Bill Belichick held a couple of media conferences this week in advance of the New England Patriots' upcoming game against Indianapolis.

Traditionally, the Colts rivalry would bring out his best gruff act. Nothing like a big game to draw in the kind of questions he bats away with parsed lips, one-sentence answers and assorted monotone drones. His goal on these occasions is to say little and reveal less.

Last year, when both teams were undefeated and the game was dubbed Super Bowl 41½, Indy television reporter Rich Nye, in an attempt at levity, asked if Belichick was going trick or treating for Halloween.

Belichick deadpanned it "would be a game-time decision," then without hesitation moved on to the next question. He never even contemplated smiling at his own joke.

So here he was this week, in the middle of the most challenging season in years: not undefeated, not starting the league MVP at quarterback, not with a historically powerful offense, not with a deep and healthy running back

The most tried and true formula for reaching the BCS championship game is as follows:

1. Play an easy nonconference schedule.

2. Belong to the Big Ten.

Four times in Joe Paterno's career at Penn State he has coached undefeated teams and didn't win a national title. This year, at 9-0, ranked No. 3 in the BCS standings and facing the easiest road among contenders over the final six weeks, he's poised for a trip to Miami to win it all.

Don't say you can't teach an old Lion some new tricks.

Penn State needs a little help from one of the teams ahead of him, Texas and Alabama. They play in higher-caliber conferences and face multiple major tests away from home. If history is any measure, one, if not both, will lose.

Penn State faces Iowa, Indiana and Michigan State. Only the home game against the Spartans presents any meaningful challenge. The lack of a Big Ten conference championship game means Paterno can cozy up before Thanksgiving and watch everyone kill one another off.

This riveting

PITTSBURGH – They came at him in waves through the years, one test of his authority after another. One test of wills after the next. Tom Coughlin has a way he will run the New York Giants and it isn't for the uncommitted.

"There (are) rules and regulations of the team," he said.

Over the past five years he's won every last battle. He either changed a player's mind or he changed their address. It's the eventual result for Plaxico Burress too, the final prima donna in his reconstruction of the Giants.

Coughlin's crew won the Super Bowl last season, yet this team, 6-1 after a stirring, come-from-behind, 21-14 victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers, may be his most perfect incarnation.

He's gotten rid of the "me-first" players who can kill chemistry. He's found a way to go without colorful stars, even if they were likable. Tiki, Shockey, Strahan and all the rest are gone. The Giants' locker room now consists of mostly like-minded winners who can be described as downright boring, starting

ROSEMONT, Ill. – Anderson Silva's corner kept screaming at him to start acting like, well, Anderson Silva. UFC president Dana White said he thought he was in an "alternate universe" and wanted someone to slap him out of this bad dream.

At the end of the first round of their UFC 90 main event, Patrick Cote, after watching Silva bizarrely bow to him, shrugged in bafflement. That wasn't even as unusual as the moment in the second round when Silva offered a hand to help Cote up off his back, rather than stomp him as you'd expect.

The Silva-Cote middleweight title fight ended in the third round when Cote blew out his knee without any contact. That was as strange, although not as much as the fight lasting to the third round in the first place.

"I was sitting there saying, 'What the [expletive] is going on?' " White said.

Everyone showed up in suburban Chicago looking for Silva to deliver one of his Mike Tyson-esque destructions of Cote, the heavy underdog. This is what Silva fights are

CHICAGO – Less than five months after USA Today declared the "UFC has a fight on its hands," the fight, if you want to call it that, is over.

EliteXC is dead. Its star, Kimbo Slice, is exposed and probably headed for Japan. Its broadcast partner, CBS, is uncertain what it'll do.

Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, not only predicted all of the above, he went crazy at the mere assertion there was a challenger to begin with. It was so frustrating it practically caused him to slam his head against the caged octagon.

Anyone can waste money starting a football league in America, but does that automatically make it a "challenger" to the NFL?

He's declared the death of EliteXC a "great day" in mixed martial arts, yet on Thursday he talked at length about the stains it has left on the sport's still fragile reputation. Propping up Kimbo was one thing. The allegations that EliteXC paid a fighter to fight a certain way in an effort to influence the outcome was

CHICAGO – Sean Sherk has won 32 mixed martial arts fights. He's lost three: to Georges St. Pierre, Matt Hughes and B.J. Penn, each an all-time great in the sport.

"The best of the best of the best," Sherk said.

At 35 he is an MMA stalwart himself, one of the pioneers of the game who first joined the Ultimate Fighting Championship for UFC 30, when he was "just some farm kid from Minnesota."

Yet he enters UFC 90 in nearby Rosemont on Saturday at the crossroads of his career, dealing with questions about his past successes as much as his potential for future ones.

On the humble undercard this time, he'll fight up-and-coming Tyson Griffin, 24, a guy who could rightfully be called a young Sean Sherk. Griffin even modeled some of his wrestling game from watching Sherk fights back when he was just a fan.

Sherk is well aware of the stakes. He was on top of the world 15 months ago, when he outlasted Hermes Franca in a 25-minute test of wills to defend his UFC lightweight championship.

He was

Luke Russert's cell phone would ring just about every morning. His father Tim was on the other line, ready to discuss anything and everything. Politics, not surprisingly, was a main topic for the host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and his 23-year-old son.

Tim Russert died in June, in the middle of a presidential election that has captivated America like few others. There is no doubt in Luke's mind, though, what his father would have most liked to talk about this fall.

"The 5-1 Buffalo Bills," Luke laughed. "He absolutely loved the Buffalo Bills."

Tim Russert, forever a Buffalo guy, sure would have loved this, then.

If you thought the odds were long that Barack Obama would lead in the polls, or John McCain would win the Republican nomination and continue to charge forward, or that the whirlwind that is Sarah Palin would've emerged at all … well, how about them Bills?

One winning season this decade, a no-name quarterback, a journeyman coach and guess who's looking down at the New England

FORT WORTH, Texas – If Joe the Plumber – who isn't a licensed plumber – can become a national authority on presidential tax plans – despite owing back taxes – then certainly I can offer college football gambling advice even though I don't gamble.

Honest, I don't.

And neither do you, of course. Well, unless you are in Nevada. No one gambles on college football except people in Nevada. Everyone knows that.

Not that you need to care about gambling to know one thing – Thursday night on the road is where college football seasons go to die. The latest was BYU's, which with a 6-0 record and a No. 9 ranking was eyeing not just entry into a BCS game but the BCS championship game.

Then TCU horn frogged the Cougars 32-7.

Astute gamblers predicted this because TCU was: a) playing at home, b) playing on a Thursday and c) giving up points (although more on that technicality in second).

Thursday as the Night of the Upset isn't just a figment of your imagination. All those wild scenes of goal posts