The U.S. wins gold

The U.S. are the World Junior Hockey championships after a thrilling 6-5 overtime win last night that saw Canada rally from two down late to force overtime. Some horrible goaltending from Canada. At the opposite end, Jordan Eberle. In a word, "man". Does anybody in the U.S. know? Care?

Strange but true: my jersey sales contact tells me that even before Canada's Olympic hockey team was announced, he saw jersey's that had Crosby with an "A" on the front. If Nike has that kind of information before the rest of the world, that is truly stunning.

One reason for the Dallas Cowboys to be nervous, despite beating the Philadelphia Eagles twice this season: they did the same in 2007 to the New York Giants before getting bounced in the playoffs by the Giants, who went on to win the Super Bowl.

The Boston Red Sox have now signed Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron to go with David Ortiz as those with drug ties. Nice. Beltre, set to make $9 million, had all of 44 RBI this season.

Oakland Raiders QB JaMarcus Russell blew off the team's year end meeting to hang out at The Palms in Las Vegas. I'm sure Raider Fan won't hold that against him the next bad throw he makes.

Not content with his offence and thinking it is too vanilla, South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier is looking at ways to make his offense more dynamic. With some colleges and pro teams running the "Wild Cat" or variations thereof, Spurrier is going with a tweaked version that, in honour of his schools team name, he's calling the "Wildcock". Amazing. South Carolina's squads are the Gamecocks, of course.

Baseball's Hall of Fame announcement will be made today and if the voters get it right, the Toronto Blue Jays will see their first entrant in Robbie Alomar.

Randy Johnson announced his retirement from baseball last night rather than mess with the Hall of Fame announcement. Uncharacteristically classy of him. The Big Unit was as dominant as they came in his prime, and in his 22 seasons chalked up 303 wins and 4875 strikeouts, and will also be remembered for blowing up this seagull in spring training one year.

More news coming out of the Edmonton Oilers rookie dinner. Seems the $8,000 portion on booze has attracted the attention of regulators. So very incredibly lame.

Bill Cowher is said to have met with the Buffalo Bills again yesterday, and the talk that he's backing out for the year is now being viewed as a bargaining ploy. Eventually, somebody will guess right.

Karl Malone writes a piece for SI.com letting the world know his thoughts on the Washington Wizards locker-room gun play. And as an avid hunter, he's none too pleased, and this is something a lot of would be gangsters in the pro-sports ranks would do well to read.

With the Jacksonville Jaguars said to be for sale, and the Buffalo Bills not far off, the company building the would-be NFL stadium for Los Angeles is said to be targeting those two to fill their stadium, along with five other possibilities.

The audio book of Sarah Palin's autobiography has some seriously harsh language from the former Vice Presidential candidate. Not for sensitive ears.

Have a great Wednesday.