01/26 Quickie: Let's Get Quicker

I'm realizing that I'm hitting on only the really big topics here, when on Quickish, there seems to be a lot more going on -- and a lot more I want to cover in a Quickie column. So today is going to be fast(er) and (not quite) furious....

*Ohio State throttles Purdue: Oh, OSU is No. 1, clearly. But in college hoops, that is completely meaningless. Unless the Buckeyes win the national title, the season is a failure.

*Tonight: San Diego State at BYU, one of the best college hoops games of the regular season. SDSU is unbeaten; BYU is once-beaten and features the nation's most must-see player, Jimmer Fredette. Shame this game is shunted off to CBS College Sports.

*Dozen Iowa football players get sick after offseason workout: How many things have to go wrong before the Iowa administration finally fires Kirk Ferentz? Apparently, it's unlimited.

*Brian Cashman says Derek Jeter will eventually have to play the outfield: But this is a non-issue. I'm sure Jeter will insist on remaining at shortstop. (Frankly, everyone knows he should have moved over to 2B when A-Rod got to NY, and it was the antithesis of being the "captain" to not do what was best for the team. Then again, where would Cano play?)

*CFB: UConn booster wants his money back. I love this story. First of all, it's the guy's right to take his money back, for any reason. Second, let's not be naive: The biggest booster of a school's football program SHOULD have a say -- or at least he should be given the chance to have a say. It's a business, and this is an investor, whether we call them that or not. Third: Let's not argue the guy doesn't have a point -- Paul Pasqualoni was a TERRIBLE hire. Fourth: Don't think the top-money booster doesn't matter to a program? Let's see how UConn does without his money. (Robert Burton: You are welcome to join the angel syndicate for Quickish.)

*Herschel Walker back in NFL? Who doubts that, if given carries in an actual game, he couldn't be productive -- probably very productive? He is one of the most unique athletes in the history of sports. Totally doable.

*Rankings: Top 25 Coolest Athletes Ever? I'm a sucker for superlative rankings, so GQ got me. Hard to top Ali as the coolest of coolest. Nice to see at least one new-ish athlete on the list, Tim Lincecum. Can't help but think they're missing a few (including anyone pre-1950's).

*State of the Union address: The big/only sports crossover was when President Obama said we needed to celebrate the Science Fair winner as much as we do the Super Bowl winner. We already do: No Super Bowl winner is more celebrated that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or the Google guys, who are the "science" equivalent of Super Bowl winners.

*Great reads: The Slate sports folks are crushing it the past few weeks, and their columns the past two days have been absolutely phenomenal. Find them here.

*Book Club: "Scorecasting," which is like "Freakonomics" for sports. Great early reviews.

*Media: What did you think of that Peter King post yesterday? He actually acknowledged on Twitter that he remembered me (not that that was something I was going for). From last night's HBO report about him, I do wish they had changed one thing: They said his column gets "3 million hits" a week. Ugh. Page-view totals are worthless, particularly when you cynically chop up columns into as many pages as possible (Not King's fault, but SI.com chops his into 6 pages. So if you assume all users click through all 6 pages -- a terrible assumption, btw -- he only really has about 500,000 readers a week. That's still a really huge number. But, just for comparison's sake, the Daily Quickie -- publishing 5x as frequently, obviously -- did about 500,000 unique users a week, on average.)

*Happy 50th birthday, Wayne Gretzky: "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been."

After a few weeks of struggling with the Quickie post because I was juggling Quickish launch stuff, I feel like I got the groove back today. Speaking of which, visit Quickish now, pop by throughout the day, and tell your friends.

-- D.S.