A Busy Few Days In The World Of Sports

I am supposed to be working on the second halves of other posts (and I am), but there have been several momentous developments in the world of sports, and I wanted to mention them briefly before they were all old news.

• Barry Bonds has been indicted on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. Apparently, the Federal Government is not convinced that Bonds told the truth when he claimed that he had never knowingly taken steroids. Go figure. Bonds could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts (no matter what, he won’t serve nearly that much time), so he’s facing some pretty serious charges.
  
• News reports have confirmed that Houston Nutt will not be back next season as the head football coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. No one knows for sure yet if he is being let go, is stepping down on his own or is off to ruin someone else’s football program, but whatever the specifics, the majority of Arkansans will now have one more thing to be thankful about on Thursday.
  
• The Razorback Basketball team lost its first game under new head coach John Pelphrey yesterday, suffering a 16-point defeat at the hands of Providence at an early season tournament in Puerto Rico. The alarming thing is that the Hogs have committed 58 turnovers over the course of the last two games, which, outside of Junior High games, has got to be about the highest total I have ever heard.
  
• It looks like A-Rod will be a Yankee next year (and several years after that) after all. Rodriguez swallowed his pride a little and went back to the negotiation table, this time without agent Scott Boras. Analysts have surmised that Boras’ reputation will take a hit from this episode, which might be supported by the fact that Kenny Rogers has already fired him.
• Oregon QB and Heisman hopeful Dennis Dixon saw his season end Thursday night in the first quarter of his team’s loss to Arizona when he went down with an ACL tear. Dixon is another in a long line of Heisman candidates who have had disappointing seasons due to injury, inconsistent play, or being on a bad team. The injury will help out the chances of Arkansas’ Darren McFadden, but after another mixed performance today (D-Mac had a 50+ yard TD reception and threw for a score as well but ended up with less than 100 yards on the ground), it will probably take a huge game against LSU to give him the Heisman hardware.

There are probably a couple of other developments that I missed. I don’t remember the last time so many big sports stories broke at the same time.