballot presented to fans at mlb.com is hardly discriminatory, however, meaning the 194 candidates include names such as Steve Lyons, Al Downing, Jerry Doggett and Rick Monday (plus Ross Porter, but no Rex Hudler?) Through November, fans can pick up to three names they hope will be among the three that are on the final 10-person ballot that is then given to 20 certified Hall voters next month. We submitted Ken Brett, Dick Enberg and Dave Niehaus. Niehaus, who once did Angels games and is the longtime voice of the Seattle Mariners, was one of three who made it on the ballot last year from fan votes (with Montreal Expos announcer Jacque Doucet and the late Bill King, who spent a quarter of a century calling games for the Oakland Athletics). The 20 who'll make the final vote include 14 Frick Award recipients: Vin Scully, Jamie Jarrin, Marty Brennaman, Herb Carneal, Jerry Coleman, Joe Garagiola, Ernie Harwell, Milo Hamilton, Harry Kalas, Felo Ramirez, Lon Simmons, Bob Uecker, Bob Wolff and Gene Elston, plus Bob Costas (NBC), Barry Horn (Dallas Morning News), Stan Isaacs (formerly of New York Newsday), Ted Patterson (historian), Curt Smith (historian) and Larry Stewart (Los Angeles Times).

-- Scully will do a live chat on Tuesday (Nov. 14) at 2 p.m. on the Dodgers' website.

Gary Miller’s run as an L.A. sports-talk show on KSPN-AM (710) has come to a screeching halt, a station source said Thursday. Effective Friday, D’Marco Farr flies solo (gulp) until a new permanent co-host is found for the 1-to-3 p.m. show. Suzy Shuster will sit in with Farr for the time being.
Making an abrupt switch like this in the sports-talk radio world usually comes with a plan to replace the departed talent. In this case, however, station program director Larry Gifford doesn’t seem to have anyone (such as Petros Papadakis) waiting in the wings.
There was no specific reasons given for Miller’s removal, except that sources say his TV personality (the former ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor now does sports news at KCAL Channel 9) never really came though on the radio, and it wasn’t in his personality to be opinionated.
You can't help but think that the show-long rant Miller went on Monday protesting a column written Friday by Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Bob Keisser had something to do with his departure.
Keisser ranked the best and worst sports-talk shows in L.A., and slotted Miller-Farr at the bottom of the list. Miller, whom Keisser called “bland,� spent most of Monday’s show making sarcastic references to how bad the show sounded and thanked guests for contributing to the poor quality.

The Arizona Diamondbacks , 386-424 since their 2001 World Series title, have decided it's time to shed their skin.
No more turquoise, copper and purple, with pinstripes. It's Sonoran Red, Sonoran Sand and black as the new team colors. And no stripes. And no vests.
Flashy, so that when they go in the tank again, at least they'll do it with a splash.
"I think it's sexy, it's strong, it's hot," said Melissa Leonesio, 40-ish, of Paradise Valley told the Arizona Republic. "It makes us look like we're the team to beat."
See, they've already brainwashed the fans.
So bye, bye to the old stuff. And buy, buy, buy all the new junk.
After all, turquoise only looks good on "mature" women who've retired to the desert. It hardly put the fear in opponents.
And they can use all the old D'backs uniforms to make belts and boots for the locals.
The changes from what the team came out with in 1998 is a curvier snake logo, acceptance of the "Dbacks" as the nickname with fang-like letters adn a patch on the arm with a "d" and "b" that looks like an evil snakehead.
And finally, no more vest jerseys. (Did we already mention that?)
"Personally, I wasn't a big fan of the purple," said first baseman Connor Jackson , pictured here in the alternate home and road jersey. "The team won a World Series in those colors . . . but it's kind of a new era and you've got to have a new look."
Gotta wonder what Wally Backman would have to say about this if he was the skipper.
Anyway, here's some more run-way looks at the new threads:

OSAKA, Japan (AP) - Azerbaijan upset the United States in five sets Thursday in the second round of the women's world volleyball championships.
Azerbaijan?
The Americans split the first two sets before losing 25-19, 16-25, 25-22, 25-27, 15-13.
To Azerbaijan?
The U.S., which lost to Olympic champion China on Wednesday, fell to 2-3 and into fourth place in Pool F. The top two teams in each pool advance to the semifinals. Azerbaijan won for the first time in five matches.
Again, Azerbaijan?
Brazil remained unbeaten, recovering from a slow start before defeating China 24-26, 20-25, 25-21, 25-16, 19-17. Jacqueline Carvalho had 20 points to lead the Brazilians, who are 5-0 in the second round.
China also dropped to 2-3.
And Azerbaijan is 1-4?

Here's Maria Sharapova serving against ... well, does it really matter who she's serving against during this WTA Championships tournament match in Madrid, on Wednesday. Sharapova won this match against ... let's see, it's around here somewhere.... oh, yes, Kim Clijsters. But the Associated Press photographer Bernat Armangue who took this overhead shot didn't quite capture the moment that many Internet bloggers were hoping for. Yet, we bring it to you anyway.

Meanwhile, the buzz at this event has been the employment of male models as ballboys.
According to a Reuters story Monday, this added eyecandy at the end-of-season WTA Championships is supposed to glam up the proceedings instead of distract the participants who have to deal with these novice ball retrievers, world No. 8 player Elena Dementieva said.
"We were practicing the other day and I don't think they really know what they have to do on the court because they are too busy watching the players," the 25-year-old Russian said.
"We'll have to see if it will work out or not but I think it will be a distraction for them to do their job. I don't think that they realize what they have let themselves in for and that they will have to be very careful about what they are doing on the court.
"The players are so focused and sometimes they get crazy with the ball boys so they don't know what they will be facing in a couple of days."
Organizers decided to use male models as an answer to criticism over the use of female models as ball girls at the men's Madrid Masters.
Clijsters, who won the tournament in 2002 and 2003, said the initiative had been a talking point among the eight players taking part.
"I was talking to Maria in the taxi and she said they looked nice," Clijsters said.
Justine Henin-Hardenne said her husband had told her to behave.
"I'm very excited, but I'm married, so I can look but not touch," she said.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Part of a Nazi leader's speech was played over the public address system before a high school soccer game, prompting an apology by the home team's principal.

Forestview High School principal Robert Carpenter said neither he nor his team's coach knew about the speech before the 90-second excerpt was played during warmups Saturday, according to a letter he sent Monday to visiting Charlotte Catholic High School.

The speech, by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, was in German. Carpenter said in the letter the team had adopted the slogan "On to victory," and a German exchange student who plays on the team had taught other students how to say the phrase in German.

"Some of our more zealous students sought to capture this slogan in German and to play it on the PA," Carpenter wrote.

School officials said two players had downloaded the speech off the Internet, and no adult heard it before it was played at the field, The Charlotte Observer reported Wednesday.

Catholic coach Gary Hoilett said his squad was "just real shocked."

"All of us stopped and looked up at the booth," Hoilett said.

Hoilett, who is black, said some Forestview players also shouted racial epithets at his two black players. Gaston school officials said they interviewed 14 people, including coaches, officials and players, but did not find conclusive evidence of that.

Hoilett called the Forestview principal's apology "lame."

"You don't toss something like that to the corner," he said.

The Gaston County district will now require school personnel to listen to any recording before it is played over the public address system.

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association was investigating. If wrongdoing is found, penalties could include probation, fines or loss of home games.

"It's really hard to fathom in this day and time," association spokesman Rick Strunk said.

Forestview won the playoff game 1-0.

In the race for the 50th district in the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, L.A. Avengers receiver/linebacker/Republican Greg Hopkins appears to have come up a couple yards short of his goal.
In Greene County, where both Hopkins and Democratic incumbent William DeWeese live, Hopkins came out on top. But DeWeese pulled in more votes from the other two counties to defeat Hopkins by about 900 votes -- 9,586 (52.6 percent) to 8,633 (47.4 percent) -- according to unofficial tabulations.
The victory could lead to DeWeese becoming Speaker of the House if Democrats win enough seats to wrest the majority from the Republican Party, according to the Uniontown, Penn., Herald Standard.
DeWeese has been a House member since 1976 and has held various leadership positions in his 30-year tenure -- the perfect reason why Hopkins' supporters thought it was time for him to challenge the professional politician.
No official word yet on either Hopkins' website or the Avengers' site if this political defeat means Hopkins, who turns 35 next week, will return for his 13th season. Named last year to the Arena Football League's 20th greatest players list, Hopkins ranks fourth all time (10,105) on AFL receiving yards.
For what it's worth, in the largely Democratic state of Pennsylvania, it was Republican Raj Peter Bhakta, a former contestant on NBC's "The Apprentice," lost his bid to oust Democratic Rep. Allyson Schwartz in suburban Philadelphia.
And here's the final scorecard for the former athletes who ran for political office Tuesday:
Winners:
- Heath Shuler, pro football, House of Representatives, North Carolina.
- Baron Hill, college basketball, House of Representatives, Indiana.
- Rick Renzi, college football, House of Representatives, Arizona.
- Joe DeNucci, boxing, state auditor, Massachusetts.
Losers:
- Jim Ryun, track, House of Representatives, Kansas.
- Lynn Swann, pro football, Pennsylvania governor.
- Italo Zanzi, team handball, House of Representatives, New York.

It doesn't seem like 15 years ago today when Magic Johnson sat at the Forum press conference with Jerry Buss, Jerry West and a bunch of other red-eyed Lakers officials and announced that after 12 seasons, he'd have to retire because he was HIV-positive.
And, by the way, that doctors told him he only had a couple of years to live.
The reason it doesn't seem like 15 years? Some will say it seems like it just happened yesterday. Maybe that's because he tried to make one comeback, then came back to coach, then really did come back for the last 32 games of the 1995-96 season before he really did stop.
To me, that retirement day of shock and tears seems like a lifetime ago.
With all that's happened since then, especially with AIDS education and treatment, it seems as if the disease is so common, so much an every-day part of society, that we've known about it, live with it, and have been dealing with it for much longer than 15 years.
"The real story is I've been living with HIV for 15 years," Johnson said today. "No, I'm not cured. And I think that I've just been blessed. I've been able to take my medicine, work out, and do the right things. And that's why I've been doing so well. But anyone can get this disease if they are not careful. People can't let their guard down. I can't stress that enough.''
Read some of the stories online about the advancement of AIDS care -- there are an estimated 1.1 million today who have either AIDS or HIV -- and how Magic is still coping with it.
-- Start with a visit to his foundation's website , where he lays out all his mission statements about wanting to better society through his initives.
--The November issue of GQ magazine is another interesting starting point, reliving those few days of when he found out, when he finally told his teammates, and how he finally went public.
--The Detroit News has a story about how Magic continues to go around the country lecturing kids on the dangers of AIDS and has opened four clinics in the area around his hometown of Lansing, Mich. -- but none in Detroit, where it's sorely needed.
--On the KNBC Channel 4 website, Dr. Bruce Hensel discusses how Johnson has survived the last 15 years and what progress has and hasn't been made. There's also a video clip of Magic's Forum press conference from that day.
--Elliott Kalb has a column on Fox Sports.com about how that press conference was a defining moment for his generation, when he watched that press conference 15 years ago having a flashback to Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in "Pride of the Yankees" making his famous speech just before he died.
Magic didn't die. But we didn't know it at the time. Look how far we've all come.
So where were you and what were you doing on Nov. 7, 1991, when American sports stood still?

What Indiana basketball player hit the game-winning jumper with four seconds left to help the Hooisers upend Syracuse in the 1987 NCAA basketball title game?
(Take your time ... We'll give you a visual hint right here ... and you see those sportswriters in the background watching? Up near that 116 sign, guy with the grayish-blue checkered shirt and tie, which was somewhat fasionable back then ... that's Frank Burlison of the Long Beach Press Telegram .. but I digress ...)
Can't remember his name?
Smart?
Yeah, right.
Smart, like how I felt after the latest episode of "The Challenge" hosted by Fred Roggin (Channel 4, Sunday nights).
For the first time since the show started back on Sept. 10, I almost went perfect (although I did wait awhile on some questions that I had no clue on and was willing to take the 10 consolation points). Basically, I'm saying the 190 points I got were what I thought was a season-high, and I was feeling good until I realized that if I could score that well, so could many others, so I shouldn't have been so bummed to see that I finished in just 62nd place on the weekly scoreboard.
And that wasn't even my season best in points for a show: I had 200 in week 4.
For the season, I moved up from 62nd to 54th with 1,230 points, miserablyl behind leader Patrick Alog (1,955 points).

By the way, Keith Smart, one of only four Hoosiers to score in the game, put up 12 of Indiana's last 15 points in the 74-73 win. Here's a YouTube.com video of that shot and the final Hoosiers celebration (unfortunately, with Brent Musburger narrating it)

And here's how The Challenge questions went for this week:

If the political arena is the new frontiere for L.A. Avengers Arena Football League star Greg Hopkins, he'll find out more Tuesday when the electors of Pennsylvania's 50th District decide if he's the guy to represent them in the state house.
We wrote about Hopkins' political slant before his final Avengers playoff game back in May (and his campaign people eventually posted it on their website, www.votegreghopkins.com), and that was before the primary. Now that he's up against the Democratic candidate, Bill DeWeese. If Hopkins wins, he's probably not coming back to play for the Avengers.
See how politics affects sports?
Maybe you're not a voter in the district, but you can still see the political ads that Hopkins' campaign has put out there on the local TV:

For what it's worth, you can also watch DB Hopkins (No. 82) in action as he sends Chicago Rush QB Matt D'Orazio into the sideline wall during a game at Staples Center in Feb., 2005:

Or this clip, where receiver Hopkins makes a catch off the net to win a game for the Avengers, named No. 19 in the top 20 plays in the AFL's history at the time:

By JOE KAY
AP Sports Writer
CINCINNATI -- The two golden trophies temporarily are stored in an administrative office under the wood-floored gym where O.J. Mayo (above left) and Bill Walker (right) packed in the crowds the last three years.
Draped over the trophies are white basketball nets cut down during state championship celebrations the last two seasons, the ones that brought North College Hill High School celebrity and scrutiny.
The school’s collection of out-of-state stars has split up this fall, leaving behind more than just those golden keepsakes:
-- The public school’s financially strapped athletics program is on solid footing because of the three-year flood of money from its basketball program;
-- The Cincinnati suburb is trying to build on its national attention, even as Mayo finishes his high school career in yet anotherstate;
-- And, like Ohio’s last prominent prep team, LeBron James’ Akron St. Vincent St. Mary, the school’s legacy now includes a statewide rules change. The state’s athletics association has made it more difficult to repeat what happened at North College Hill, where a powerhouse was built with players from other states.
“Billy and O.J. are two really good kids,� said Dan Ross, commissioner of the Ohio High School Athletic Association. “Sometimes young people end up being pawns for adults to achieve their mission.�

Read on more about Mayo, who still threatens to attend USC next season, and Walker, who Friday enrolled officially at Kansas State and will begin playing for Bob Huggins' team next month ...

By ALEX BRANCH
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
SNYDER, Texas -- On the first play of the game, Snyder Tigers running back Will Clay took a reverse 62 yards down the sideline for a touchdown against the Lamesa Golden Tornadoes.
Air horns sounded, the cheerleaders hugged and, thousands of miles away, somewhere northeast of Baghdad,
27-year-old U.S. Marine Casey Doyle grinned, leaned forward and, ever so slightly, pumped his first.
“I knew he’d like that first play,“ said Tommy Doyle, his father and assistant coach, standing near a small television screen in the press box that showed an image of his son watching in his fatigues.
The bright lights of West Texas football were beamed live to a U.S. military base in Al Asad, Iraq, on Friday night, courtesy of a foundation that uses global Internet broadcasts to connect military personnel overseas to family members.
“A little taste of home,� said Jackie Kidd, whose 28-year-old son, Staff Sgt. Quintin Kasparek, is in Iraq. “What says ‘West Texas’ more than high school football?“

Pro sporting events, college basketball and even the Kentucky Derby have been broadcast to soldiers fighting abroad, officials said. This is surely the first high school football game.
“It’s a really neat first: Friday Night Lights for Texas soldiers,� said Rick Snyder, president of Tandberg, a company based in New York and Norway that donated the videoconferencing equipment.

Read on ....

It missed the cut for this week's Daily News media column, but it's not worth missing if you got a few minutes:

-- If you happened to watch all of the 3 p.m. “SportsCenter� on ESPN Wednesday, it wasn’t one big commercial for LeBron James and Nike. It just seemed that way. The shoe company bought out the entire ad inventory for that hour-long show to introduce the Nike Air Zoom LeBron IV shoe with spots featuring “The LeBrons� characters that the Cleveland Cavaliers star plays. ESPN even helped accommodate the Nike sponsorship by cutting back commercial time from 15 minutes to 10, eliminating many of its own promos for other shows, and on its “Shootaround� pregame show at 4 p.m., it had Jeremy Schaap “interview� with “The LeBrons,� leading into the Cavaliers-Wizards live contest. As a story in the New York Times points out, it’s not coincidental that the ad agency employed by the ESPN networks, Wieden & Kennedy, also handles the Nike campaign. Ed Erhardt, president at ESPN/ABC Sports customer marketing and sales, also told the New York Times that “SportsCenter� would probably offer itself up to a lone sponsor “probably every five or six weeks.�

-- If that sends more light bulbs popping up over the heads of execs looking for new ways to milk sponsors, Philips Electronics has done something similar to Nike, but went even more overboard. It has bought all the national ad time on TBS' coverage Saturday of the Texas-Oklahoma State game and says it will give some of the time back to the network so that it can do more replays and interviews in the stands and other things that make it look like good corporate partners. What is this, the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation?

-- ESPN officials say they haven’t decided past this weekend whether college football analyst Brian Kinchen will cover any more games this season. He has been taken off the air this weekend after comments made during an ESPNU telecast of the Northern Illinois-Iowa game, where he said talked about how receivers need to catch the ball with their hands “because they are tender and can caress the ball.� He followed with a pause and added: “That’s kind of gay, but then …� Kinchen apologized for the “extremely poor choice of words.�

-- Dan Fouts, Tim Brandt and Jack Arute do the UCLA-Cal contest for ABC (Channel 7, Saturday at 5 p.m.), which goes to 19 percent of the country (the rest are split between Oklahoma-Texas A&M and Virginia Tech-Miami) while USC-Stanford on FSN West (Saturday, 4 p.m.) has Barry Tompkins , Petros Papadakis and Jim Watson.

-- Eric Wynalda, the former U.S. men’s soccer star who was more than critical of the coaching job that Bruce Arena did for the national team during the recent World Cup, now has to work with the guy as a broadcast partner. ESPN2’s coverage of the MLS Eastern Conference championship game between New England and D.C. United (Sunday, 1 p.m.) pairs up Wynalda with Arena, who was eventually fired by U.S. soccer and hired by the MLS’ New York Red Bulls, on the telecast where the below-average Dave O’Brien does play-by-play.

-- An animated series based on the "Mike and Mike" ESPN Radio show starts a new run on ESPN.com starting Wednesday. The show, "Off-Mikes," actually won something called the Sports Emmy Award for Achievement in Content for Non-Traditional Delivery Platform. Uh, OK. The series takes banter between Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic and puts it into cartoon form. You can check it out for yourself at the ESPN site.

-- Andy Furman, a longtime Cincinnati sports radio commentator, was fired by WLW-AM nearly a month after calling Bengals wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh a "racist" during the station's weeknight sports talk show, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Furman made the comments on Oct. 6, one day after Houshmandzadeh failed to make a scheduled, paid appearance on the show. During the show, Furman accused Houshmandzadeh of calling him a "punk-ass white boy," according to the newspaper.
Houshmandzadeh denied making that remark. "I told him, 'Andy Furman, you can f--- yourself.' That's the bottom line. And he twisted it into all whatever he wants to," Houshmandzadeh said. "What he did was wrong ... This time he took it too far."

-- NBCSports.com suppliments NBC's coverage of Sunday's New York City Marathon (a one-hour highlight show delayed at 10:30 a.m.) by showing live online coverage beginning at 6:30 a.m. They're charging $4.99 for this first-of-its-kind coverage of the event, which includes cameras that will follow Lance Armstrong from a motorcycle traveling nearby (the first 30 minutes of his run will be free, by golly). A "Runner-Cam" lets viewers enter a bib number of any of the 37,000 race participants and get notification of where they are as they approach and pass three established camera spots along the course -- the half-way point, the 30K point and the finish line.

-- And finally, Aerosmith has been recruited by ESPN and ABC to do a revised version of "Back in the Saddle" to go with their NASCAR coverage for 2007. The aging band is supposed to be recording a live version of that song during its concert Nov. 4 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. ESPN and ABC do the last 17 races of the Nextel Cup Series starting next year. If only ESPN coulda talked them into a live version of "Dude Looks Like A Lady." Not that it'd fit into the NASCAR coverage. We just dig hearing it any time, any where.

This ongoing circus surrounding Lance Armstrong running in Sunday's New York City Marathon continues to amaze us as to how star-struck everyone in the Empire State has become over this.
The Tour de France champ won't be riding a bike -- he'll have to rely on his running shoes, and the investment the city has on him finishing this in a decent time has gone beyond what any real, world-class runner is getting for this event.
In fact, the city is in a panic that he might actually not finish and embarass 'em all.
The New York Times reports that three legendary long-distance runners will come to Armstrong's aid for this venture.
First, former marathon champion Alberto Salazar, 48, will be Armstrong's pace racer for the first 10 miles. Another former marathon champ, Joan Benoit Samuelson, 49, will take over the next 10 miles.
“I’m not sure how this 49-year-old body will handle it, but I’m going to try my best to keep up,� Samuelson said. “I really don’t know how it’s going to go, but it should be interesting.�
Finally, Hicham el-Guerrouj, the defending Olympic champion in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, has Armstrong's back for the next six miles.
Let's see, that leaves .... that point-two miles through Central Park. The Times reports that Armstrong will be on his own.
But what if he can't find the finish line? Will Matthew McConaughey be around to draft behind?

By STEVEN WINE
Associated Press

MIAMI -- Scattered around the country, Larry Csonka, Bob Griese and the rest of the 1972 Miami Dolphins will be rooting for their legacy and former team Sunday against the unbeaten Chicago Bears.

It’ll be a little different than in December 1985, when a dozen former players from the 17-0 team in ‘72 — including Hall of Famers Csonka and Griese — gathered along the Orange Bowl sideline to watch Miami play another mighty Chicago team.

The presence of the perfect-season Dolphins inspired a team led by Dan Marino to beat the previously undefeated Bears, who went on to win the Super Bowl and finish 18-1.

“Those Dolphins were a little stronger team than the team we have today,� Csonka said from his home in Ohio.

Miami’s 1985 team was the defending AFC champion and battling for first place in the AFC East, while the 2006 Dolphins are 1-6 and two-touchdown underdogs at Chicago (7-0).

“I’m not sure any of the 17-0 Dolphins are going to have an impact Sunday,� said ‘72 center Jim Langer, a Hall of Famer who lives in Minnesota.

With the only perfect season in NFL history, the ‘72 Dolphins root each year to preserve their unique status.

“We’re a bunch of old men,� said Csonka, 59. “We can’t play anymore. The only way we can compete is with the word ‘perfect.’ So we root to remain the only team that went undefeated and untied.�

And they root until everyone's sick of it. Read on if you must ...

As it does now with as much predicitability as a lame prediction from Dr. Z, Sports Illustrated already has quickly run out all the St. Louis Cardinals "tribute" stuff that its marketing department can print, both for sale and lure new subscribers, ready to clutter the trophy room of any new Jeff Weaver fan from here to the South Pole.
Not so fast, according to those who are still tabulating the horrid team batting averages.
These sorry Cardinals have apparently said they're sorry for upsetting everyone's expectations that the Detroit Tigers would win, and are willing to make amends.
After all, since this was a World Series that apparently no one watched, it shouldn't be that big a deal, right?
"I don't know what we could've done differently," St. Louis Cardinals second-baseman Ronnie Belliard is quoted in a the latest fake sports story posted on The Onion.
"We gave the Tigers every opportunity to win ballgames, but when their pitchers keep making errors on simple ground balls, what are we supposed to do, pretend we forgot the rules and start running to third base?"

Here's the link to the Onion exclusive:

Cardinals Apologize For Winning World Series

Here’s to you, the real men of genius at ESPN.
Ten years ago, you defied conventional wisdom and forced us all to re-evaluate our priorities by concocting an all-news sports channel - one so ingenious, you smashed ESPN into a Reeses-like marketing marriage with news to create something beyond comprehension:
ESPNEWS.
When it debuted on Nov. 1, 1996, we wondered: Who needs scores and highlights 24/7, and that was before the phrase “24/7� was even a pop culture reference. After all, we have “SportsCenter,� do we not?
Ah, there’s the rub. “SportsCenter� is the half-hour sit-com, on just on a few times a day, full of frilly “booya.� We shall want a score or highlight within eight seconds of thinking about it. And we shall have it.
In the decade of self-triumph later, ESPNEWS may seem to be on the slippery slope toward obsolete, playing against
the immediacy of the Internet and technological advancements that now enable anyone to pick up innocuous information from anywhere on the planet and beyond. But for those of us who’ve become transfixed creatures of that endless “Bottom Line� crawl that continues through the commercials, and are looking to answer the question, “What ever happened to Bill Pidto?� the channel remain on our TiVo “favorites,� although
if we ever actually recorded it on TiVo, that would be really going overboard.
From 1.5 million cable homes in ‘96 to ratcheting up to more than 50 million homes today (thanks largely to the strong-arming tactics ESPN has put on cable operators through the years) and owning up to having an audience with the youngest median age and highest median income among all ESPN channels, ESPNEWS lunges forward. It doesn’t
even boast anymore about its most important victory — that Ted Turner CNNSI thing that launched in Dec., ‘96 but finally melted down into nothing in 2002.
So here’s to you, ESPNEWS. When we venture into a sports bar, hotel lobby or a forward-thinking Jamba Juice, we see you in all your dissected-screen glory - video to the left, stats to the right, more words flipping and rolling across the bottom - and it reminds us not only that John L. Smith will be looking for a new job next
year, but John Q. Public needs a refill on that ADD medication.
Pure genius.

By JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer

When Stanton Barrett failed to qualify for last weekend's Busch Series race, he figured it was time to go back to driving school.

The accomplished Hollywood stunt driver trying to make it in NASCAR has made only eight Busch starts this season, and maybe it's because he's been distracted. The driving school he's attending this week is one for budding bobsled drivers in Calgary, Alberta.

"I'm ecstatic to be running with all these world-class drivers," Barrett said, shown above as he guides a modified bobsled down the race track during the Chevrolet Geoff Bodine Bobsled Challenge last January in Lake Placid, N.Y. "I'm like a little kid. I get to watch them and I get to drive on the same track."

Since participating with nine other race car drivers in the inaugural Bodine Challenge, Barrett, a former ski racer whose grandparents were founders of Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort, hasn't been able to get the sport out of his mind. That he was the only driver to record a top-three finish in each of the event's two races probably has something to do with his newfound passion.

"He fell in love with it," Bodine said. "All weekend long he said, 'I need a bobsled, I need to do this, I want to go from the top.' Those sleds weren't designed to go from the top. We couldn't let him."

Next time they will.

After Barrett learns the nuances of driving, he hopes to run two races in the America's Cup series, sort of the minor league of bobsledding, and maybe even compete at the U.S. championships. They will be staged the first weekend in January at Lake Placid in conjunction with the second Bobsled Challenge.

"He's a good athlete," said John Morgan, a former U.S. bobsledder and now a television commentator who suggested the bobsled school to Barrett. "Those guys are drivers. They don't like riding."

Read on ...

Nobody loves the ump (rhymes with chump). But we gotta have 'em if we're going to play baseball. So we might as well have good ones. Or at least ones considered to know their stuff.
Which brings us to the Major League Baseball Umpire Camp, scheduled for Nov. 5-12 and Nov. 12-19 at the Urban Youth Academy in Compton.

Current MLB umps Derryl Cousins (27 years of service), Randy Marsh (24), Larry Young (21), Tim Tschida (20) and Kerwin Danley (nine) will be helping those who want to improve their technique, knowledge and arguing ability (OK, so that's not part of the ciriculum, but it could be slipped in there somewhere on the side).

“This is an outstanding opportunity for somebody on the west coast to stick their foot in the water to see if umpiring is for him or her,� said MLB Umpire Supervisor and MLBUC Camp Coordinator Rich Rieker. “People at all levels of baseball, from Little League up, will learn from the most senior-level staff we’ve ever assembled.�

At the camps, attendees will improve their plate work, positioning for plays on the bases and situation management. Participants also will receive conditioning, nutritional, equipment and safety instruction.

It's not a freebe: Those who don't need a hotel room and are driving in each day have a $749 fee. But you get a T-shirt and cap.

For more information about MLBUC or to enroll in camp, go to www.mlbuc.com.