Sports World

This just in: NBC has traded Bob Costas to CBS for Ashton Kutcher and the entire library of "Green Acres" reruns. The deal has not been finalized, but Chris Paul has threatened to try to block the deal, citing many of the "Green Acres" episodes as kind of schlocky and in need of another rewrite. This just in: Washington has traded the Lincoln Memorial to St. Louis for the Arch, three Italian joints and the Rams. Chris Paul has sued to try to block the deal, citing the Rams as a fictional entity with no real market value.

Let's take a deep breath and hold off on the canonization of Roger Goodell. The puffs of white smoke coming out of the chimney are a bit much. Yes, Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, slapped down the New Orleans Cheating Saints pretty good Wednesday. Somebody will make a T-shirt out of that soon. The big letters on the front: NOCS. On the back: a picture of Brett Favre, bleeding from the nose. Goodell didn't have a difficult decision. One of his teams got caught doing something really stupid and Neanderthal and then lied about it. Suspend the guy in charge for a year, do the same to the guy in charge of the guy in charge for six months, collect some cash and take away some draft choices.

It dominated this year's sports scene like a black-tasseled whip. Athletes were embarrassed by it, executives were crushed under it, and at least one former Notre Dame football coach tripped over it and fell on his big fat face. FOR THE RECORD: Athletes' transgressions: A column by Bill Plaschke in the Dec. 9 Sports section about media coverage of the many transgressions of sports figures this year said we were treated to reports about allegations made in court that basketball star Dwyane Wade had given his wife a sexually transmitted disease.

Sunday was supposed to be the day the sports potatoes got off their couches. This is the NFL's contribution to society. No games — and no, the Pro Bowl is not a game. It is an exhibition. The kids down the block playing flag football hit harder. It is a day to be devoid of five guys, sitting at a table in a TV studio, making six-figure salaries to state the obvious for an audience that will nod in deep appreciation at being told that the Patriots need to establish their running game.

Perhaps no news story in recent decades carried with it the shock attendant to the Lakers' Magic Johnson announcing he was retiring from basketball because he had contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Was it possible? The 6-foot-9 dynamo from Michigan State, the big guy with the big smile that had illuminated NBA arenas for 12 seasons? The shock rocked the sports world. In New York, Pat Riley was preparing to coach his Knicks against the Orlando Magic at Madison Square Garden.

You say you want to know what's wrong with USC football. You say you can't imagine how a football team from USC could lose six of nine games. You say you still don't understand how a football team from USC could lose to Memphis State at home by 14 points, but lose to Notre Dame at South Bend by only four. You say you wonder why a football team from USC can hold Washington to 14 points and Penn State to 10, but give up 32 to Arizona State and 52 to Cal.

I have no time or patience for sentiment. But it occurs to me that there's a little 6-year-old in all sports fans -- or at least there should be. Six-year-olds don't worry about drug tests or collective-bargaining agreements. They don't care about Scott Boras' counteroffer, or what the presiding officer has to say about blood-alcohol levels. Six-year-olds just want to win, baby. Here, according to a 6-year-old boy I know, is how various sports would differ if you turned them over to the kids.

Lance Armstrong takes his message straight to his 2 million followers on Twitter. NASCAR signs up former newspaper writers-turned-bloggers to follow the sport in tough economic times. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball hire their own reporters to cover their leagues, while college conferences try to limit access to events in the lucrative Internet world, where websites such as Facebook can provide instant game coverage. "When I log onto my computer in the morning, I'm putting up three screens," said NASCAR's Ramsey Poston, who launched a "Citizen Journalist Media Corps" this year.

When Raider defensive lineman Howie Long first met Dominic Aguilar, a 4-year-old from Torrance who was severely burned when his home was destroyed by fire in December, he couldn't help but think of his own children. "I have three small children of my own and the thing you realize is this kind of thing could happen to anyone," Long said. "He's not unlike any of my kids. He's just a 4-year-old boy who happens to have been burned." Long met Aguilar, an avid sports fan, in early March.

Museum: a word that produces its own dust. The institutions are not without importance, of course, but who are we kidding? Many museums can also be interminable — like Ashton Kutcher movies, or Patti LaBelle renditions of the national anthem. Oddly, one of L.A.'s most fetching museums is a dirty little secret, in an industrial area east of the Coliseum, the kind of place God hides the things he flubbed. The Sports Museum of Los Angeles opened in 2008, closed in 2009 and now is open only for special tours or charity events.

Museum: a word that produces its own dust. The institutions are not without importance, of course, but who are we kidding? Many museums can also be interminable — like Ashton Kutcher movies, or Patti LaBelle renditions of the national anthem. Oddly, one of L.A.'s most fetching museums is a dirty little secret, in an industrial area east of the Coliseum, the kind of place God hides the things he flubbed. The Sports Museum of Los Angeles opened in 2008, closed in 2009 and now is open only for special tours or charity events.

This just in: NBC has traded Bob Costas to CBS for Ashton Kutcher and the entire library of "Green Acres" reruns. The deal has not been finalized, but Chris Paul has threatened to try to block the deal, citing many of the "Green Acres" episodes as kind of schlocky and in need of another rewrite. This just in: Washington has traded the Lincoln Memorial to St. Louis for the Arch, three Italian joints and the Rams. Chris Paul has sued to try to block the deal, citing the Rams as a fictional entity with no real market value.

Legendary boxer Oscar De La Hoya has a message for a sports world that idolized and doted on him. "Hi. I'm Oscar De La Hoya and I'm an alcoholic. " So, we have tarnish on the Golden Boy. The fighter who carried the sport for nearly a decade, who proved you didn't have to be a heavyweight to appeal to the masses, who generated nearly $700 million in pay-per-view revenue before retiring at 36 in 2009, is telling all. We never thought he was a choir boy. There have been stories of boozing and womanizing along the way. But he was a boxer.

The ugly cloud of cheating and greed that hovers over NCAA athletics these days does not darken anything for Farren Benjamin. Nothing blocks her sunshine. She says she is a student-athlete. "Some people get that order wrong," she says. "They think they are athlete-students. " She will be an academic senior and an athletic junior at USC this fall. She will take 16 credits, including four toward a graduate degree. She will work in the Trojans' sports information department as an unpaid intern and will spend four hours a day in training for her varsity sport.

The variety of summer activities — now playing in camps, clinics and tourneys — is a further reminder that the days of three major sports are over. There is, seemingly, a sport for every kid and temperament. For the cerebral, there is cross-country. For the anti-cerebral, there is football. For the old-schoolers, there is baseball. For the new-schoolers, there is lacrosse. For the jumpy, there is volleyball. For the ironic, surfing. Ironically, I have never surfed myself, yet I find myself down here in Huntington Beach, mecca of the sport, actually mecca of every sport.

Sometime on Monday, an aircraft will touch down in the United States and from it will emerge a shaggy-haired, 49-year-old former journalist from Chile by the unlikely name of Harold Mayne-Nicholls. That's when the latest round of fawning will begin. Things have gone pretty well for Mayne-Nicholls since the days when he was scribbling reports on various doings in Santiago, Valparaiso and elsewhere. These days he glories in being not only president of the Chilean soccer federation but also a fast-rising FIFA suit.

In the month since Magic Johnson walked away from basketball, the NBA has returned to the business of glorifying its product. Perhaps only the Lakers are feeling the impact of Johnson's absence. The rest of the league, it seems, has moved on . . . and away from the AIDS issue. But for Michael Mellman, Johnson's physician, the subject did not end when the Laker guard re-retired Nov. 4 in the wake of criticism from some players. "Something's wrong here. It just doesn't sit right," Mellman said.

Here's a book title you won't be seeing soon: The Joy of Being a Referee. These are not salad days for those who blow whistles, drop flags or wear chest protectors. Same for those policing other sports, even those sitting in tall chairs and getting suntans at tennis matches. It isn't just the Tim Donaghy saga. Yes, he poisoned the pool and got us all thinking about the fragile line we walk by trusting the people in charge of our games.

Any baseball game can hinge on a close call — the rapid movement of a line drive off the bat or a 200-pound body shifting in front of an umpire's line of vision. Is the ball fair or foul? Is the runner safe or out? For years, the call — whether perceived as good or bad — was considered part of the game, a human element as wholly ingrained in baseball's fabric as a misplayed ground ball or errant throw. But now Major League Baseball is tussling with another kind of close call: Should it stick to tradition or consider leaning more on technology, as the NFL is already doing?

When he reveals the next chapter in his celebrated pro basketball career on national television Thursday, LeBron James will finally end the frenzied pop culture speculation that set Twitter, the national media and sports news networks ablaze for the last several weeks. . But the superstar free agent's unusual announcement arrangement with ESPN — complete with a glitzy one-hour prime-time special that promises to devote the advertising proceeds to charity — is already raising eyebrows for its infomercial-like feel and its apparent creation of a new standard for a star breaking his or her own news.