• Is ex-Laker Rick Fox calling it quits on his basketball broadcast career?

If so, could he bring his sister Jeanene onto the show before he goes?

• This Celtics-Bulls series is turning into an instant playoff classic.

• Trev Alberts: Form the TV analyst’s chair to the athletic director’s chair.

• Tommy Lasorda visits with the troops - but he’s not looking so well.

• Under Armour recalls over 200,000 athletic supporters. Well, ain’t that a shot to the balls.

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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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When I think “model parent,” I think former Nebraska linebacker and former ESPN analyst Trev Alberts. Which is why I’m glad he told BUGS & CRANKS blogger Chris Rasmussen that he shouldn’t worry about whether or not Rasmussen — a Royals fan — has a daughter that grows up to be a Cardinals fan. Deal with it.

Alberts, now on CSTV, also does videos for Sprint Sports, and his recurring “What The Blog?” segment discusses not only random blogs and what they’re talking about, but he weighs in on them. (Admittedly, it’s refreshing to see mainstream analysts actually use some kind of cognizance with what bloggers write.) Read more…

• Spencer Hall of THE SPORTING BLOG snaps a shot of Vols coach Bruce Pearl practicing for his post-coaching job as army recruitment poster model:

• In honor of Bob Knight’s arrival at ESPN, INTENTIONAL FOUL whips out a clip of Comcast Sportsnet’s Michael Jenkins doing his best impression of Bobby behind the desk.

• 100% INJURY RATE wipes down another case of Steve Nash nabbing Craig Sager’s trusty hankie.

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