==Onion Sports headline/story of the week:

==The City of Los Angeles Marathon (Channel 4, 7:30 to 11 a.m.) ... we'll get more into that tomorrow once a few logistics are worked out with things they want to cover.

BASEBALL:
==Today's Dodgers-Atlanta exercise (10 a.m.) is the first of nine ESPN spring training games. Gary Thorne, John Kruk and Steve Phillips narrate it, with Peter Gammons included to divert attention from steroid discussion. The Dodgers (against Boston) are also on Thursday (March 6, 10 a.m.) with Sean McDonough and Phillips. ESPN’s "Baseball Tonight" returns March 18 (1:30 p.m., ESPN2) before it falls into the Monday-Saturday slot of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. (Sundays at 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.)

==KABC-AM (790), the new/old home for the Dodgers this season, decided to hire John Suchon, a former Bay Area sports writer and current aspiring baseball broadcaster, as a reporter for pre- and post-game shows. His L.A. ties go deep: He covered the Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants for a combined six years with the Oakland Tribune, and did a book on Barry Bonds called "This Graciouis Season: Barry Bonds & The Greatest Year in Baseball." In 2007, he spent the season doing the Modesto Nuts games, as well as doing play-by-play on high school football and college basketball in Northern California. The station has already sent him to spring training to do reports during regular programming on 790-AM and KLOS-FM (95.5).
We're already yearning for the days of A Martinez reporting on the Dodgers back at KFWB.
Side note: KABC plans to carry every Dodger spring training game live. The Angels' new home, 830-AM (which used to be its Spanish-language flagship station), isn't doing every game live. In fact, many will be pre-empted for either a scheduled infomercial, or a Ducks game. Angels games can be heard on audiostream at the team's website without charge.

==ESPN2 has the first Urban Invitational Baseball Tournament, with Bethune-Cookman playing UCLA (5 p.m.) and Southern University facing USC (8 p.m.) from the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy in Compton. Throne will call both games with former Dodgers outfielder Brian Jordan as the analyst, and appearances during the broadcast by Frank Robinson, Bob Watson, MLB Academy director Darrell Miller, and former Dodgers Reggie Smith and Eric Davis -- all to talk about the recent trends involving African American athletes playing baseball.
Down the road (March 29), ESPN will also do the second annual Civil Rights Game from Memphis (at the National Civil Rights Museum).

==TBS, which starts a package of 26 consecutive Sunday day games this season, has penciled in the first two months of its schedule, which includes an appareance by the Dodgers when they visit Atlanta in April 20. The games go national but are blacked out in each team's home TV territory. Boston at Toronto (April 6, 10 a.m.) opens the series. Sorry, but Chip Caray does the play-by-play. Analysts will be named later.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL:
==Jim Nantz and Billy Packer call Sunday's UCLA-Arizona contest (1 p.m.) for CBS and will remain paired together for the next five weeks.

==CBS has added USC's home game on Saturday, March 8 (11 a.m.) against Stanford as its "wild-card" college basketball national broadcast. It has also added Purdue at Michigan for its Big Ten window game on Sunday, March 9 (1 p.m.).

==On ESPN's uninspired hiring Bob Knight as a studio host, two questions come to mind: 1) Shouldn't ESPN make it like a reality show, where Knight has to earn his way into the Bristol, Conn., offices and then maybe ... maybe ... they let him talk for two minutes and then drown him out with Dick Vitale and Digger Phellps, both of whom lobbied management to take him on; 2) Will Brian Dennehy sit in for him when he's not available?

==ESPN says its fortuitious coverage of Tennessee's victory over previous No. 1 Memphis on Saturday set a record as the most-viewed college hoop game in network history -- 3.63 million homes, a 3.8 rating. It's also the most-viewed game on any TV since Duke-North Carolina on CBS in March, 2005 (3.97 million homes).

==Which leads to another Onion Sports headline/story that's good probably through 2059:

NBA:
==Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy call the Lakers' home game against Dallas for ABC on Sunday (Channel 7, 12:30 p.m.), going head-to-head with UCLA-Arizona, and following Chicago-Cleveland at 10 a.m.... Breen and Jon Barry call the Clippers' game in Denver tonight for ESPN (7:30 p.m.).

GOLF:
==No Tiger Woods for this weekend's PGA Tour event in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where NBC picks up the coverage Saturday and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller have the 18th hole tower, plus Gary Koch, Bob Murphy, Roger Maltbie and Dottie Pepper. NBC, remember, has the U.S. Open from Torrey Pines in June. This is the second of seven straight weeks of golf on the network before CBS resumes from the Masters in early April.
Woods' participation in Sunday's WGC Accenture Match Play Championship final against Stuart Cink did a 3.5 overnight rating, up from 2.1 a year ago.

==ESPN has done expanded its digital deal with Augusta National for the Masters that means ESPN.com, ESPN360.com and masters.org will share a bunch of live streaming, especially of "Amen Corner." ESPN.com and Golf Digest will also collaborate on online material. ESPN is coverering the first two rounds of the event, plus the Par 3 Contest.

AUTO RACING:

==It's been pointed out that Fox NASCAR analyst Larry McReynolds wrote on his blog that he'd "heard a lot of rumblings over the weekend that the TV network is what caused" the Auto Club 500 in Fontana to try to squeeze the race in Sunday despite miserable weather and a wet track. "That's one of the most absurd things I've ever heard," McReynolds continued. "What fans and other people in the sport don't realize is that television doesn't drive anything. Because of the rain delay, the network lost many millions of dollars ... you think they wanted that? ... That type of call has never been made by television, and it never will be."
Not that we question his response, but he does have to understand that, really, television drives a lot of things. Maybe not in this case, but it had to come up.

NHL:
==Because of the L.A. Marathon coverage, KNBC Channel 4 joins the NHL's Philadelphia-New York Rangers game in progress for the third period at about 11 a.m., with Doc Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Pierre McGuire. In flex-schedule mode, NBC will also says it will do the Pittsburgh-Washington game on March 9.

ALSO:

==ESPN Home Entertainment has released a DVD version of the ABC telecast of USC's 49-17 victory over Illinois in the most recent Rose Bowl, with added features such as a piece on Mario Danelo, volunteeer waterboy Ricky Rosas, a regular-season recap and post-game interviews.
It's going for $19.95 suggested retail, much less in the state of Illinois.

==Showtime added a secondary audio program (SAP) with Juan Larena doing the call on Saturday's Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez bout from the Home Depot Center (9 p.m., delayed).

==Ashley Hanley, a communications major from USC working as an intern for the Lakers, won the $2,500 Michael Jund Sports Media Scholarship Award, presented by the Kings and Kings Care Foundation. Jund was a 22-year-old media relations assistant who died from a heart condition nine years ago.

==HDNet has live coverage of three International Fight League events tonight at the Orleans Hotel -- site of last Saturday's AVP Hot Summer Nights tour finale -- starting at 8 p.m., carrying six of the eight bouts. A new twist: Something called "Fitestat," a custom-designed IFL statistical program that the league has brainstomed with Stats Inc., will be shown on the telecast.
Perhaps it'll find its way onto CBS' new MMA shows ...

FINALLY:
==The NFL wants you to know that, even when it's not on, it's still smokin' the competition.
With Sunday's Academy Awards show in the books, as well as the recent relaunch of the tired "American Idol" on Fox, the NFL still has seven of the most-watched TV shows of the current writers-strike torn season.
Here's how they go (and will probably remain through September):

1. Super Bowl XLII (Giants-Patriots), 2/3/08, Fox, 97.5 million viewers
2. Super Bowl XLII Pregame (6:00-6:30 PM ET), 2/3/08, Fox, 64.9 million
3. NFC Championship Game (Giants-Packers), 1/20/08, Fox, 53.9 million
4. AFC Championship Game (Chargers-Patriots), 1/20/08, CBS, 44.8 million
5. NFC Divisional Playoff (Giants-Cowboys), 1/13/08, Fox, 40.1 million
6. New England-Giants regular season game, 12/29/07, NFL Network/CBS/NBC, 34.5 million
7. New England-Indianapolis regular season game, 11/4/07, CBS, 33.8 million
8. "American Idol" season premiere, 1/15/08, Fox, 33.5 million
9. Super Bowl XLII Pregame (5:30-6:00 PM ET), 2/3/08, Fox, 32.4 million
10. 2008 Academy Awards, 2/24/08, ABC, 32.0 million

So, they count two portions of the Super Bowl pregame show as legit, stand-alone half-hour programs? That's kinda tacky. The only golden lining is that full hour before the game (5:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET) was without Ryan Seacrest.