Some semi-meaningless sports info I learned over the weekend:

How many of you missed the NFL Pro Bowl? Not that it was anything too engaging to miss, but some pigskin aficionados like to sit through perhaps the worst all-star contest on the planet because it is the final fix of football until preseason games kickoff. It seems like it's always been on a Sunday, one week after the Super Bowl. Saturday night, there I was, reading about it and thinking I had 24 hours to catch the action from Hawaii. The next day, a guy at my health club asks me what time the game starts. I was not alone.

I guess we must know EVERYTHING when prepping for a fantasy baseball draft. On my league site over the weekend, it was noted that Braves pitcher John Smoltz is getting divorced from his wife Dyan after 16 years of marriage. OK, so on April 1st, when I'm trying to chose a starting pitcher, will Smoltz be a good pickup because he is single again (turning 40 in May, no less) or will his mind be elsewhere? Does visitation of his four kids and alimony spike a guys ERA?

Former UW-Stevens Point basketball standout Nick Bennett is currently soaking up what he can at Marquette. Bennett is on Tom Crean's staff as a student assistant. Meanwhile back in Point, his fiancée is Becky Pepper, a senior on the Pointers women's squad. On Saturday, Becky's future father-in-law, former Stevens Point men's coach Jack Bennett, called her final home game along with yours truly for rebroadcast on FSN North. The wedding is set for 7/7/07, and both Jack and I snickered when Pepper took a shot to the face. "There goes the wedding picture!" exclaimed Jack. My thoughts exactly.

The Texas Rangers will give their starting right field slot to former Brewers outfield prospect Nelson Cruz. it's his job to lose heading into spring training. So let's sort this out one more time: Texas lost Carlos Lee, who was a rental, but got a young outfielder in the deal with Milwaukee. The Rangers unloaded a relief pitcher that was not closing any more (Francisco Cordero) and two outfielders they had no use for (Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix). Cordero plugged the Brewers bullpen hole that Derrick Turnbow created, but plan on platooning Mench, who was awful after the trade. Nix will be in the minors, on the bench or gone.

So, why did the Brewers include Cruz in the deal again? Wouldn't an outfield of Cruz, Bill Hall and Corey Hart excite fans more about the future? Here's why they did what they did: to make it appear that the team wasn't giving Lee away, which would have been a straight up deal for Cordero. Keep an eye on Cruz. We already know that Mench was a mistake.

I've got to give it up to our college basketball radio guys who call the games for the Badgers, Golden Eagles and Panthers. Matt Lepay, Steve True and Bill Johnson are all conscious of repeating the time remaining and the score. It seems like that is becoming a lost art over the airwaves, but all three guys keep you posted when you don't have the pictures in front of you. Keep it up, gentlemen!

It's a minor glitch, but I found out through a friend at Spaulding that the old NBA basketballs, which were the new basketballs for two months (until the old leather basketballs made a comeback), yellowed the nets. Some of the substance rubbed off the synthetic balls and colored up the twine in NBA arenas, including the Bradley Center.