What's Going On In the Sports World?

It's been a while since I did a blog about nothing in particular.  With the start of baseball season, the Stanley Cup Playoffs getting underway this weekend, and my impending digit change, it seems like I've been all but neglecting the rest of the sports world.  Well, that's not the case.  Let's take a look at what else has been going on.

• NBC and the USOC announced the TV schedule for the Olympic Trials.  And there's a lot of it.  This is a good thing.  NBC is going to show the swimming finals live every night for a week, as well as live track & field, gymnastics and diving.  Those are the "Big Four" sports when it comes to coverage within the actual Olympics, so focusing on them during the Trials makes a lot of sense.  This was one of the purposes of rebranding Versus as the NBC Sports Network.  Besides, what else is NBC going to show during the summer?
• Boston College beat Ferris State in the finals to win the NCAA hockey championship.  Just like Kentucky, the Eagles were the No. 1 overall seed.  And just like Kentucky, they rolled to the National Championship.
• Speaking of National Champions, Baylor's evidently in a whole bunch of trouble.  Apparently they've been making illegal recruiting calls in both men's and women's basketball.  For a while.  It's going to be interesting to see what comes of this.  Especially for the men's team.  It wasn't that long ago that Baylor's men's basketball program was on the receiving end of some pretty massive NCAA sactions after that ugly Carlton Dotson-Patrick Dennehey situation.
• The situation at Howard University is just weird, though.  Last week it came out that Howard was immediately suspending its entire athletic program.  Then they did an about-face and said that wasn't the case at all.  Rather, only certain athletes had been suspended while they did an internal investigation about possible NCAA violations.  This evidently involves book stipends that were being spent on other things.  I've gotta think it's much bigger than that, though.
• On the day Sean Payton was appealing his supension, a tape was released of Gregg Williams in the Saints locker room prior to their playoff game against the 49ers in January where he was encouraging his guys to go after Frank Gore and Vernon Davis.  In other words, the bounty program was still in place as of the most recent Saints game.  Good luck getting reinstated, Gregg.  If it were up to me, "indefinitely" would mean more than just this season.  Speaking of Payton's appeal, it was denied...like we all knew it would be.  He was just trying to buy a little time.  Mission accomplished.  This is the most confusing "one-year" suspension ever, though.  It starts on Monday and ends after the Super Bowl.  That's not a year.
• The top-ranked American, No. 9 Mardy Fish, missed last weekend's Davis Cup quarterfinal in France.  That didn't stop John Isner from leading the U.S. to victory, and their first berth in the Davis Cup semis since 2008, when they lost to Spain.  Who's this year's semifinal opponent?  That would be defending champion Spain.  In Spain.  It'll be the U.S.'s third straight road tie in this year's Davis Cup, all of which, of course, will be played on red clay.
• Magic Johnson's the face of the group that bought the Dodgers for a record $2 billion.  The connection might seem odd, but I think it makes a lot of sense.  Magic Johnson's as identifiable with sports in L.A. as the Dodgers are.  He knows how important they are to the people in that city, and I think the new ownership group will without a doubt make the effort to make the Dodgers the team that everyone expects.  This is one of the marquee franchises in all of baseball we're talking about, after all.
• The Jets claim signing Tim Tebow was a "football move."  How exactly?  They signed Mark Sanchez to a four-year extension, then bring Tebow in and have this massive hullabaloo around a "backup."  Please.  Woody Johnson wanted attention.  Everybody knows it.  What the Jets owner either doesn't understand or fails to accept is that New York will always be a Giants town.  No matter what the Jets do, they're going to be the little brother.  A "football move?"  No.  A desperate attempt to get on the back page for a couple days?  Yes.