Prosecution gets delay in Bonds trial

Michael McCann thinks it’s a big risk to put off the slugger’s perjury trial. But the feds typically don’t proceed unless they feel reasonably certain of a conviction.

If we’re fortunate nothing will come of all of this in a victimless incident that’s hardly the worst that ails baseball.

An agent fears for the future of the NBA

When the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2011, David Falk predicts NBA commissioner David Stern will push for a hard salary cap, increasing the age limit for incoming players and other dramatic measures to address the economic effects on the league by then.

Could we be headed for a lockout, or will Stern get his way, as usual?

Champions’ League knockout format disappoints

Gabrielle Marcotti of SI.com pans the two-legged elimination stage marked by the away-goals rule. Typically it’s opposed by fans of teams who have the disadvantage after the first leg.

Patient Braves happy with results

John Schuerholz and Frank Wren explain how the off-season acquisitions markets dried up on them, but some Braves fans probably won’t buy what they’re saying.

A century of doping

Imagine injecting yourself with a strychnine cocktail to compete in the Olympic marathon (not even that would get me to run 26.2 miles!). That’s what Thomas Hicks did in 1904, but the scandal at the time was that there wasn’t enough to go around.

This sounds like a particularly frightening substance to ingest, but the tale reflects a timeless battle between the urges of human nature and those on a Puritanical rampage to “cleanse” sports.

NFL cuts 169 jobs, Goodell takes pay cut

Is the NFL really in such bad shape as this? The commissioner is taking a 20 percent pay cut — symbolic or not?

And how much did the richest sports league in North America spend for Bruce Springsteen to perform during the Super Bowl? How many jobs might have equalled that amount?

What’s to hate about college football?

Mark Schlabach, my former AJC colleague, details the 10 things he dislikes the most about the sport he loves. His first two mirror mine exactly.

ESPN.com editor “blown away by the complexity of the digital space”

Rob King, who left the Philadelphia Inquirer (and whose father, Colbert King, was a columnist at the Washington Post) has some candid and refreshing observations in this Q and A with The Big Lead.

Baseball deluding itself over steroids

Mark Kriegel of Fox Sports hits this one way out of the park as the Bud Selig era has become fully engulfed by the scourge of steroids. Grand slam graf:

“Now everybody wants A-Rod to come clean. But what about Selig? He’s like Rodriguez; he comes clean only after these matters become public. Still, given his I-wouldn’t-do-anything-different bit, I wonder if he’ll ever really fess up.”

Sports columnist wishes he had taken woodshop class

Art Thiel, who’s been with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 28 years, jokingly offers himself as “a pretty good pool boy for a wealthy widow” if the paper closes.