More Saturday Sporties

-Earlier this week, LeBron James made his second trip back to Cleveland. Admittedly, this visit had a lot less fanfare than his first trip back, probably because the Cavaliers are worse than expected and everyone thought the Heat would win by 35 points. (Surprisingly, the Cavs ended up pulling out a victory). Despite that, it turns out the most interesting parts of the day happened before the game. First LeBron James showed up for morning shoot-around with two cars full of his entourage. When he was in Cleveland James used to do this sort of thing all the time, forcing his teammates to park elsewhere as he took up several reserved spots for his friends. But this time the guards at the arena told James that visiting players weren't allowed to bring people into the arena and, oh yeah, he was supposed to be parking in the visitor's lot anyway. Petty move by the Cavaliers? Absolutely. Still kind of awesome? Yep.

-The other interesting this that happened was LeBron actually missed player introductions, claiming he was in the bathroom at the time. I would believe that if LeBron hadn't been part of thousands of previous starting line-ups without missing a single one. Dude, just admit you didn't want to get booed and move on. This move also makes James' earlier claim that he would love it if the Cavaliers eventually retired his number even more of a joke: he knows damn well how that city feels about him. He's the best player in that franchise's history, but I would be shocked to see his number in the rafters. Maybe if he came back to play for them at the tail end of his career, or if they got a new owner and waited a few decades, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

-There was a scandalous report out this week concerning the finances of the Fiesta Bowl. Apparently the chairman of the game has been using money to pay off politicians, wine and dine NCAA officials and pay for private functions. In other words, exactly what you would expect him to be doing. But, people are pretending to be shocked and outraged at this kind of behavior and are doing all the posturing that comes with pretending to be shocked and outraged, including threatening to remove the Fiesta Bowl's status as a BCS Bowl. The reason this amuses me is that people are making these threats with a tone in their voice like they are about to put Santa Claus in jail. The BCS has only been around 11 years and the Fiesta Bowl was only chosen as a BCS Bowl due to the wining and dining they are now in trouble for. It is not like the game is a National Treasure. Relax - we can find another bowl to take its place.

-A few days ago Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow unveiled a new commercial for some energy shake. It was nothing too ground-breaking, just the typical athlete spiel of "They said I couldn't do X, they said I wouldn't be able to do Y, they said I'd never..." Like I said, nothing new. But, I did want to clarify one thing Tebow said. He had one line, "They said I'd never be a first-round draft pick." Actually, Tim, what we all said was you shouldn't be a first-round draft pick, not that you couldn't. It's an important distinction. (One, by the way, that you haven't proven anyone wrong about yet.) Perhaps you could change people's minds by spending your offseason working on that new playbook instead of filming commercials.

-I'm no Yankee fan, but I did think this was an interesting fact: on Opening Day Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada became the first set of teammates in professional American sports to play together for 17 seasons. That's actually very impressive. For all of them to stay at that level for that amount of time takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Plus, who knew it was possible to be annoyed by one group of men for this long?