Gus Johnson had only just gotten over Brandon Stokley’s deflected TD reception against the Bengals when a controversy arose surrounding his interesting choice of words during the Jaguars-Titans game on Sunday. In calling a Chris Johnson touchdown run, Gus said that the Titans running back had “getting-away-from-the-cops speed!” Whoops.

Gus Johnson is very sorry, kind of. And he said so today, in one of the most striking non-apology apologies in the history of anything. In fact, the apology was so hollow, there was an audible echo. He shouldn’t have bothered, really, except that in saying something, at least he was acknowledging the controversy.

(Wait, isn’t it the Bengals who are usually running from the cops?)

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I can’t honestly say that watching the Oakland Raiders has been a picnic over the past few seasons, but Sunday’s vibe at the Coliseum was the most forlorn and hopeless I’ve seen in a long, long time. The one saving grace for the Silver n’ Black concerning Sunday’s 23-3 loss to Denver? Few locals saw it … the game was blacked out in the Bay Area.

Some pesky rule about a game having to be sold out in order to be on local television. Of course JaMarcus Russell’s performance wasn’t cable-ready to begin with: Those of you who have him on your fantasy rosters, my condolences. He was a glossy 12-of-21 for 61 yards and two interceptions. Worst. QB. Ever? Time will tell. And Rich Gannon was there to see it all, which has to be particularly galling to Al Davis. If you’re not familiar with the Gannon backstory, here it is:

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We’ve got nothing against ESPN analyst Trev Alberts. He seems like a nice enough guy, and the way he took a stand against ESPN management in 2005 — costing himself his own gig there — was both strong-willed and honest. Nonetheless, all the nice things you can say about Alberts don’t make his appointment as the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s new athletic director any more sane.

Consider this:

• Alberts has never been a coach at any level, and now he’s going to be in charge of hiring all the coaches for an entire school, from football (maybe he can pull that off) to gymnastics (whuh?).
• For the entirety of Alberts’ professional career, he has been a talking head, so he’s never done a day of work where he wasn’t reading from a teleprompter.
• UNO is almost certainly leaning on his celebrity status and Nebraska roots — he was an All-American linebacker and Butkus award winner for the Huskers in 1993 — to impress candidates, yet that’s never landed other Nebraska alums at any of his prior posts.

All-in-all, the move seems like a pretty enormous leap of faith to think that Alberts can run the school’s entire athletic department. Coach the football team? OK, maybe we’d buy that. Run the budget for 15 different varsity sports in the middle of an economic recession? Do we even know that he’s successfully run his family’s grocery budget before?

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CBS may not own any NBA TV rights, but they can at least now own this:

After the Beijing Olympics, 17-year-old Shawn Johnson suddenly has one of the world’s most recognizable faces. She’s young, she’s an Olympic gold medalist (she would have won more than one of those, if not for Alicia Sacramone), and she’s had her own official fan club since before her 15th birthday. In fact, that’s part of her problem, as one of those fans, a 34-year-old man named Robert O’Ryan, has taken things way, way, way too far, trying to break onto the set of a CBS studio where Johnson is filming the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars.

The story comes from TMZ, via FANHOUSE — and was mentioned in this morning’s Speed Read, below — and it’s about as scary a fan issue as we can remember. Not only did O’Ryan claim he was “meant to be with,” Johnson, he also was packing a .45 caliber handgun, a shotgun, and a plethora of material that could be used to kidnap someone; duct tape, zip tiles, maps to different Johnson locations (the CBS studio, her house, etc.), love letters and “other clippings and information.”

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Hey, how about this year’s March Madness? Yeah, I haven’t found it that exciting, either. No Cinderella stories to courageously follow. No interesting or intriguing personalities to keep me glued to the set. There’s been more action off the court than on it. Maybe because there’s no more Billy Packer to universally hate. So the announcing crews drudge on. And when you think CBS sports announcing, you eventually think Jim Nantz.

However, Jim is almost 50, and he can’t keep getting March Mad forever. So, what would he like to do after he shuts off the mic for the last time?

Run for office!

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• Jenna Jameson & Tito Ortiz are the proud parents of twin baby boys.

• New disturbing details of the missing NFL boaters situation - survivor Nick Schuyler said the others “freaked out”, and one started throwing punches.

• If more American players keep getting hurt in the WBC, Davey Johnson is taking his baseballs and going home.

• Green may be great for the Boston Celtics’ jerseys, but it’s not so fun for the other 29 NBA teams.

• Oh, Sean Williams, can’t you go anywhere without getting arrested?

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Will 2010 be the last hurrah for March Madness on CBS? The NCAA is currently in an 11-year, $6 billion deal with the network to broadcast its men’s basketball tournament through 2013. However, the NCAA has an opportunity to exercise an option to get out of the deal after next year’s tourney.

(No more Cinderella stories like George Mason for CBS?)

Richard Sandomir of the NEW YORK TIMES brings up the possible scenario of March Madness moving its way off of CBS and bouncing over to another network. Let’s see - what television network with a heavy emphasis on sports programming would be interested in airing such a grandiose event?

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Yes, we realize that the above headline makes absolutely no sense. Or at least it shouldn’t make any sense. The sad part is that it’s absolutely the truth: Billy Packer did, in fact, hire a psychic to find the murder weapons O.J. Simpson used to kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, audio which then made its way to AWFUL ANNOUNCING and HUGGING HAROLD REYNOLDS. Luckily, we now have it too, with typically clever illustration put together by HUGGING HAROLD after the jump.

(We always thought he looked a little like a fat, drunk owl.)

According to Packer (who, incidentally, still doesn’t own a computer), he hired a psychic the family had previously worked with to find the murder weapons in the O.J. case because the psychic — a man named John Monte — called Packer and said he knew where the weapons were.

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Hey, sports fans! Thought you had seen the last of Tom Arnold doing anything sports-related after he left “The Best Damned Sports Show Period”? (Assuming you were one of the 20 people who actually still watch.) Well, MEDIAWEEK says that he’s back on your TV, sort of, as he’s set to star in a Web series for CBS.

Titled “Heckle-U,” the 10-episode series focuses on “an underachieving slacker who excels at heckling during college basketball games with the help of his bartender uncle.” (In case you couldn’t figure it out, Arnold plays the bartender uncle.) So basically, the series will be celebrating the exact type of fan behavior that the NCAA works hard to discourage. Brilliant.

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