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We long for a Triple Crown winner. But who in their right mind thought I'll Have Another could possibly be that horse.

An anthropological romp through the lesser and greater headlines in sports (and more) from the week past.

The week in review from death to life, from loss to win, from political metaphors to sports clichés.

It is a rare and happy thing to grow old and great in your craft. Thoughts on Martin Brodeur and Mariano Rivera.

Tuesday night's game was Ilya Bryzgalov's untidy season in miniature: a brilliant mess, an expensive oddball thought-experiment on the persistent unfairness of fairness, and a jittery meditation on uncertainty.

Watching Game 7 in Newark: When the Devils moved from the Meadowlands a few years ago, not only were they anchoring a new urban improvement strategy, they were moving from no place to someplace.

"Family values!" cry the Republicans. And the Democrats. And the newspapers. And the churches. And Steve Harvey. "Family values" are not the problem in stories such as Bobby Petrino's. The problem is men.

Somehow it gets better. Somehow it got better. Thanks to incalculable sacrifice, we've all been set free. We arrive in 2012 with a black president and a future as bright as we choose to make it.

Trayvon Martin and the Miami Heat have brought the games we play back to the forefront of the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America. Are sports truly colorblind?

The basic contribution of Tim Tebow to professional football, it seems to me, and to religious discussion and to modern American culture generally, has been to embody the essential tension between faith and science.

Maybe it's just spring fever, but something strange is happening in sports. Andy Pettitte, Peyton Manning, Jason Kidd and other graybeards are defying the aging process.

Peyton Manning will play on, by all accounts, but it might not be pretty. So rather than ask where he'll meet his next challenge, perhaps we should ask what he thinks that challenge really is.

The obvious question is whether or not the Saints' bounty program encouraged dirty play. Did it reward an intent to injure? The real question: How much does this hurt the NFL's image?

I'm still not sure what the central narrative has been this race week. Danica Patrick needs to crash less. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is less like other drivers than he would have been a decade ago. A rainy day notebook.

There's no central narrative this year at the Daytona 500 except the changes to the cars. No real arc of interpersonal drama, no rising conflict Aristotelian or Chekhovian or even Hatfield/McCoyian.

It's the annual drama that is Daytona. Jeff MacGregor is on board to chronicle the spectacle from the buildup and aftermath of the "Great American Race."