BRADENTON, Fla. – Inside a gym, at a sports school first built for the minting of young tennis prodigies, a group of basketball coaches conduct an experiment of sorts. This is not an experiment like most experiments, with charts or doctors or a system of controls. Instead it is the testing of a vision, the affirmation of the coaches' belief that there is a right way to build a certain basketball player today.

The two subjects of this experiment stand over 7 feet tall. In basketball language they are "super bigs" – men who loom like sequoias above the rest of their teammates. Only these super bigs aren't men but rather 17-year-old boys. The tallest of them, Meng Xiang Yu, is 7-foot-2 and from China. The other, Satnam Singh, is 7 feet. He is from India. And since they are young and raw and from places where basketball is new, they are blank canvases for the coaches at the IMG Academy, where Meng and Satnam have come to learn basketball.

Because inside this gym the coaches are determined to

The great threat to the fabric of football did not brandish an arsenal of guns when I met Chris Kluwe in his living room in the fall of 2011. He didn't swill whiskey as we drove to his band's practice. Nor did he store PEDs in his refrigerator, instead opting for piles of fruit and a carton of milk. His television was off as it often is because – gasp – Kluwe likes to read.

All of which makes the Minnesota Vikings' release of Kluwe on Monday more perplexing. For eight years, Kluwe was the team's punter. In fact he had been a very effective punter, deadening his kicks as if his leg was a 9-iron. He was a sure-handed holder on field goals and extra points, invisible in the way you want your holder to be. And given the trouble teams have in finding gifted punters and dependable holders, it seemed he would remain the Vikings' punter for a long, long time.

[More: White House removes petition to get Tim Tebow signed to Jaguars]

But the NFL doesn't always respect reliable players who are role

Apparently the New York Jets couldn't have hated Tim Tebow more. They dumped him on the first Monday after the NFL draft, knowing that other teams' rosters will be filled and the chance Tebow finds another job in the league is bleak.

It wasn't enough for the perpetually dysfunctional half of East Rutherford's two football franchises to drop Tebow from its roster. It had to humiliate their backup quarterback on the way out the door, timing his release to come at the worst possible moment.

The coach who never seemed to like Tebow issued a statement on Monday that thanked him for being in shape, which coming from a man whose most salient comment in the last three years had to do with eating a "goddamn snack" seemed as backhanded a swipe as any. Rex Ryan couldn't run Tebow to the curb fast enough. Then he had to jump on his head.

Tim Tebow saw just 77 offensive snaps this past season with the Jets. (USAT Sports)

All of which would make sense if Tebow came pulling an arrest record or showed up late for meetings or cost the Jets the playoffs with a bad interception. Instead,

Fresno State DB Phillip Thomas catches a pass during the NFL scouting combine. (USA TODAY Sports)The Washington Redskins picked a safety named Phillip Thomas from Fresno State in the fourth round of the NFL draft Saturday. What made this ironic is that last year, on the day after the draft ended, they signed an unselected safety named Phillip Thomas.

Except that they didn't.

Because last year's Phillip Thomas wasn't real.

Actually he was real. He was a cornerback from Syracuse who grew up in Miami, who ran the 40-yard dash in 4.56 seconds and could bench press 225 pounds 14 times. And when he wasn't selected in the 2012 draft, he signed a contract with the Philadelphia Eagles. But he also had a very persuasive imposter who created a convincing Facebook page and contacted me several times last spring saying he had signed a rookie free-agent deal with the Redskins.

He posted pictures taken inside Redskins Park with images of a team playbook on a nightstand and inside the club's new practice bubble. At the time it seemed odd but mildly plausible. Teams are slow to release the names

The link to their lives lurks in the darkest corners of the internet, tucked in a place where network television won't dare to go but human curiosity nonetheless treads. Joe Theismann likes to call it "The Fraternity," this club of men who found their legs twisted and broken and ruptured in the most gruesome ways. After the night of Nov. 18, 1985 he became the fraternity's unofficial president, rushing in each subsequent unfortunate soul screaming in agony on a football field or basketball court as his teammates looked away in horror.

Joe Theismann receives attention after receiving the career-ending injury against the Giants. (Getty)Theismann's moment came in his last game as the Washington Redskins' quarterback when New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor thundered through the line, jumped on his back and Theismann's right leg cracked in half. That it happened on Monday Night Football just as technology had grown to a point where such an injury could line up perfectly in a television screen magnified the horror until everyone could all but hear the crack.

And it became all anyone

The Bruins hosted the first major sporting event in Boston since the bombings on Monday. (AP)

BOSTON – They gathered late Wednesday night in a room beneath the TD Garden, each of the EMTs, firemen and state police officers holding their own horrible memory of the marathon gone wrong and the blood that stained the sidewalks. This was supposed to be a celebration and in a way it was: the Boston Marathon's first responders waiting to meet hockey players barely 55 hours after the first bomb went off. But what do you say when the common bond in the room were images of severed legs and gushing arteries?

"The number of children was incredible," said Jason Yutkins, an emergency medical technician with Boston EMS.

He was on Boylston Street when the bombs went off, racing to the site of the first explosion to see a sight none of them will likely ever witness again. So much blood. So many injuries. Even on Wednesday, after the first major sporting event in town – a 3-2 Bruins loss to the Buffalo Sabres – they were still numb, the visions of two days before raw. One by one

BRADENTON, Fla. – The bat, long and thin and dipped in black paint, can’t weigh more than 34 ounces, but it is the name on the barrel – the one printed in gold – that makes the lumber so heavy. Manny Ramirez Jr. smiles as he touches the letters. For 17 years he’s lived with this name and the stares and looks and jokes that come with it until he can do nothing but shake his head. Son of Manny. That’s who he is.

Manny Ramirez Jr. has his father's work ethic when it comes to hitting. (IMG Academy)What’s a name anyway?

“I think people might assume unrealistic things for now, but it doesn’t bother me,” he says.

Perhaps no recent baseball name other than Alex Rodriguez brings more baggage than the larger-than-life persona of Manuel Aristides Ramirez Onelcida – better known as Manny Ramirez. For almost 19 years Manny Sr. was one of baseball’s best hitting acts with a vicious swing, long home runs and a running clown show explained away as “Manny being Manny” until it wore old at each stop. Then the home runs disappeared and the suspensions for

BOSTON – At 11:45 on Tuesday morning, Michael Groffenberger, the vice president of the nation's second-oldest jewelry store, Shreve, Crump & Low, was unfurling an American flag from the second-floor balcony of their franchise store at 39 Newbury St. He and two of his employees tried to tie the flag to the railing but the midday breeze kept lifting it from their hands. They brought out a roll of packing tape but the tape didn't hold. Finally, someone gave him a hammer and a handful of nails. He nailed the flag to the balcony's ledge.

Michael Groffenberger and his employees hung a flag over their jewelry store. (Y! Sports)Then he stood back.

This was his stand, however small, against the mysterious bomber and the blood and broken metal just one block to the south in the Back Bay neighborhood and less than two blocks to the west.

"I think the flag is a symbol of community," Groffenberger said a few minutes later as he stood in front of his shop. "It's the symbol of who we are. We are part of Boston, of Back Bay. We are part of Boston and the United States."

He asked