One would hope that having a billion dollar empire, the protection of one’s ass(ets) would be a priority. But, of course, hindsight is 20-20, and now Sir Paul McCartney has officially learned the hard way.

Losing more pennies than Charles Barkley after a weekend in Vegas, McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, officially gets $48.6 million per the divorce settlement officially ruled on today.

To marginalize the meaning of this marriage the way I know how — in sports terms — Mills ends up with a marriage contract worth the equivalent of $12 million a year. In local terms, she got as much as Miguel Tejada did with the Orioles up until they traded him to Houston this year.

All things considered — McCartney and Mills did have a 4-year-old together — pending further review into the numbers, Mills proved to be more productive for McCartney than Tejada for the O’s.

I am unaware of any special addition or subtraction of items in the Houston water supply, but please, if you are from the area, please ship some this way.

The Rockets’ star, shooting guard Tracy McGrady, cannot advance in the NBA playoffs to save his life, but damn if he hasn’t figured out how to accomplish personal feats worthy of historical mention.

20 wins in a row is an amazing feat, no matter the sport, and no matter how pretty those wins are. Consistency in professional sports is difficult to maintain, no matter how you look at it.

Fresh off the 18-1 New England Patriots’ season, we are all well-versed in the emotion floating around perfection. Of course this is not complete perfection, but rather 20 games worth of it.

But I can’t help but let the devil’s advocate in me ask the question: If one of those wins isn’t a championship, what worth does it have?

Since this is professional sports, isn’t the goal to “play to win The Game,” meaning — The Championship? Ah, to belittle such a great accomplishment feels foul on many accounts, but someone had to ask.

I will never fully understand why, on February 22, 2007, one of the NBA’s toughest competitors (No. 1 goes to Allen Iverson, hands down), Dwyane Wade, was carted off the floor in a wheelchair after separating his shoulder. He didn’t injure his legs, knees, ankles or toes — essential body parts needed for walking — but rather, he injured his shoulder.

I imagine if A.I. were to remark on that injury, the quote would be something along the lines of:

We’re talkin’ bout a shoulder injury. Not a leg, knee or hip. A shoulder. Not a pinky toe, shin or groin. A shoulder injury. Come on? A shoulder injury…

With that said, it’s easier said than done to assume others may have reacted “tougher” if placed in a similar situation, walking off-court using our healthy, functional legs following the same collision. If Wade needed a wheelchair, one of us might have needed an air lift. But I digress.

A nagging knee injury has bothered Wade this season so, with the Heat’s season sitting at 11-51 and any hopes of being admitted attendance to the playoffs in any way/shape/form ruined, the team decided to let the 4-time All-Star, 1-time NBA Finals MVP sit out the remainder of the season.

Good for him; smart planning on the team’s part. The team is easily one of the worst in the league. At the moment, they are the bottom-feeders in the East. They shipped off the Batman/Robin (depending on what angle you prefer) of their ‘06 Championship operation, Shaq, but in return received an all-around hoops animal in Shaun Marion. With the benching of Wade, the rest of the team can get used to playing together and, as you see with coach Pat Riley’s absence, they already started planning for the future.

Listening to Mike & Mike the other morning, Mike Greenberg sounded especially upset at the notion that Dwayne Wade would shut down to nurse his injury, and made note that his kid wears Wade’s shoes and jersey, and that Miami season ticket-holders were being duped.

I smell hypocrisy. Isn’t this the same Mike who saw his favorite quarterback, Chad Pennington, fall to a season-ending injury, and rooted for his Jets to lose the last few games of the season so they could get Reggie Bush in the draft? It’s funny how the mind works sometimes.

Wade has never been a person to just quit on his team. He wasn’t handed the 2006 Sportsman of the Year (over a fan-fave Brett Favre, mind you) because he isn’t a team player. One championship, a finals MVP, 4 All-Star appearances and 3-time All-NBA should earn him that much respect. There’s no use in risking further injury to the team’s best player when the season is beyond lost. Fans of the team and Wade — and even the parents of Wade’s younger fans — should understand this.

Brett Fav-rah, you heartless brute, you. Didn’t you know retiring from an adoring, groupie-filled league would have an adverse effect on the economy? Why didn’t you think about others, sir, when deciding to hang up the stubble and cleats?

The NFL Network is placing employees on the chopping block. More cuts will be upcoming, considering they will no longer spend months on end enduring Wisconsin blizzards, shooting everything from “Grass cam” to “Favre’s Thoughts Cam.”

The damage is not yet complete.

Mind you, the country is in the midst of a recession (even if the president of the U.S.A. cannot utter the words because of either pride or literacy issues) and all Favre seems to think of is himself. Ah, the nerve of some superstars, I tell ya.

If John Madden “steps down” from his post, I’m starting a new blog called “BrettFavreTheRecessionStarter.com” and outing #4 for national crises-starter he truly is!

The most wonderful time of year is here for sports. It’s called March Madness and it’s the sports world’s savior for disasters like steroids, spy-gate, the BCS, crooked refs, hockey, criminal activity, and more. March Madness is sports at its most pure and at its best. Those first four days of the tourney, that wonderfully long weekend of sunrise-to-sunset college basketball is a cure-all to the anti-climatic and scandal-ridden world of games that we have to endure month after month.

Before the tournament begins, though, the field must be set, meaning the brackets must be filled out. That is accomplished, as most of you know, by the NCAA Selection Committee. This group of 10 bear on their shoulders the task of seeding the 31 teams that earned automatic bids by winning their conference championships. They then, and most importantly, pick the remaining 34 “at-large teams” that will also be welcomed. That final product of 65 schools will be introduced at 7 pm this month on March 16^th.

But there is one glaring problem with this whole process and it will surely, perhaps even this year, bite the NCAA right on its overly-confident hind-side. The bracket unveiling happens at 7 pm this year, as it does every year, on a Sunday night in mid-March. The problem is that with all of those career-changing selections being made, the NCAA has little time to compose itself since five conference championship games will be played earlier in the day on the 16^th.

What does that mean? Well, if you’re one of the 15 teams or so that are on the tourney “bubble,” meaning you may get in, you may not, you now have the selection group juggling your fate based on what happens an hour prior to the show’s start. This rushed schedule does not help the NCAA at all and I fear it will ultimately lead to an embarrassing situation.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never taken 65 of anything and ranked them, paired them together for competitions, and then assigned them to cities they must travel to based on geographic location, but I assume it’s pretty hard. It’s so hard, in fact, it would seem a group of 10 different deciding individuals may need up to a day to finalize such an important happening. Not the NCAA. With the show airing at 7 pm sharp, the selectors have the Big 12 conference championship starting at 3 pm (ending presumptively at 5) and the Big 10 conference title starting at 3:30 pm (ending at what they pray is 5:30). Now, if any bubble teams are involved and, in a worst case scenario, win those matches, the tourney committee then has to juggle the future of up to 15 school programs in about a half-hour span. Why do they put this pressure on themselves? Here’s what could happen…

Embarrassing scenario #1: According to ESPN’s Bubble Watch website, the Big 12 has only two locks, or tournament-guaranteed teams, which are Texas and Kansas. They also, have six bubble teams, or teams that could presumptively make it by selection. Now, let’s say for example that neither Texas nor Kansas make it to the conference championship on the 16^th. It’s 3 pm, and tipping off at center court are Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. Both are decent teams despite their lackluster 15-13 regular-season records.

Now, one of those teams has to win and it won’t be until 5 pm, two hours before the committee’s final selections are aired. Let’s say the game is neck-and-neck and OK State wins on a buzzer beater. How many Big 12 teams does the committee let in? State is a lock because they won the title. Texas and Kansas are also locks. Now, what about the five other bubble teams that also have a chance? Who is let in and who is left out? Baylor and A&M had stronger records, but it was Texas Tech that lost on a lucky buzzer-beating shot. More importantly, what about the mid-major teams around the country like Creighton, Davidson, and VCU that are also competing for those spots?

Judgment is rushed in this scenario, and that’s not good for the NCAA or the game of basketball.

Embarrassing Scenario #2: Let’s say the Big 10 tourney title comes down to Wisconsin and Iowa. Now, Wisconsin is the #10 overall team in the nation and therefore a sure lock on a Big Dance future. But Iowa is not supposed to be in this situation. They were never supposed to get this far. And now it’s 3:30 pm and they’re tipping off for a shot at making it into the tourney.

College basketball games are a science of timing. They’ve got the minutes, the timeouts, and the guaranteed fouls down pat. College b-ball games universally last two hours in length. You can set your watch by it. Give your grandpa his pill when it starts and when it ends, because it’s going to be two hours. The NCAA counts on this, and it almost never fails them. But what if it does? What if the game lasts more than two hours and runs into selection-show-time, only there’s no finished bracket to present?

Take for example the Baylor vs. Texas A&M game earlier this year. The crowd in College Station, Texas, thought they had an exciting one going when regulation ended with a 64-to-64 tie heading into overtime. Little did they know that it would be five overtimes before Baylor walked away with a 116-to-110 win. Now, games like this are not common at all. But extended games of two and three overtimes happen commonly every year. What if one strikes the Big 10? Suddenly it’s unranked and unexpected Iowa battling mighty Wisconsin in the third OT at 6:25 pm.

The selection committee, in this situation, has to now make two tournament brackets for CBS to air. There’s the one where everything goes as planned and Wisconsin walks away victorious. And there’s the other where Iowa does the unthinkable and earns an automatic berth into the Dance. It would seem, considering this is a TV show and graphics and scripts must be written and loaded, that a half-hour is not enough time to make such crucial judgments.

Worse yet, the pressure of such an enormous task in a short time panics the selection crew sending them all into the fetal position. Greg Gumbel must now adlib on screen at 7 pm for minutes on end as a disappointed nation waits to see where they’ll have to travel on the map to see their beloved team play. Advertisers freak.

Why is the NCAA risking this?

College basketball is a powerful and influential industry. It shapes portfolios and, more importantly, it shapes lives. All of this is excluding the hundreds of millions in cash that exchange hand-to-hand from gamblers every year.One need only look to Gonzaga University for proof. Now a tournament staple, the Zags didn’t make it to the Big Dance for the first time until 1995. After some successful runs, they charged all the way to the Elite 8 in ‘99 forever changing the landscape of that school. In one year, Gonzaga saw a 22% increase in student enrollment. That’s without mentioniong the millions it made in donations, season ticket sales, and merchandise. The Zags now play in an arena twice the size of the one the ‘99 team dribbled in. Even the school’s business and science buildings saw extensions of  up to 47,000 feet added, due in part at least to the men’s team’s success.

With me personally, I had already picked out UNC-Wilmington as my school of choice in early 2002. But watching the Seahawks take down four-seed Southern Cal sure didn’t make me regret my decision.

And don’t tell me George Mason University is in worse shape than it was two years ago on this day.

Yes, the NCAA has a lot on its plate. The decisions their chosen few have to make are monumental and can define schools and lives for generations to come. With the Big Dance not beginning until a week after the brackets are announced, why still does the league insist on rushing their judgment? This risk-taking will ultimately lead to embarrassment, leaving no difference between the men’s hoop programs and the failures of the BCS. It’s not worth it.

It’s a little late — this dunk happened earlier in the week — but nevertheless the jam is memorable. Boston’s Rajon Rondo blows past Richard “Rip” Hamilton and does the nasty in the face of Jason Maxiell.

Exhibit A through X:

Check out Rondo’s blog on Yardbarker some time. Gotta love athletes in the blogosphere, no?

Favre finally had his press conference.

Many attended, knowing what he would say: “I retire.”

He said he appreciated a lot of the time, thought he reached his threshold.

Promised not to cry.

Then cried.

“I promised I wouldn’t get emotional,” he said. But as the tears flowed, he added, “I’ve watched hundreds of players retire and you wonder what that would be like. You think you’re prepared …”

Think his promise to not come back can be trusted?

Don’t be naive.

UPDATE:
AOL Fanhouse had a link to a video tribute to Favre’s career interceptions… quite entertaining. “Simply the Best” plays in the background…

I heard the radio announcements, read the glowing, teary-eyed eulogies and can already picture the cheese-tastic Wisconsin parade upcoming. The thing is, I just don’t believe Brett Favre has taken his last snap in the NFL.

He still has more linemen to taunt, young wanna-be gunslingers to harass and reckless throws to make.

There are more receivers to hoist over his head after TD passes, more face masks to grab after someone doesn’t hustle quite enough, more ringing endorsements to receive from John Madden and the rest of the press corps.

Last year we saw the same Favre we’ve seen in the past. He made the big throws, hyped his team like a jubilant young buck, passed along knowledge when needed and, most of all, the reason most of us enjoyed watching Favre-led teams play, he played like he was in the back yard of his childhood home, among friends, having the time of his life.

Call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of the Great American Gunslinger.

Vinny Testeverde played until he was well into his 60s (or something along those lines… ha), so why can’t the toughest QB of his era (and arguably of every era) stick around a few more years?

Last year’s numbers show he hasn’t lost “it” –  4,155 passing yards, 28 TDs, 66.5% completion — so if the right situation presented itself, why wouldn’t he hop in on a contender and keep the good times a rollin’?

No one would argue the fire still burning within Favre. What would stop him from listening to an owner who heads a team with viable pieces but a questionable QB core, willing to offer a Roger Clemens-like prorated half-season deal? He could be the ultimate closer for a team looking to hire a gunslinger to push their team into the playoffs.

The great All-American comeback is already written for Favre.

Sure, he’ll say what “retired” folk typically do at this point. But as the days go on, the itch to return will get increasingly aggravating. Can the Great American Gunslinger resist the urge to return?

The Favre I know and enjoy couldn’t possibly miss out on a good time like that.

Way back in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles conducted a very revealing study: “The Terrell Owens Experiment.” The aim was to overcome a recent string of big, late-season losses (three-straight NFC Championship L’s) by combining their jovial, fun-loving All-Pro leader and quarterback, Donovan McNabb, with a reputed team nuisance, All-Pro receiver, Terrell Owens.

Year one’s findings were positive: the McNabb/T.O. combo produced 14 touchdowns, 1200 yards and an average of 15.6 yards through 77 connections in the regular season; and, despite losing Owens for four games due to injury (two regular season games,and the division and conference championship game), the Eagles reached the Super Bowl.

Year two’s findings resulted in absolute chaos, causing the Eagles to be weary of high-paid free agents. After the Super Bowl, T.O. decided he wanted to rip up the multi-year contract he signed a year earlier and get more money. In-house conflicts ensued — T.O. blamed McNabb for the S.B. loss, and for being selfish (!) — and once the Eagles refused to rework the contract and Owens’ world-famous rambunctious ways took over, “the experiment” officially ended by way of a T.O. dismissal from the team.

Up until this year, and ever since the T.O.-burning, the Eagles remained weary of big-name free agents. They were like a kid who broke their heart for the first time — too scared to jump right back in take another risk.

But just as if it were a clear sign from the football gods, another reputed team troublemaker of sorts, Randy Moss, hit the market this free agent season.

Fresh off a 1400+ yard, 23 TD season and, most importantly, 0 team disputes, the Eagles chose to set aside their lingering pain to take yet another chance at something with the potential to produce NFL magic.

The Eagles missed out on Moss — he resigned with the Patriots for 3 years, $27 mil today ($15 mil in guarantees) — but reportedly made a run at the All-Pro receiver, offering him more than what he signed for (ESPN’s John Clayton said during an interview the number was around $10 mil per).

According to ProFootballTalk.com’s Rumor Mill –

The Eagles, as reported elsewhere, offered a higher annual average than the Patriots. The Eagles also offered more guaranteed money than did the Pats.

But it was a day of high drama. The process went back and forth between the Eagles and the Patriots. At one point, the Eagles thought they had him. Then, it looked like the Pats had him. Then the Eagles. Then the Patriots.

One source said that the Pats won Moss “at the wire.”

Moss, as we’re told, was afraid to leave a place where he’s happy after being unhappy for so many years before that.

The Eagles, as we understand it, knew that Moss was inclined to return to New England but decided to be aggressive.

*insert applause here*

Kudos to the Eagles for making a run at arguably the best receiver of his era, despite being burned in the old, lingering feelings left behind after “The T.O. Experiment.” Shame on them if they let their motivation to get an All-Pro receiver die out here and now.

With the signing of All-Pro cornerback Asante Samuel (ex-Patriot), the Eagles established their willingness to spend, and at the same time opened up a clear path for disgruntled DB Lito Shepard (wants a new contract) to be dangled as trade bait.

Use that bait to land McNabb an All-Pro receiver, and he’ll come through with an All-Pro year.

The evidence is there, clear as daylight. Brian Westbrook proved yet again that he is an amazing double-threat (rushing and receiving) and when it comes down to padding stats versus winning games, no one doubts were he stands (or, slides in this instance). Kevin Curtis had a great year, but would be best suited to assume a 2nd or 3rd option role at receiver. The team gained a new pass-rush specialist with the signing of ex-Raider Chris Clemons, adding to its 9th-ranked defense of 2007.

The team is well on its way — that is, if they finally make the most important move needed to put the team over the top. McNabb, Westbrook and Eagles fans deserve it.

Time is running out and, soon, patience will follow.

(Wonder if a “Fire Andy Reid” domain is available… might be able to sell that off to a crazy fan somewhere down the road…)