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Yes, there's a terrible homogeneity to the coverage of sports in this country. Just as there is in our coverage of news and of politics and of the arts. Yet there's never been a better time in history for lovers of unloved sports.

You can't put a price on glory. Or maybe you can. Owners threaten to move and demand new arenas. In the late age of money, cynicism and American mobility, what does it mean to be the "home" team?

A week of preparation and then the fights, old and new, old and new: Zab Judah and Brooklyn, looking tough, looking beaten, looking renewed.

Is pain a means to grace? To clarity? Is it an "instrument for perfecting" ourselves? Where's the line between the instructive and the destructive? What are sports meant to teach?

Sports aren't immune to the worst of politics or political violence. Especially across the last half century.

Some seasonal reading recommendations for that slow ride in the club car from spring training up to Augusta.

The Red Hook Criterium may be the greatest bicycle race in America. Or the hippest. Or the strangest. Or the strangest, hippest, greatest bicycle race in America.

Different arenas, different athletes, different nights: Almost everything here translates our dream of flight. The dream to fly as old as the species, the dream to somehow exceed ourselves.

From the opening bell, Bernard Hopkins circles Tavoris Cloud and clinches and feints and ducks and grabs and circles. Such is the genius of old age, the Early-Bird Special of guile and the slipped punch.

We round again into March and basketball and spring and we come to see the sorting of those who'll stay behind when high school ends from those who might keep climbing. And to remember how much and how little are at stake.

In next week's news, the Oscars become a national holiday, Manti Te'o gets clocked again, and Kobe and Dwight try to work it out, Jeff MacGregor writes.

Just as there is in Hollywood and the movies and show business, in sports there's a global economy of mythic fictions. Sports runs on profitable illusions of heroism and goodness and wisdom, too. We just add statistics.

Maybe fans at the post-lockout NHL game go to rekindle something. Not just to admire the high level of play or to root for the local colors, but to feel, however briefly and imperfectly, the thing itself.

While you weren't looking, the NFL became our national metaphor for everything. From Sandy Hook to Camp Courage, the measure of America is football.

With the Super Bowl rising this week until it blots out the sun, maybe it's worth asking how and how much technology has changed the way we watch and think of sports.

The elaborate prank that may or may not be Manti Te'o's love life has a long and distinguished history in the annals of comedy.