Now on to my regularly scheduled column.

I won't dwell on what's happened in the past week in sports (and in my personal life)-plain and simple, I missed a lot of things. I missed my first my no hitter in baseball as a blogger (John Lester). I certainly did not miss the NBA Playoffs (who's still standing, as if anyone cares), although making a big deal about a team winning their first road game this late in (Boston) is certainly a problem for that team. I will say that if Boston-LA Lakers make the Finals, then I think we should investigate the NBA for fixing the playoffs. The Stanley Cup finals apparently are going on now; I have a small care level here: I do want Pittsburgh to win, but I'm not going out of my way to see this happen. The French Open Tennis tournament started...and again...yawn with a capital Y. The race car stuff-why bother watching cars race around in circles; I can get that by watching the local news' traffic reports.

So....what's left??? The fact the NFL owners want to open up the old CBA is really a huge deal. It's hard to pick sides in this this, but anyone with a pulse could see this happening. When the CBA was signed off, there were owners then who didn't like the deal, but probably signed off in the name of labor peace. Can you blame the players, who are now getting 60% of revenues? If the owners didn't like it, why agree to it? So this means the owners, particularly the have-nots who are not making as much as the Washingtons of the world, are not happy. There are two years to fix this, but I suspect by then, no agreements will be in place and chaos will ensue. It will be very interesting....

Old news that the BCS will remain for a while. I saw late last week that Joe Paterno is really dead-set against the BCS. I will say this about JoePa: I want him to retire, but if he wants to raise hell about the BCS, God let him! The BCS is a Bull Crap System and there should not be any justification to have it. Period.

So Charles Barkley is going to give up gambling for a year? Does anyone find it interesting that's he allowed to continue working in the capacity that he's working in the NBA? Does anyone have the balls to investigate whether or not he was gambling as a player? Someone who gambles as much as he does had to have been doing it as a player, right? I love Barkley, but if the NBA possibly ran Michael Jordan out briefly for gambling, I'd like to see something here.

While I will be talking total baseball in my next column, I do want to address instant replay. It seems that in the past couple of weeks, a lot of calls have been flubbed up and instant replay would help make them right. Even as a so-called baseball purist, I think replay needs to happen, provided the humans doing this get it right. I think for starters, replays should be used for homeruns and close catches (line drives that or might not skip the grass), in addition to interpreting grounds rules situations. I think at least three overturns in the last two weeks affected Cubs games and it will make a big difference in a lot of games. I know baseball wants to reduce time in games, but why??? If you keep the fans in the park longer, THEY WILL SPEND MONEY!!!! More beer, dogs and peanuts means more $$$$ for the teams, vendors, etc. Okay, in the NFL and even NCAA Football, waiting for replay decisions are very maddening! But most times, the officials get it right. I think it makes sense; I'm sick of hearing after the fact that something should have happened that didn't. Take the time and geterdone right the first time.

I'm glad to be back.....stay tuned for my baseball update.