Barking Carnival

Nice rundown on Wednesday's open practice here already by Scipio.

Rank Team / (first-place votes) / 2009 record / Points / Final 2009 rank 1. Alabama (55) 14-0 1,469 1 2. Ohio State (4) 11-2 1,392 5 3. Florida 13-1 1,245 3 4. Texas 13-1 1,240 2 5. Boise State 14-0 1,215 4

There is some intrigue building over the upcoming launch of 24/7 Sports, mainly to see what kind of platform they roll out. Anything more current than, say, a late 80's Tungsten blue Volvo 240 DL with a rusted out tailpipe and 260K miles on the odomoter will put them in pole position against Scout and Rivals.

This should be fun. ESPN is providing live coverage of every round at 3 AM for the golf pricks out there that re-grip their clubs every other week, keep a putter at the office, and wake up at night to pisrr50 every 10 minutes. I think we've adequately covered the subspecies Golficanus Prickofficus so we'll leave you to Dan Jenkins for further entertainment. "You've heard that tour pros fear only

HenryJames leaves the country for two weeks and manages to arrive back in Austin within an hour of first pitch. Reason #4,590 to loathe this man. But he still uses a travel agent and is excited about getting a cellular flip phone for Christmas, so I find my sympathies conquering sheer hatred once again.

Ho hum. Just another Thursday in May for OU's scandalous basketball program. The latest incident has all the role players from a Magnum P.I. re-run: Oronde Taliaferro, the former Oklahoma assistant basketball coach who abruptly resigned last month, exchanged at least 41 phone calls and 25 text messages over a 10-month period with a Tampa, Fla., financial adviser who reportedly wired $3,000 into the bank account of former OU forward Tiny Gallon. "I

Seriously, just trash it.

Yes, I'm talking to the seven of you out there that still receive this rag in the mail.

We lost another great old guard sportscaster yesterday in Ernie Harwell. He called games for the Detroit Tigers on radio and TV for 42 years and has already been inducted into numerous Halls of Fame. He'll be remembered for his trademark calls: "That one is LONG gone", "It's two for the price of one!", and his call of Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard Round the World in the 1951 National League pennant.

As we branch out past the standard coverage of your favorite offseason sports -- Badminton, Jai Alai, Squash, Curling, Fencing, etc --into more blue collar stuff like thoroughbred horse racing,

After yesterday's 14-0 Drubbin' on the Diamond sponsored by State Farm at the hands of Their Friends from the State Capital (that's us! Ha ha ha ha!), the Ags really need a win here today. As such, someone on the Shermanator's crack staff devised the following scoring system to help guarantee victory, which may be the difference between an overachieving 7-5 season, a superawesome 8-4 record, or perhaps even another TEN WIN SEASON! Yes,