From the moment it was born, the Big East was a dead league walking. Even through its best years, the whole thing felt like an arranged marriage made for network boardrooms. Now that it is ending, the biggest surprise isn't that the Big East has fallen apart for good, but rather that it lasted for 34 years.

On Tuesday, the conference begins its final tournament in its current form. Then again, it's hard to know what form that is exactly. The Big East has been many things in its existence – a union of small Northeastern basketball schools, a football league, a haphazard hybrid of both. Each reinvention was another attempt to resuscitate a league that was never going to be saved. Its demise was only a matter of time. UConn coach Jim Calhoun reacts during the 2011 Big East tournament. (Getty)

The problem with the Big East is that it started as an experiment. Could the best basketball schools from Boston to Washington form a league based on television money? For a time, they could. As college basketball blossomed and coaches became superstars themselves,

BRADENTON, Fla. – The Great New Thing does not look like Tyler Wilson standing in the pocket. The Great New Thing does not hold tight as the pass rush descends. The Great New Thing does not run to the sideline in long, loping strides to avoid a sack. The Great New Thing is supposed to dash around tacklers and throw while scampering. The Great New Thing is supposed to be dazzling and dynamic and all the words that anyone can invent to explain the way football is going to change.

Except what do you do in the year of the read-option quarterback when all you are is a version of the traditional passer that has worked for decades?

Tyler Wilson participates in a passing drill during last month's NFL scouting combine. (USA TODAY Sports)

"I'm not going to be that [read-option] guy," Wilson, the former Arkansas quarterback, said this week during a break in his training at the IMG Academy. "I am a guy who uses his own ability."

In every NFL draft there is a Tyler Wilson, a player who the draft experts say is not The Great New Thing. The list of negatives they spill come in a nitpicking

What is the price of desperation heaved into the frigid air of a Denver evening? What's the worth of a mistimed leap?

On Friday, the Baltimore Ravens bestowed upon their quarterback, Joe Flacco, what appears to be the most lucrative contract in NFL history, handing him a reported $120 million over six years. It is most likely a contrived title, the padding of extra non-guaranteed money to make the overall deal look bigger than it is.

Joe Flacco is lifted into the air by teammates after defeating the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII. (AP)But regardless of the contract's standing in history, $120 million is an absurdly large sum for a quarterback who has never been to the Pro Bowl or even seen as among the very best at his position.

Yet as good as Flacco was in Super Bowl XLVII, winning the MVP with 287 passing yards and three touchdowns, the money was probably already his. The fact he brought the Ravens to New Orleans at the same time his previous contract was about to expire forced Baltimore's management to give Flacco his $120 million. Even if the 49ers had come back to win

They pulled Jacoby Jones all over Hollywood this week: Photo shoots, interviews, introductions, famous people. All those handshakes. Smile here, look there.

He met Karina Smirnoff, who will be his partner on Dancing With The Stars, and after a few minutes he realized she was a female version of him – so full of life. Then he went on Good Morning America. And could you believe it, Jacoby Jones on Good Morning America?

It wasn't all that long ago he was thrilled just to be on the Cox 10 channel back home in New Orleans.

"I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately," he said Thursday morning after finally returning to the Baltimore Ravens' practice facility.

Jacoby Jones awaits a pass from Joe Flacco that resulted in a 70-yard TD against the Broncos. (AP)But this is his new life, the one born in a 2013 that has been like nothing he has known before. There was that catch in Denver, the 70-yard touchdown just seconds from defeat that instead sent the Ravens into overtime of a playoff game they would eventually win. Then came

The act is leadership regardless of circumstance.

So yes, Tom Brady is a man wealthy beyond all reasonable measure, with a wife who is worth even more. And, yes, he could retire tomorrow to a Brazilian beach with Gisele Bundchen and never need another dollar in his life. Last year, Forbes Magazine reported that they were the world's second-highest paid celebrity couple behind Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z. And while such things are never fully accurate, the Forbes estimate that Brady and Gisele together made $72 million suggests he is a very rich man indeed.

Tom Brady has guided the Patriots to two straight AFC title games. (AP)But in a world where worth is measured by the number of commas and zeros on a paycheck, the fact Brady is taking less money to help the New England Patriots continue to win is going to matter in a locker room come December or January when the savings turn into victories.

SI.com is reporting that Brady has agreed to a three-year contract extension that will only pay him $27 million. To most of us, this is a figure so

WASHINGTON – This was on the morning of the first home game, back in November 2001, when there was still hope for Michael Jordan as a Washington Wizard. And yet he already seemed tired by it all. We stood in an area beneath the stands of what was then called the MCI Center – myself, a reporter from Japan and a writer from Sports Illustrated.

"This is an elite opportunity!" shouted a man who walked Jordan to us. But it hardly felt elite. The Wizards had just finished their morning shootaround. It was cold in the arena, which also houses a hockey team. Jordan shivered. He smiled wanly at the Sports Illustrated writer, a man with whom he was friendly, but whose magazine he hated for once imploring him to give up his brief baseball career. The man, as a matter of routine, asked Jordan to let him interview him. Jordan, as had become his custom too, declined. It was almost a joke between them. The Japanese reporter handed Jordan a DVD as a gift. He took it awkwardly. He mumbled a couple

NEW ORLEANS – The blitz is called "Cable" and Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees didn't hesitate to call it on the play that decided the Super Bowl.

In fact, he already knew he was going to call it. That was when the San Francisco 49ers stood on Baltimore's 7-yard line, trailing by five with 2:39 and four downs to win the game. Pees loves Cable, calls it "a darn good blitz," the kind of thing that can rattle a quarterback, making him panic and then throw the ball to a place he doesn't want.

Five years ago, as the defensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, Pees called the same blitz in the waning seconds of the Super Bowl. Back then, the Patriots held a four-point lead on the New York Giants. Only that night Giants receiver Plaxico Burress beat Ellis Hobbs, the cornerback covering him, for a touchdown. Burress made a double move then jumped high in the air to grab the pass.

[Related: Greatest Super Bowl ever? Terrell Suggs thinks so]

Oh, how they killed

NEW ORLEANS – And on Friday, Roger Goodell emerged from hiding. For a week, the NFL's commissioner has been exiled from his Super Bowl, ducking into dark cars and riding behind a line of wailing police motorcycles. His meetings in the city that hates him have been with safe subjects – team owners, union officials and the people with whom he worked to rebuild the Superdome.

When he emerged for his grand media conference at week's end it was less a celebration of his imperial power and more the appearance of a dictator in the throes of revolution. Outside the Ernest Morial Convention Center, New Orleans rages, still upset over the bounty scandal. His name is no good in the city's restaurants. He's been pinned to dartboards, put in compromising positions on Mardi Gras floats and even ordered to eternal damnation on a banner that has danged from the side of the Superdome he helped save. His players mock him. His suspensions have been overturned. Six and one half years