I was almost over the Chris Chandler trade, too.

I've mentioned before on this blog my distaste for college baseball. Among numerous things, I don't care for the way regionals typically come down to who is completely out of pitching. I assume that's what happened to Ohio State, as FSU destroyed them 37-6 yesterday to advance. Florida cruises on to next week as well, with an impressive effort against Miami. I'll find out tonight whether South Carolina keeps the discussion topic relevant here for another week. It's good for business if they do, but that's as far as my interest in aluminum bat baseball goes.

Sometimes things just sneak up and sucker punch you. I was reading Mike Lombardi's notebook column on the National Football Post discussing the St. Louis Rams being a franchise actually interested in signing Michael Vick when I got to the part about not making too big a deal about how rookies are performing during the early workouts with their new teams. Lombardi, a former NFL GM, mentions that when he was with the 49ers they had an early disappointment who they looked to deal off. They offered him to Tampa Bay for a conditional tenth round pick, and the Bucs said no. The player in question: John Taylor! That's right, the franchise that traded a third rounder for Stephen Starring around the same time to "help" the wide receiver position decided to draw the line at a tenth rounder for Taylor. Great - just great. I didn't know the story until Sunday, and it irritated me so much I wish I still didn't.

Lots of people are piling on LeBron James for not speaking to the press or shaking Dwight Howard's hand Saturday night after the Magic finished off Cleveland. I agree it was a mistake, but I think people are being way too harsh in their evaluation of it. That guy put everything he had into the series. He hit the amazing shot in game two and then single handedly won game five in the fourth quarter. LeBron has handled his fame and riches incredibly well considering how young the guy still is. He won a gold medal for the US last year. He cares about the right things. I don't know why LeBron didn't talk - maybe he was afraid of what he would say - but to me commentators ranting about him being "a punk" because of it are going overboard.

Anything the Phoenix Mercury does will be a minor story to most of us, because the odds are you are not a hardcore WNBA fan either. Today they're announcing that they're putting a patch for an ID theft protection service on the front of their uniforms. It'll be interesting to see how quickly other leagues duplicate this. I've always thought one day there will be a team here hard up enough for cash that they'd change the whole name of the franchise from, for example, the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Nationwide Blue Jackets. NFL uniforms would look like a NASCAR driver's suit if every interested sponsor got to add a logo somewhere on the players.

If you're looking for a little something to jazz up your backyard, may I recommend the scoreboard from Notre Dame's football stadium? Curiously, the ad makes no references to all the great victories that scoreboard's been there for since 1997. There's Navy, Michigan a couple of times, Navy, a close call against USC, and who can forget Navy?