He's the kind of coaching candidate whom T. Boone Pickens would trade a few oil wells for – impeccable résumé, big name and a national championship ring on his finger.

He's at the career crossroads where maybe a change of scenery would do him good. Oklahoma State, with its wealth of facilities, history and, assuredly, contract, might be just enough to draw him in.

There is only one thing that stops the coach dead in his tracks and dismisses the entire idea instantly – the wealth of that one booster, T. Boone Pickens.

"I don't want to be owned by him," the coach said.

This is the conundrum for Oklahoma State. It's got a sports-crazed alumnus in Pickens, who has billions to burn. But rather than just buy a pro team, like his buddy Jerry Jones, he would rather pour it all into his alma mater.

He has donated a reported $290 million to the school, $265 million of which went to athletics. And that's before his money grew through investments. They've named everything from the football stadium

The other day reporters asked Geoff Ogilvy, an Australian golfer, for some gambling advice.

Some bookies are offering the following Masters bet: even money on Tiger Woods vs. the field, a dual testament to Woods' genius and everyone else's weakness.

"It's not far off the mark," Ogilvy said. "But I'd probably take even money on the field. I'd rather have 90 guys playing against Tiger."

Ogilvy's assessment actually made headlines around the world – and mostly because it seemed like he was expressing doubt about Tiger. It was a comical reaction considering even money on one player vs. the field is an almost absurd proposition. The field should always be favored.

Then again, who's ready to risk real money that Tiger won't be slipping on a green jacket Sunday?

This is what the PGA Tour has gotten to, Tiger Woods and everyone else. He comes into Augusta, the major that suits him best, having won nine of his last 11 tournaments. The buzz isn't just about him winning this week, but starting a

As the news pours out of China about the latest round of murdered monks and slaughtered nuns, as crowds around the world protest the Olympic torch, the prevailing wisdom now is that the Beijing Olympics are looking like, if we're lucky, merely a redo of the 1936 Berlin Games. And that's only in the unlikely event the bloodshed ends.

And so the International Olympic Committee's apologists are claiming the ridiculous decision to award this summer's games to China in the first place was a worthwhile gamble to modernize the host country even though it appears to be a bet that they will lose.

But this was no gamble.

No person with even a modicum of sense could have believed the Olympics would cause China to reverse course on human rights, democracy, freedom and the environment. To believe it overnight would turn into Switzerland is not gambling, it's insanity.

Nor would anyone think that freedom seekers in Tibet, their cries mostly ignored for the last 50 years, would decide to just stand

Yahoo! Sports national columnist Dan Wetzel lived the dream: He covered the first day of the NCAA tournament … from his local watering hole, 24 Seconds in Berkley, Mich.

12:02 p.m. EDT: For the fifth consecutive year (except the year I didn't do it), I've convinced my rube bosses at Yahoo! Sports to allow me to watch the NCAA tournament from a local spots bar and write a live blog about the games, the characters, the gambling and whatever else it takes to make them think this is work.

In past years we've tackled some serious issues, such as could a 900-foot Jesus be a capable basketball player, is Northwestern State the most arrogant school in America and does anyone think Mike Krzyzewski really drives a Silverado?

Expect these topics and other big issues to be broached again.

My freeloading father is joining me again, and in an effort to class things up I've brought in Tony Chiles, assistant basketball coach at Drexel. I told him this was like being invited to break down the games on

Down in Florida, Dr. Richard Lapchick rails against the pathetic graduation rates for players who compete in the NCAA tournament – barely more than 50 percent for African Americans, according to his latest study. It's far worse when you consider the players on just the good teams.

Up in Ann Arbor, Mich., a stinging four-day newspaper investigation shows that one of college sports supposed academic bastions, Michigan football, might turn out decent graduation numbers but might be doing it by institutionally steering players to easy majors and sympathetic professors. You might get a diploma, but do you get an education?

Out in Omaha, Neb., the NCAA prepares for the first round of its billion-dollar men's basketball tournament with a marquee prime-time game featuring two freshmen – Southern California's O.J. Mayo and Kansas State's Michael Beasley – who are unlikely to finish the semester, let alone their degrees any time soon.

They are only serving out their college purgatory because

As advances in technology go, the Internet's ability to broadcast NCAA tournament games has to rank up there with Johannes Gutenberg's movable type, Heinrich Hertz's Electromagnetic Theory of Light and the genius who figured out how to put bottled beer taste in a can.

Just last year American businesses lost an estimated $1.2 billion in worker productivity during the NCAA tournament, mostly during its first two days. And that was before the Internet feed was as widely available or of as high quality as it will be this year.

So this could be a milestone year when the tournament's early rounds go from a shared screw-off venture – people crowded into bars and huddled into break rooms – to a solo one with everyone quiet in their cubicles.

The good folks who run this thing have even programmed a "boss button" which allows the worker watching whether George Mason can upset Notre Dame to, with a single keystroke, dump the screen when their supervisor comes by looking for their TPS report.

No

In 1982-83, the Arizona Wildcats won just four men's basketball games. After the season, they hired Lute Olson as their coach and by his second season, 1984-85, he had them in the NCAA tournament.

They haven't missed it since.

It's one of the most remarkable runs of success in college basketball history. The 23 consecutive appearances ties Olson with North Carolina's Dean Smith (1975-97) for the longest such streak by a single coach. Only the Heels' 27-year streak (1975-2001) is longer for a program and, of course, Arizona is still in progress.

And not to take anything from Carolina, but the Heels had been an established power for decades when they started their streak. Olson built his out of nothing in the middle of the desert.

It would be like Oregon State suddenly making every tournament between next season and 2032 – not to mention reaching four Final Fours and winning 11 Pac-10 titles and a national championship along the way. You'd bet the house against it ever happening.

But en

In college sports, it is often the athletic program that brings scandal upon the university, not the university that brings scandal upon the athletic program.

But here was Scott Sutton, who had turned Oral Roberts basketball into one of the premier mid-major programs in the country (it wrapped up its third consecutive NCAA tournament bid Tuesday), opening up the newspaper every morning last fall to new and wilder revelations.

The Tulsa, Okla., school was founded in 1963 by Granville Oral Roberts, a legendary evangelical Christian who started preaching at tent revivals and through radio and television built an empire. He started conservative Oral Roberts University, he said, on order from God, one of many divinely inspired projects.

But last fall, with Oral semi-retired in California, scandal surrounded his son Richard Roberts, the school's president at the time. There were lawsuits alleging misappropriated funds, lavish spending, patronage, political shenanigans and unfair firings.

The