==Maybe Keith Olbermann will have something fresh to say about Vick when, in a decision to introduce MSNBC “Countdown” viewers to the NFL, and possibly re-introduce sports viewers to the Olberman Experience, NBC airs a special edition of “Countdown" on Sunday at 4 p.m. leading into the network’s coverage of the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh NFL exhibition game at 5 p.m. Olbermann, who until recently was participating in hour-long segements on The Dan Patrick Show for ESPN Radio, says juggling sports and news has become more enjoyable, because of the percentages. “I like this set up very much, where it’s both. There’s enough sports where that part of me is always fed, yet the amount is just small enough that I can still really enjoy it. If you’re doing sports five days a week, or more realistically seven days a week, it’s like anything else. If you love ice cream and you go into the ice cream making business, at some point you really don’t want to have anything to do with ice cream. It may only last a day, it might last a month, but you’re sick to death of ice cream. This is just enough ice cream. I can still now recreationally go to a sporting event and enjoy it again, and not feel like I’m working and not feel like I’ve washed my avocation. So to many respects, this allows me a role slightly more sophisticated than a sophisticated fan, which is really nice. I can be involved in it and I can still enjoy it. And in the past, and anybody who does it on a nightly basis will tell you, sometimes it’s difficult to juggle both of those things.” If you must, read up more on the trails and tribulations of Being Olbermann in today's USA Today media column.

Gene Wojciechowski, Bettis said he came into camp with a knee that had been surgically repaired the previous summer. Fearing he would be cut if the team knew how much the knee was injured, he didn't say anything. During a short-yardage drill at an early camp practice, Bettis fell down, grabbed his knee and yelled in pain. "Man, did I do a nice job of acting,'' Bettis wrote. "The thing is, I wasn't faking that I had an injury. I was just faking that the injury happened on that short-yardage play. I had to fool the coaches and the team's medical department into thinking the injury had occurred on that play. Otherwise, the Steelers would have had their reason to cut me and my salary."
Because Bettis was hurt in training camp, the Steelers couldn't release him. He was worried that the Steelers, and especially offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride, wanted to give his job to Richard Huntley. Bettis cited a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which said that Huntley told his agent that Bettis would be cut.
He rushed for 1,341 yards in the 2000 season. Five years later, he was on Pittsburgh's Super Bowl winning team and then retired.

==Our other favorite story from the latest edition of The Onion:

==The Dodgers’ game Saturday at Shea Stadium against the New York Mets is the Fox (Channel 11) regional contest sent to 57 percent of the country at 12:55 p.m. with Kenny Albert, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal. An added bonus: Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner is slated to rejoin long-time broadcast partner McCarver in the third inning to do play-by-play, the first time they've worked together since 1998. Kiner was part of the Mets' broadcast team since 1962 and spent 16 seasons ('83-'98) with McCarver. “We spent sixteen great years together,” said McCarver. “I’m looking very forward to seeing my good friend.”
And then there Sunday's Dodgers-Mets game on the ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” slate starting at 5 p.m. with Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Peter Gammons. ESPN Deportes, the Spanish-language channel, also does the game ("Domingo de Grandes Ligas" for those who remember Spanish 101) with Ernesto Jerez on play-by-play and former Dodgers outfielder Candy Maldonado as the analyst.
The Albert-McCarver pairing on many of Fox's recent MLB telecasts, a result of the fact that Joe Buck hasn't been around to do much baseball this summer, was the subject of a recent New York Times column by Richard Sandomir (which unfortunately has been archived in the pay-up-to-read-it-now files), but was discussed on the Baseball Think Factory blog ...

==Heather Mitts, a defender on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team who is out with an injury, will work as an analyst on ESPN2’s coverage of the team’s match against Finland live Saturday on ESPN2 at 6:30 p.m. from the Home Depot Center, with play-by-play man JP Dellacamera. Lori Walker, Ohio State women’s soccer coach, will also be in the booth.

==What to pick, the Tiger-less PGA FedExCup playoff event on CBS, or the U.S. Amateur Championship on NBC?
Woods was part of the promotion for this four-event playoff that gives away some trophy sponsored by an overpriced delivery service, but he decided he had enough points in the standings to skip The Barclays event in Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y. and play the final three. CBS has the coverage Saturday (noon to 3 p.m.) and Sunday (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.).
The network also got Yankees star Derek Jeter to tape a segment for the opening, talking about how he's played in 11 post-seasons and New York is the perfect stage for this PGA Tour playoff event.
Apparently Tiger didn't get the memo.
Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo are in the tower with Peter Oosterhuis, Gary McCord, Ian Baker-Finch, David Feherty and Peter Kostis around the course trying to explain a) why Tiger could afford not to show and b) how the winner of this playoff receives a ton of money in the form of an annunity that they won't be able to spend for years down the road.
NBC's coverage of the guys who don't get paid starts at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday from the Olympic Club in San Francisco, a course that by itself is worth watching without the match play. Dan Hicks is joined by Gary Koch, Roger Maltbie, Dottie Pepper and Jimmy Roberts, but no Johnny Miller. It's an event Woods won three years in a row ('94-96), so perhaps he'll be more apt to watch that coverage instead.
"I'm a huge fan of the U.S. Amateur," said Maltbie in an NBC statement. "It's probably my favorite event to broadcast for NBC. The depth of talent is amazing, to watch young players who have these great dreams about being star golfers and they're not yet jaded by all the entrapments of professional golf. They are just young kids with a dream, playing as hard as they can for the love of the game. You're watching future Tigers and Phils."

==EXPN.com reported its biggest traffic numbers for any X Games during the 13th event held at Home Depot Center and Staples Center earlier this month. According to comScore Media Metrix, the site was accessed by more than a half million unique users, and generated more than 3.2 million page views over the course of the X Games. Both EXPN.com and ESPN360.com streamed 40 hours of live X Games 13 coverage. Broadcasts of the events on ESPN were also up 35 percent compared to last year in the male 12 to 17 age demographic. On television, nearly 38 million fans tuned into X Games 13, up 7% from 2006. Overall, X Games 13 averaged a 1.0 Household coverage rating on ESPN, a 19% increase from 2006.

==Bill Walton will be the analyst for all ESPN family coverage of the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship, which started Wednesday in Las Vegas. The ESPN channels have 10 games, including all U.S. games, and both semifinals through Sept. 1. Mark Jones and John Saunders share play-by-play assignments. NBA TV is carrying 40 games and simulcasting the 12 games that FSN is carrying, including the bronze game and final, with Rick Kamla and Alla Abdelnaby as the primary broadcasters.
And while NBA TV has that Vegas event, plus the WNBA playoffs going on to help fill up some of its 24-hour programming, but nothing beats going to Africa where Angola is battling Cape Verde and Egypt takes on Cameroon in the semifinals of the FIBA Africa Championship in Luanda, Angola. The network has Thursday's semifinals on tape Saturday at 11 a.m. Then on Sunday at 11 a.m., it has the championship game of Saturday's Olympic qualifier from Luanda. It's global, baby.

== The Brooklyn, N.Y. AVP tour stop on Coney Island beach is the last of five NBC live broadcasts this summer. The Men’s final (11:30 a.m. Saturday) and women’s final (11:30 a.m. Sunday) include Chris Marlowe, Karch Kiraly, Mike Dodd and Heather Cox.

==CBS decided to rebrand its sports site as CBSSports.com instead of CBSSportsLine.com. “SportsLine is a terrific property with a strong, dedicated fan base,” said Steve Snyder, Chief Operating Officer, CBS Interactive in a statement. “This change will allow the community to continue to thrive as it always has, but with the added, and more clear connection to the premier sports broadcasting franchise in the industry.”

==XM Satellite Radio has added SEC and Big 12 college football games to its lineup that already includes BCS participants of the Pac 10, Big Ten, ACC and Big East. XM, with 8.2 million subscribers (compared to about 6 million-plus with Sirius, which is still in talks about having a merger finalized), will set aside 15 channels for live play-by-play. Here’s the channel guide: www.xmradio.com/collegesports.

==Joe Beninati and Quint Kessenich will call the Major League Lacrosse live semifinals and final this weekend in Rochester, N.Y., which includes the Los Angeles Riptide’s game against Rochester at 2 p.m. Saturday, after the Philadelphia-Denver semifinal at 11 a.m. Both of them are on ESPN360.com. Sunday’s final is at 10 a.m. on ESPN2.

==ESPNU carries the U.S. men’s rugby national team’s live game against Munster Rugby of Ireland as part of the Setana Sports Challenge Cup in Bridgeview, Ill., on Sunday at noon. USA Rugby provides the announcers as well as handles production.

== The Associated Press reached a deal with NBC Universal that allows AP to include video links, interactive graphics, multimedia and other exclusive content from the 2008 Summer Olympics in a premium online service. A story on the announcement by AP says: “The move aims to satisfy increased demand by media outlets for online and interactive content, as more newspaper readers turn to Internet-based sources for their news, sports, business and entertainment information.” News outlets that subscribe to the service can feed it directly to their own Web site.

==The NFL Network has both Detroit at Indianapolis (4 p.m.) and San Diego at Arizona (7 p.m.) as live broadcasts of NFL exhibition games on Saturday.

==Retired Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell is trying to persuade the city to keep the old Tiger Stadium up and running as a venue for boxing, amateur football and amateur baseball with 10,000 to 14,000 seats rather than convert it into a parking lot.
"In America, we have a tendency to knock down anything that's over 30 years old and make a parking lot out of it," the 89-year-old Hall of Fame member said in an Associated Press story. "Whereas in Europe, they preserve all these beautiful buildings and structures that have a history. I sort of like the European approach."
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has set an Oct. 1 deadline to hear the plan before proceeding with plans to demolish the stadium. It has stood at the site since 1912 but saw its last Tigers game in 1999. Team owner Mike Ilitch moved the ballclub to Comerica Park in 2000.

==And finally, Kevin Costner has agreed to make TV spots to support keeping the College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium on Omaha, Neb.
Jason Smith, an organizer for the group called Save Rosenblatt, said in an AP story that an Omaha film crew will head next week to New Mexico, where Costner is shooting his new movie, a comedy called "Swing Vote."
Costner, the Cal State Fullerton baseball supporter, said earlier this month he is willing to help Omaha keep the CWS at Rosenblatt Stadium, if that's what the community wants.
Smith said the commercial probably will feature Costner talking about the tradition of Rosenblatt.
"This is big-time stuff, and it's great for the city of Omaha," Smith said. "He understands the tradition and the pride of Rosenblatt Stadium. He'll be talking about the spirit of baseball."
The city has submitted two plans to the NCAA to ensure the series stay in Omaha. One calls for a new downtown stadium. The other calls for a major renovation of Rosenblatt, which was built in 1948 and became home to the series two years later.
An NCAA response is expected this fall. Save Rosenblatt has collected about 9,000 signatures from people who want to keep the CWS there, Smith said.