For two months everything he touched had turned to Big Blue gold. Now in one NCAA allegation letter the honeymoon ends for John Calipari and the hand wringing begins.

The charge from the NCAA is a monster – a fishy SAT score of a redacted player (Derrick Rose, according to a source).

Then there's a redacted relative of a redacted player (Reggie Rose, Derrick's brother, according to a source) getting away with some free travel (on the team charter, according to a source) which means Calipari's second Final Four banner at a second school could be coming down.

And, of course, the skepticism continues.

All these years and those wins and Calipari couldn't land a plum job because everyone figured a cloud would follow him from Memphis the way it once did from Amherst. Then Kentucky got tired enough of not winning enough, gave the guy their Cadillac job and in two months he transformed an NIT team into a national title contender.

Everyone in blue thought for his next trick he'd walk across the

CONCORD, N.C. – Jimmie Johnson has an office at the Hendrick Motorsports complex here. He doesn't need it. He rarely uses it.

"My car is my office," he says.

Regardless, he has one and, if nothing else it, the hallway that leads to it is useful for displaying trophies from some of his 41 career victories during his Sprint Cup career. They come in all shapes and sizes, many garish, oversized monuments that no one would dare allow to ugly up a home – consider the one they hand out for conquering Delaware's "Monster Mile," a two-foot tall monster that is the antithesis of the Stanley Cup.

He does have three beauties though, perfectly spaced and prominently displayed. Each one is for a Sprint Cup championship – 2006, 2007 and 2008.

"I'm willing to fit another in there," he says, laughing.

As we come out of the all-star "break" and head into Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Jimmie Johnson sits fourth in the points standings. It's a "good position," he says, for a charge at

The Indianapolis 500 is Sunday and we know this because we've been treated to a month of questions to Danica Patrick about when she's going to give NASCAR a try.

It's a sign of how far general interest in open-wheel racing, not to mention its signature event, has fallen. The hard-core fans will still turn out and tune in this weekend, but it's saying something when the most asked question is about the future of a driver who isn't even a favorite to win the race.

Jimmie Johnson has heard the questions and Patrick's open-ended answers about the possibility of a jump. As NASCAR's Sprint Cup champion three years running, Johnson's advice to a potential opponent is pretty simple.

Come on over, although not until you're ready. And, trust me, you're not ready.

His suggestion is for Patrick to re-sign with the Indy Racing League and spend her free time driving on minor league stock car circuits so she can learn to handle the vastly different machine. It's not her lack of talent, he says, it's

DETROIT – The hard times for this city are well-documented and continue by the day; layoffs, plant closings, even an expected bankruptcy filing by General Motors, whose headquarters tower over the city and cars define the place worldwide.

Yet no matter how bad (or good) things get in Detroit, there is one constant: the red machine that churns up each spring in an old hockey barn down by the river.

As they seemingly do every year, as the days grow long and the air warms, the Red Wings offer an example of excellence from the city, a whip smart, powerfully efficient winning organization in a region too often criticized (often unfairly) for being just the opposite.

Tuesday they moved another step toward their 12th Stanley Cup – and fifth since 1997 – with a 3-2 overtime victory over Chicago.

The victory gave the Wings a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference finals with Game 3 in Chicago on Friday. It forces the boy-band young Blackhawks to beat them four of the next five to stop what so often

HOUSTON – They kept saying they expected this, but no one believes them. Kobe said it. Phil said it. Pau said it. They were all lying.

The Los Angeles Lakers were supposed to roll to the NBA Finals, cruise to a waiting LeBron, and while it's rarely as easy as dreamed, it wasn't supposed to be the Houston Rockets that gave them a series, pushed them to the brink.

And that was before Yao Ming(notes) went down, and even Ron Artest(notes) admits, "I was pretty messed up in the head. I'm always messed up in the head, but I was even more messed up in the head."

"We're not talented enough to play with this team," Shane Battier(notes) said, without a hint of humility. He was stating a fact and everyone knows it. The Lakers are better than the Rockets – except maybe they aren't.

The Rockets won 95-80 on Thursday, evening the West semifinal at three games each, and now everything goes to L.A., this entire 65-win, championship-in-the-making season on the line for the Lakers, the final stop in a

CONCORD, N.C. – Jimmie Johnson pried two white Claritin tablets out of their protective seals, popped them in his mouth and chased them with a gulp of Aquafina.

"Seasonal allergies, pollen," he said before joking, "I'll probably be the random [drug test] this week."

All over NASCAR, the talk is about the suspension of driver Jeremy Mayfield, the first to get caught up in the circuit's new toughened drug testing program. The punishment is clear – Mayfield is out indefinitely. The details of the crime are not, even after the Associated Press reported it was not a performance-enhancing drug violation.

NASCAR still has yet to say what exactly Mayfield tested positive for. So in the meantime everyone gossips, including the man who's won the last three Sprint Cup championships.

"I want to know what the hell he was busted for," Johnson said Thursday morning from his office at the Hendrick Motorsports headquarters near Charlotte. "That's the million dollar question.

"There are rumors floating

CLEVELAND – Forget amazing happening, nothing happened here Thursday night. In fact, nothing's happened here the entire NBA playoffs.

The Cleveland Cavaliers unloaded on another overmatched opponent, beating the Atlanta Hawks 105-85 to take a 2-0 series lead. Cleveland is now 6-0 in the playoffs, with each victory by double digits. Only the 2004 Indiana Pacers have ever done that.

It was a brilliant performance, moments of pure basketball genius – passing, spacing and no-look alley-oops to LeBron James(notes). The 20-point margin of victory is unbelievably kind; the Cavs led by 34 in the fourth. The game was over just after LeBron sent the chalk flying and long before he hit a 36-footer to close out the first half and put Cleveland up 24.

Other than that, if you were looking for the And1 MixTape Tour with sound fundamentals, this was it.

If you were looking for the NBA playoffs, well, they don't start in Cleveland for a couple more weeks. So far it's been easy.

"It was not easy,"