If there is one thing that baseball’s steroid mess has wrought, it’s that people are interested in names, and  names exclusively. No one knows what Sammy Sosa took, or how long he’d been on it, or anything of that sort: they just know he tested positive for something he shouldn’t have been taking, and that was that. He’s been branded a steroid user, his legacy tarnished for good.

Nevermind that whoever leaked his name to the New York Times broke federal law, we have the name, and now we can dance on his grave forever.

The NCAA, though, has the exact opposite case on hand. Instead of people breaking law to get names out, it’s actually interpreting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act too hard to save themselves from scandal and rule violations in multiple situations. Things are omitted and blacked out in reports that shouldn’t be, such as flight manifests and summer jobs held by student-athletes. Instead of being a law to protect a student’s grades from coming out and that alone, it’s become a catch-all for everything. And after the Columbus Dispatch reported on this in a great expose a month ago, it looks like people are now springing into action on it:

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John Calipari to Kentucky — the likelihood of which R has already touched on today — is gaining steam. And if he ends up leaving Memphis for the “Notre Dame of college basketball” then it is going to drastically alter the 2009-10 NCAA season.

I say that based on two rumors that are coming out of the pen of well-connected Louisville Courier-Journal writer Rick Bozich, the first of which revolves around salary and the second of which revolves around recruiting.

For starters, Bozich has written that the word on the street has Kentucky offering Calipari an eight-year contract worth at least $32 million. Holy. Schnikes. Yes, that’s $4 million a year, and yes, it’s a $1.65 million per year increase over his current contract at Memphis (the $5 million loyalty — comical — not withstanding). That is seemingly more than enough money to get Cal to Kentucky alone.

But add in Bozich’s second item that relates to recruiting, and it’s not hard to see Coach Cal jumping the Memphis ship by the end of the afternoon. See, Bozich, who knows Worldwide Wes, who knows a thing or two about the Memphis program, is stating that John Wall, the No. 1 recruit in the nation, would suddenly forget about all the other teams that had been recruiting him (Memphis, Kansas, NCSU, Duke) and hop aboard the Cal-wagon headed towards Kentucky.

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EA Sports has had some remarkable success predicting how real life sports will pan out via simulations on the old Xboxes. For instance, some experts even called their Super Bowl prediction/simulation “Scary good.”

And, of course, they busted out the ole simulation machine for the NCAA Tournament as well. Which, via FirstCuts, has a whole lot of chalk running down the road to Detroit.

This season, NCAA Basketball 09 has Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and North Carolina in the Final Four with Louisville defeating Pittsburgh, 76-70. If you want to check out the full simulation, visit the EA Sports web site link here (PDF warning).

EA apparently loves Dayton as well — pushing them all the way to the Sweet 16, although that heavily contradicts the word out of Vegas, which has Dayton as dogs to the last four or five teams out of the tournament.

The video version also sends five Big East teams to the Elite Eight, which is certainly plausible — it would be a surprise if UConn, Pitt and Lousiville all didn’t make it, obviously — but seems like somewhat of a stretch, once you add in Duke, North Carolina and Oklahoma. (Not to mention Wake Forest!)

Of course, doubting EA has never done me any good. I routinely question the quality of the improvements in Madden each year and routinely end up buying the newest version of the game. But, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that fictional basketball information input into a soulless, money-grubbing video machine will not produce the same amazing results as having Rhonda from my office randomly fill out a bracket en route to taking my $20.

Barack Obama became our 44th president today, but that does not mean the markets are all of a sudden going to start shooting upwards exponentially. We have work, a lot of work to do, before we’re anywhere near recovered. He said as much in his speech. (Which Bill Clinton totes loved!)

The latest sports victim of all this? Maybe, just maybe Stanford University. The athletic department is foreseeing a $5 million dip in revenue over the next few years and it’s contemplating staff, and even team, cuts.

The school is expected to decide in the next 30 to 60 days on staff cuts, a Stanford employee familiar with the budget issues told the AP on condition of anonymity because the person is not authorized to discuss the shortfall.

The person also said Tuesday it wasn’t clear which teams, if any, would be considered for elimination — and it likely wouldn’t be until next season so at the earliest in the fall.

“That’s the last thing they want to consider. They don’t want it to affect student-athletes,” the person said. “We do have some serious budget problems. We’re looking at other ways (to save).”

The difficult thing for Stanford? Its fringe, less popular sports are some of its most successful. Both men’s and women’s running programs — track and cross-country — have a rich history of championships.  And according to the AP, women’s volleyball, women’s basketball, men’s gymnastics, men’s golf, baseball, men’s and women’s swimming, women’s gymnastics, women’s water polo  and women’s tennis all finished incredibly high nationally. That’s a lot of good, solid programs there.

If teams have to be cut — and again, this is a big if at the moment — that’s an awfully tough decision to make.

In times like these, it’s best we all turn to Stanford’s mascot the Tree (pictured), and ask him to see us through these tough days ahead.

So gas costs a lot. I don’t own a car (and I’m a renter!), but this is what I’ve heard. And then there was this whole stock market/AIG nonsense earlier this week, and a war we’re pumping a lot of money into, and the airline industry isn’t doing so hot, and then the whole housing market has gone to hell and … hey kids, welcome to America!

Would you like to travel in a nice fancy plane on your partial NCAA track and field scholarship? Would ya, would ya? Well, that might be what we consider a huge luxury this year:

The NCAA typically has provided charter services in situations where air travel is appropriate and seats are limited on commercial airlines, but reduced capacity could dramatically increase the cost as well as availability of chartered flights. Projections indicate that charter costs could double or even triple during the next 18 months.

In response, the national office assembled an internal staff group to develop recommendations to alleviate some of the budget strain resulting from increased travel costs and to get ahead of anticipated problems created by diminished airline capacity.

NCAA championships officials acknowledge that adjustments may be necessary to manage some of these costs and the reduction in scheduled commercial flights, but the governance bodies are being urged to take appropriate steps to minimize the impact on student-athletes.

Well, if nothing else, it looks like the NCAA is at least trying their hardest to keep kids on flights. And they say it’s just money-grubbing operation, tisk tisk. If things fall through though, I say it’s time once and for all to invent a flying car that runs on enthusiasm, heart and desire. Every team would get to their destination safe and efficiently, except for Northsouth Harmony State, which doesn’t give a hoot about teamwork and whose sporting teams have hearts of black.

See also: Awful Announcing, Eye on Sports Media