IOC to women's ski jumpers: flight cancelled!

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= Tonight’s Menu =

>> The 20-41 Clippers are in Miami to play the 11-50 Heat, without Dwyane Wade and coach Pat Riley. Wade is hurt and out for the season, but Riley just decided to become the team’s chief scout instead of its head coach and turned the team over to Ron Rothstein. Dorell Wright and Smush Parker are also out for the Heat tonight and both teams continue to flounder. The Clips have won one of their last nine and the Heat, two of ten. Even though the home team has won seven of the last nine in the series, the Clippers are favored by one with an over-under of 189. So the final is projected as Los Angeles 95, Heat 94.

>> On the ice, 34-24-10 Vancouver comes to Staples Center to play the 27-38-5 Kings. The Canucks’ road record of 15-13-5 is better than the Kings’ home record of 15-18-2. Los Angeles has the worst goals-against average in the league, allowing 3.3 goals a game and have won only two of its last 10 games. Even though the Kings have three straight wins over Vancouver, the Canucks are a heavy favorite: it takes $115 to try to win $100 on the visitors, but $100 on the Kings could return $145.

= L.A. Stories =

>> What’s Bruin: See our daily blog on UCLA sports at LATimes.com!

>> Thinking Blue:
Noise from the Oakland A’s camp: Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Oakland has inquired about the availability of Juan Pierre from the Dodgers. Although Pierre can still cover ground in left field and steals bases, moving him would give Joe Torre an opportunity to play the so-far insecure Andre Ethier every day. And the A’s should be in favor of that . . . after all, they traded Ethier to the Dodgers in the Milton Bradley deal!

>> Talk of Troy:
Although no one was watching, one of the bright stars of the future was having a rough day on Saturday at the Trojan Invitational track & field event on campus. Freshman Bryshon Nellum suffered a hamstring strain during the 4 x 100 m relay and pulled up. “We took a giant blow by losing him,” said coach Ron Allice in the Daily Trojan. He’s a guy that is just vital to our chances to having a more-than-successful season.”

= Panorama =

The National Pastime:
>> Miami, Fl.: Florida Marlins pitcher Logan Kensing has some do-gooders in Florida upset. The co-chair of the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition, a man named Barry Silver, sent a letter to Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria telling him that he had until March 20 “to reprimand the player for behavior that isn’t one of a role model. If they don’t, we will be persistent. We’ll infiltrate the fans and pull out signs. We’ll picket. If we’re willing to have 27 people arrested [in another protest], it’s obvious we’re committed.”

Kensing has the ire of the group because he hunts wild pigs and coyotes from a helicopter during his time as an off-season rancher in Texas. He talked about it in a February 21 interview with the Palm Beach Post, and said later of the furor it caused, “It doesn’t bother me. They can come at me if they want to. We make money off our land. Those pigs destroy everything.”

Silver may have another problem trying to get the Marlins’ fans involved in a protest. Are there any?

College Hoopla:
>> New York, NY: According to TNS Media Intelligence, television ads on CBS for the NCAA basketball tournament will total about $545 million this year. That’s up 5% from last season and makes the tournament a bigger ad draw than any other post-season series in sports except the NFL playoffs.

>> San Francisco, Ca.: “I think she’s very incompetent. She’s in way over her head. This is not an easy, 9-to-5 job.” That’s former University of San Francisco basketball player Larry Blum, who is just one of more than 100 fans and friends of the once-proud USF basketball program that signed a petition to remove athletic director Debra Gore-Mann. Retired attorney Art Zief, who has donated more than $14 million to USF, told Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle, “On a scale of 1-to-10, she’s a minus-2.” USF has had three straight losing seasons, fired coach Jessie Evans in mid-season and hired 71-year-old Eddie Sutton, who said he would only finish this season. Gore-Mann came from Stanford and is accused in the petition of allowing the basketball program to disintegrate. “This has occurred out of pure neglect,” said the petition.

NBA Hoopla:
>> New York, NY: According to the trade journal Variety, ratings for the NBA are up on ABC, ESPN and TNT thanks to the intense competition in the Western Conference. ESPN has the biggest viewership so far, with an average of 1.46 million viewers through 53 games, a 12% increase over last season. ABC’s ratings for the NBA have risen by 11% through nine games and TNT is up 5% for its 40 games so far.

NFL Extra Points:
>> Boston, Ma. The Boston Globe reported, in a long story today, that among other issues swirling around the Patriots and former video assistant Matt Walsh, “The NFL has informed Walsh’s lawyer it will not pursue charges against Walsh if he turns over any property, gives the league any other evidence and speaks truthfully about his tenure with the team. He also is a central figure in inquiries by Senator Arlen Spector, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and a class-action suit filed in New Orleans against the Patriots and [coach Bill] Belichick.” Walsh, in the meantime, is undoubtedly asking for the NFL to pay all of his legal fees attendant to the “Spygate” issues and to shield him from any suits filed against him by anyone in the future. Even for the NFL, that could be expensive.

Pucked Up:
>> New York, NY: The NHL found a format that people will watch – outdoor hockey in football stadiums – and is slowly capitalizing. After the huge ratings success of the Pittsburgh-Buffalo game at Ralph Wilson Stadium near Buffalo on January 1 that earned a 2.6 ratings and 5 share on NBC, the New York Rangers are trying to arrange an outdoor game at Yankee Stadium in the 2008-09 regular season that might be the last event ever held in The House that Ruth Built. “It’s something we’ve spoken both to the Yankees and to the city about,” said NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly in an interview with the New York Daily News. “But it’s not a done deal. There are still other possibilities and a lot of moving pieces.” How long before we see an NHL “Game of the Week” doubleheader with an outdoor afternoon game followed by an indoor game?

Rings & Things:
>> Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: More bad news for the Beijing organizers, as marathon world-record holder Haile Gebrselassie – who suffers from asthma – announced he would not participate in the Olympic marathon thanks to local pollution levels. “The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42 [km] in my current condition,” he told the Reuters news agency. Gebrselassie does plan to run the 10,000 m race, requiring two rounds at about 27 minutes per race instead of the two hours-plus it takes to run the marathon.

>> Toronto, Canada: Paul Henderson is the former head of the International Sailing Federation and a loudmouth, to put it politely. So it’s no surprise that he’s unhappy that the Canadian government didn’t provide the full $30 million (C) per year for Olympic athlete development that was requested. “So, they give us $8 million for 2008-09, an additional $16 million for 09-10 and $24 million in 11-12,” he told the Toronto Sun. “Heck, they gave the Vancouver Olympic event $25 million just for the torch relay and an additional $20 million for the opening and closing ceremonies, orchestrated by an Aussie, as if Canadians were incapable of producing the shows.” Thanks, Paul.

>> Vancouver, Canada: The women’s ski jumping community – all 80 of them – are furious with International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. He ended the debate about inclusion of the women’s ski jump in the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, but Rogge said last week, “If you have three medals, with 80 athletes competing on a regular basis internationally, the percentage of medal winners is extremely high. In any other sport, you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of athletes, at a very high level, competing for one single medal. We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down. That is the bottom line.” More than one commentator has noted that one reason why Canada might be pushing so hard for women’s ski jumping is that the top four jumpers in the world – right now – are Canadian. And it is well known in the Great White North that, in Olympic terms, “O Canada” stands for zero gold medals: Canada is the only host country not to win even a single gold medal, at either the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal or the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary.

Rassle Maniacs:
>> London, England: Want to be a star in the WWE? Some good advice from The Rock – a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson, who played defensive end at Miami – in an interview with the Sun of London:

We have a great responsibility as athletes, actors and celebrities to children, because we are very influential. You know the outcome of the matches, it’s a scripted television show.

What I tell guys interested in getting into wrestling is you need to find a way to connect with the live audience. And you don’t do that through your biceps. I never wanted to be the biggest guy. I wanted to be the most entertaining.