The Sports Section launched in September of 2009, and an awful lot has happened on the local sports scene since then. A Yankees World Series title. A Giants Super Bowl victory. Linsanity. The Summer of LeBron. The emergence of the Rangers as a Stanley Cup contender. The ongoing Mets struggles. The ongoing Jets circus. The relocation of a pro sports team to Brooklyn.

That doesn’t even cover the really important stuff, like all of the wonderfully insane catchphrases that John Sterling has introduced.

And the ultimate highlight? We made this photo happen back in 2010:

It’s been a fun three-plus years, but the post you’re reading right now is the Sports Section’s last. We’ve decided to fold sports coverage into Daily Intelligencer, where we’ll be taking a more national perspective rather than focusing solely on local teams. Will Leitch and I will appear there with columns on a daily basis under the helpful rubric of “The Sports Section.” (This blog’s archives will remain on nymag.com, just in case you want to revisit, say, our special investigation into whether Jeff Nelson ever actually picked off a runner using “the Old Jeff Nelson.”)

Sincere thanks to anyone who has ever read a post, left a comment, sent along an e-mail, or linked to us from elsewhere in the sports blogosphere. Look for us on Daily Intelligencer. That’s it for us. Have a great weekend.

As is tradition around these parts, we sat down with our PlayStation 3 and our Madden 13 and watched every NFL playoff game that's happening this weekend. (We are so alone.) So, how'd it go? Your final scores:

Atlanta 34, San Francisco 10
New England 27, Baltimore 22

Obviously, call your bookie.

It’s sort of fitting that as the Rangers prepare to kick of their most highly anticipated season in more than a decade, the team has cut ties with the final reminder of past mismanagement. Yesterday, as expected, the team bought out the contract of Wade Redden, after the league and players union agreed to allow that sort of thing to happen now instead of after the season. Redden, who spent the last two seasons on the Rangers' AHL affiliate, was hardly the only expensive mistake Glen Sather ever made. But the others were already gone: Scott Gomez, for instance, was shipped away to Montreal after just two seasons, while Chris Drury, as well liked as he was, was bought out in 2011.

There wasn’t necessarily a turning point when Sather started to Get It: You can trace the rebuilding of this team to events that took place before the lockout, but big mistakes were still made after it ended. In any case, Sather has mostly gotten his act together and assembled a team that’s both talented and eminently likable. Once upon a time, the Rangers’ strategy was a league-wide joke. How different are things now? Check out the Hurricanes section of the Down Goes Brown conference preview or read Puck Daddy's Ryan Lambert express bewilderment about how the Rangers can look this good on paper and still have some room under the cap. Cutting ties with Redden doesn’t make the Rangers any better — and his buyout affects their cap situation for this year, as does Drury's — but on the eve of the 2013 season, there’s a certain symbolism to it, no?

In the spring of 2010, a friend of ours submitted an item about us and our job to our high school’s alumni magazine. It described this blog as “the go-to Internet source for daily New York Rangers pessimism.” Indeed, the 2009–10 season saw the Rangers miss the playoffs for the first time since the lockout. But the seeds of a better team had been planted, and less than three years later, Sather’s plan has really started to come together. He's still willing to throw around big money: The Brad Richards contract, especially, won’t look so good toward the end, but give Sather credit for identifying a window of opportunity and going for it.

Yes, looking good on paper doesn’t mean very much, and the playoffs are chaotic and unpredictable. But with the season set to open tomorrow, the Rangers — the Rangers! — look to be as dangerous a team as there is in the NHL this season. Optimism now abounds.

By Sunday night, we will know who will meet in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans. Of the four teams left, only one — the Patriots, of course — has been to the Super Bowl in the last twelve years. (The Patriots have gone five times this century. The Ravens were last there in 2001, the Falcons in 1998, the 49ers in 1994.) Hockey starts this weekend, and we've got the two conference championship games. Should be quite the grand weekend. Let's make some picks. If you'll forgive the pat on the back, our preseason Super Bowl prediction is still in play. (Playoff record: 6-2.)

SUNDAY
San Francisco 49ers at Atlanta Falcons, 3 p.m., FOX
It's the second consecutive NFC Championship Game for the 49ers, though they won't get to play this one at home. The Georgia Dome isn't traditionally the most intimidating road venue, though, and the Falcons have sort of felt like paper-top-seeds all season. It's still sort of crazy that the NFL season has in large part boiled down to "can anyone stop Colin Kaepernick?" but this is why it's so hard to predict anything, ever. The 49ers are the trendy, it's-their-time pick — they're actually Vegas favorites, on the road — but we were pretty inspired by the way the Falcons pulled out the late win over Seattle last week, particularly with the whole sports world screaming "playoff chokers" in their ears. (The Falcons collectively have many ears.) We think this is the "all right, so Matt Ryan is top shelf after all" game. And the 49ers fall short again. Falcons 31, 49ers 27

Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots, 6:30 p.m., CBS
So, are you ready for two weeks of Ray Lewis talk, or Tom Brady talk? (Cyanide is an option.) We haven't been a believer in the Ravens yet — the only two playoff games we've predicted wrong were the two Ravens games — but it's tough to deny that Joe Flacco hasn't taken a major step forward this January. And hey, as Mike Tanier pointed out, Flacco now has seven playoff wins, one behind Dan Marino, Eli Manning, and Steve Young, and just two behind Peyton Manning. But Tom Brady has seventeen, the most of all time. Listen, we're obviously suffering from a blind spot on the Ravens: We don't think they're nearly this good. Even with Gronkmeister out, we think the Patriots will have enough to get to yet another Super Bowl. Patriots 24, Ravens 16

Carmelo Anthony has played a remarkable enough two and a half months that serious mentions of his MVP candidacy get dismissed not with raucous laughter but with "LeBron and Durant are still better." That's a compliment. So it came as no surprise that when TNT revealed the final returns on the voting for NBA All-Star starters, Anthony finished behind only Durant and James (and Kobe Bryant, who led the voting because that's just what he does) with almost 1.5 million votes. He will start for the Eastern Conference alongside a couple of friends and a couple of ... not quite friends.

Yeah, Melo and LeBron and Dwyane Wade are all rivals, but also pretty great friends off the court (and, in LeBron's case, Olympic teammates this past summer). So, that's nice. Rajon Rondo will be a fun teammate, but his only apparent friends are his Celtics teammates and a few cacti. And Kevin Garnet ... well, this could get awkward. Those two have been ahead in All-Star balloting for a while, so it was evident as soon as Garnett verbally abused Melo and Melo stalked him around the MSG perimeter a week and a half ago that the two were sowing the seeds of an uncomfortable All-Star pairing. Anthony claims the two smoothed things over, and this little beef certainly pales in comparison to some of the tense Michael Jordan–Isiah Thomas All-Star teams of the past, but folks will still be talking and watching very closely. And by the way, if the Knicks can sneak into first place in the East by January 31 — they're just one game back of the Heat right now — Mike Woodson will be chosen as the head coach of the East, in which case I'd wish for an All-Star practice of Celtics running suicides while everyone watches, then 48 minutes of playing time for Garnett and Rondo. Bitter? No.

But hey, what about the rest of the Knicks? If they're second in the East, they must have some more worthy players. The rest of the selections get voted in by the coaches, not us dumb peasants, and they're likely to pick at least one Knick. Tyson Chandler has some tough frontcourt competition in Al Horford, Joakim Noah, and Brook Lopez (to name a few), but he seems likely to get a nod for his fine work. J.R. Smith, too, has a small chance of getting voted into a relatively weak Eastern backcourt. He's had a great season to date and only one of the Eastern Conference coaches (Byron Scott of the Cavaliers, who coached Smith in New Orleans) has any reason to hold a grudge.

So, the Knicks will be represented at All-Star weekend. From the look of things, they could send as many as three guys to the game itself. Earlier in the weekend, we'll likely see Steve Novak in the three-point shoot-out, and even though he hasn't done much playing or dunking this season, James White deserves an invitation to the Dunk Contest as well. At the very least, we'll get to watch Melo, and that should be fun. Maybe a little tense, too.

In a rare weekday afternoon game -- and by "rare," we mean "the last one they'll play until Monday, their next game" -- the Knicks outlasted the Pistons 102-87 today in London. The game wasn't exactly the most glorious display of American basketball to show the Brits, but it was an efficient win, especially considering all the Knicks had to drive on the wrong side of the lane. Carmelo Anthony was the leading scorer with 26 points, but the real story of the day was the return of Iman Shumpert, high-top fade and all, playing nearly 15 minutes and almost instantly increasing the Knicks' defensive pressure. Interior defense when Tyson Chandler is out remains a problem -- Amar'e Stoudemire scored 17 points, on 11-of-12 free throw shooting, but boy howdy is he bad on D -- but the Knicks clearly have needed Shumpert, however gingerly he went today, to shore matters up. It was a nice breezy win, something the Knicks haven't had in a while and definitely welcomed. They'll fly back to New York tomorrow morning before the final Nets game of the season (until the playoffs?) on MLK Day, Monday afternoon. As for today, though: Jolly good!

The Nets Power Rankings, written by the excellent Devin Kharpertian from the Brooklyn Game, run every Thursday. Enjoy.

This is a new team under P.J. Carlesimo. Even after a smallish sample size of eleven games, there's no denying the difference. Thusly, this week's power rankings will focus on the "Phase Two Brooklyn Nets," and how they've performed in the eleven games since interim coach P.J. Carlesimo took the helm.

1. Brook Lopez. Make no mistake: Lopez was playing excellent basketball before his injury, but he's ramped it up to another level under P.J. With Carlesimo putting him in more pick-and-rolls and increasing his post-ups slightly, Lopez has extended his offensive dominance, averaging 25.8 points and 9.8 rebounds per 36 minutes on 54.9 percent shooting. His buckets come in a variety of ways — his standard back-downs and rolls aside, Lopez is most successful in finding those little holes near the basket when either Joe Johnson or Deron Williams attacks the basket and sucks in defense. According to Synergy, he's scored more points off those little cut plays than any other player in the NBA — and that's including eight missed games and some rough nights playing through recovery. And though Lopez is criticized as a poor rebounder, he's around the league average for centers. He'll never be a healthy Dwight Howard defensively, but Lopez is using his length effectively and has read opposing offenses better than ever under Carlesimo. Lopez posts the team's best defensive rating in the P.J. era, allowing just 97.1 points per 100 possessions — a number that would rank second in the NBA among teams this season. Deron Williams and Joe Johnson may make the All-Star game over him for proprietary reasons, but don't let that fool you: Brook Lopez has been this team's best player this year.

2. Deron Williams. Lopez's dominance is by no means a knock on D-Will — much of the reason Lopez has been able to flourish is Deron's ability to create off the dribble and find teammates for easy buckets, as well as his newfound ability to hit three-pointers. Williams, a 29.5 percent shooter from beyond the arc at the time of Avery Johnson's firing, has hit three-pointers at a 39 percent clip under Carlesimo. From this eye, it just appears that Williams is taking better shots; his threes are usually open and within the flow of an offense, rather than oddly timed chucks. I don't know if it was his wrist, his hip, his quad, his ankle, his brain, or his Avery, but whatever it is, it appears to be gone. Hopefully, for the sake of the Nets and the sake of basketball, it's gone for good.

3. Joe Johnson. Johnson had already begun a climb back up to normalcy before Carlesimo took over, and outside of a rough game in former stomping ground Atlanta Wednesday night, he's been everything they expected him to be: a killer spot-up shooter, someone that can overpower opposing guards in one-on-one situations, and a reliable threat to score anywhere within 26 feet of the basket. The only big issue with Johnson is his free throw allergy: Despite his control, his smarts attacking the basket, and his 81 percent rate from the free throw line, Johnson rarely attacks the basket looking to draw contact. He knows it's something he needs to do, and he's said as much — but he's still not doing it.

4. Gerald Wallace. True to form, Wallace has shot horribly (34 percent from the field in the team's last eleven games), incurred a freak injury, and the team plays far, far better with him on the floor. It's a little bit of everything; Wallace often defends the opposing team's best wing or forward, out-rebounds his opponents, can post-up, spot-up, or drive the lane, and is the team's best passer not named Deron Michael Williams. He rarely shoots — only Reggie Evans has attempted fewer field goals per minute in the P.J. era — but on a team with this offensive firepower, he's fitting in just fine.

5. Mirza Teletovic. If there was a statistic for "shots attempted per seconds touching the ball," Mirza Teletovic would be No. 1 all-time and it wouldn't be close. On at least two occasions this season, Brooklyn Nets PA Announcer David Diamante said his name back-to-back as if he were rolling in a conversation: "In for the Brooklyn Nets, Mirza Teletovic. MIRZA TELETOVIC! FOR THREE." The Nets signed Teletovic to do one thing: hit three-pointers. Under P.J. Carlesimo, he's doing just that, hitting ten threes in 89 minutes at a 43 percent clip. But he's also shown a surprising ability to put the ball on the floor, attack the basket, and swing the ball to open shooters; Carlesimo said after one game that the stat guys shorted him at least one assist because of how well he was passing the ball. Also: AIR MIRZA.

6. MarShon Brooks. Like Teletovic, like Williams, and like Lopez, Brooks has had a resurgence under P.J. Carlesimo, looking more like the smooth scorer the Nets saw in his rookie season than the bumbling mishap machine they saw in the first 29 games. Most importantly, he has a pretty sweet couch.

7. Andray Blatche. Blatche, who tweeted (before deleting it) to Avery Johnson's son that he missed having Johnson & Johnson Jr. around, hasn't skipped a beat on the floor under Carlesimo. He's even found ways to adjust his game when dealing with illness, focusing on the little things instead of trying to create his own shot on possession after possession. The worry: Blatche is hitting a surprising amount of fadeaway jumpers, shots that may look good when they fall but aren't high-percentage looks, and if that ever evens out it's going to be a rough fall. With that said, most of his shot attempts under P.J. have been dunks, layups, or chip shots from within five feet. Let's hope he sticks to that.

8. Reggie Evans. Evans's aggressive rebounding will never go away, but his defense has looked a little more frightening — it's becoming more clear that he can't defend taller, longer forwards, and the team sometimes seems to abandon him on rebounding opportunities, leaving him to fight four opponents for the ball. It's astounding how often he wins those matchups, frankly, but it often ends with him on the floor flailing for a loose ball and the opponents with a sudden five-on-four break. With that said, Reginald Jamaal Evans dribbled between his legs in a professional basketball game and I am still in a state of shock.

9. C.J. Watson. Watson is an odd duck: He's a point guard, but not a prolific passer. He's a sneaky defender, but also easily beaten. He's a great shooter, but not a good scorer. He draws fouls but can't make shots inside. He's six feet tall in stilettos and has recorded more rebounds than assists in the P.J. era. He's a dependable backup point guard and a steal for the minimum, as long as he's on the floor with someone else that can handle the ball.

10. Keith Bogans. Bogans is a paradox — a bench player best suited to play with the starters.

11. Kris Humphries. January 15 is somewhat of a holiday for Nets fans, mostly because it means Kris Humphries is now eligible to be included in potential Nets trades. Humphries has strung together a few decent games off the bench, but struggles with inconsistent playing time and hasn't produced anywhere near what a $12 million price tag may indicate. If the Nets are looking to boost his trade value, this isn't really the way to go.

12. Jerry Stackhouse. The fall from grace was inevitable, but there's no better dressed member of the Nets organization.

13. Tornike Shengelia. #FreeToko. Maybe he doesn't deserve playing time, but whenever he plays he does a couple of smooth things you don't expect. A steal and a fast-break layup. A nice defensive rotation to cut off a backdoor. An offensive rebound and tip pass to a teammate for a dunk. He seems to specialize in the little things. Would be nice to see him get a shot.

14. Tyshawn Taylor. The third-string point guard averages the third-most field goal attempts per 36 minutes of all Nets players and more than both Deron Williams and Joe Johnson. Also has more than twice as many assists than turnovers. He'll figure it out someday. I think.

The NHL published a full-page apology to fans in newspapers today, thanking them for their patience and saying that the league is "committed to earning back your trust and support the same way it's earned on the ice: with hard work and unwavering dedication." It's a relatively empty gesture, as far as these things go, but it's telling that the league is still in apology mode with opening night just two days away. It knows there are certain types of fans it's in danger of losing, and the league desperately doesn't want to be seen as anti-fan after a lockout in which the league's supporters were the undisputed losers.

Contrast that with the tone and content of an e-mail Rangers owner Jim Dolan sent to a fan this week (the validity of which, by the way, was confirmed by a team spokesperson to Newsday). Here, first, is the e-mail the fan, Joseph Hellman, wrote to Dolan:

“With all due respect,” Hellman wrote, “I think the way the New York Rangers organization has responded to the NHL lockout is terrible. In other cities, there have been open practices, sales at team stores, fan rally’s, deals on tickets, etc. The Rangers have done nothing for fans to show a hint of remorse over taking away our game for four months … ”

“I’ve always thought the Rangers were one of the classiest organizations, not just in hockey, but in all of pro sports. This slap in the face to your loyal fans is inexcusable. I won’t complain about ticket prices. I understand attending games is a luxury. I would, however, sincerely appreciate some explanation as to why there’s been no outreach to fans in the wake of the ridiculous lockout.”

The line about accepting that attending games is a luxury is profoundly sad, but we'll let that go for now. Here's Dolan's response:

“Joseph: There are several reasons for this. Most importantly, we have little time to get ready and all of our focus is bringing our fans a championship. Please be patient, and we will return to our fan engagement tactics soon. As far as remorse goes, no one wanted to play hockey more than the NY Rangers.”

Believe as much as you'd like about that e-mail, like whether the team couldn't possibly have done more because it's so focused on bringing its fans a championship. (What exactly that means, we're not sure.) It sort of doesn't matter, though, because there's something else to be learned here. The Rangers don't really feel the need to make any big gestures to win back their diehard fans right now because they frankly don't have to. Would it be great if they slashed ticket prices? Of course. But go try to buy a ticket to opening night on the secondary market, and you'll see there's plenty of demand, even with tickets at full price. Dolan's e-mail doesn't beg the fan to stick with the Rangers; it doesn't have to.

If anything, Dolan is putting himself in the same boat as the fan, and he's not bullshitting when he says no one wanted to play hockey more than the Rangers. Not only does the team have the potential to be among the league's best, but Dolan knows that it's profitable, too. That isn't true across the NHL, and in many cities, the sport is still in its infancy, relatively speaking. (There are no third-generation Blue Jackets fans.) The league, representing both its strong franchises and its struggling ones, needs to make a show of being sorry, and must make an effort to, at the very least, maintain its existing fan base. That's not as big a priority for the Rangers, who can still count on their core supporters to care even after a work stoppage. (We are sort of curious to see what these "fan engagement tactics" are, though.)

This isn't to say the Rangers are the talk of the town right now; there's plenty of room to grow its fan base by winning over new fans, or further engaging the casual ones. But while the league has to consider fans across the continent, the Rangers know their situation was pretty desirable before the lockout and remains pretty desirable now. The NHL needs to do damage control, but the Rangers can go about their business, more or less as usual.

Last night, Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o's beautiful, tragic, cancer-dead girlfriend was revealed to be a hoax: Lennay Kekua does not exist. Two days prior, Esquire magazine revealed that Megan Fox is endangered: In a world overrun with "thoughtful" females, true hotties no longer exist. Hoax hotties, however, have yet to be defended. Until now.

The symmetry of her face is genuinely nonexistent. The lip on the left and the lip on the right are in perfect nonexistence, like a problem of logic with an invalid hypothesis. It's not even logical. It's closer to purely invented, a figment of the mind, the patterns of electrons crisscrossing the Internet. What she is is fake. There is absolutely nothing real about her.

Lennay Kekua is a fake girlfriend. To be a fake girlfriend in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like Pygmalion's hottie statue with that rock-hard ass, or Narcissus with that babe in the water. Fake girls once used to roam the cultural landscape like unicorns, and like unicorns they never existed.

Loneliness and denial both play their part. If you want to see naked fake women, of virtually any kind, do virtually anything to their fake bodies, just fire up the ol' noggin, it's a thought away. In your head, women no longer need to be real in order to express their desirability. Real women like Lena Dunham and Adele and Lady Gaga and Amy Adams do not return your phone calls, anyway. But a fake woman, she always tweets back, provided it's not past the bedtime of the teen boy controlling her.

For every fake girlfriend who is dismissed out of hand — or fake girlfriend who is exposed as the figment of the Internet-addled adult man she claimed to love — there is a fake girlfriend who tries to be real. A female Pinocchio whose breasts grow larger in your mind every time she lies that she will meet you at the Macaroni Grill by your house on Saturday, just not this Saturday, because something just came up, let's talk later, though?

It's not Lennay Kekua's fault. Today, unfettered fakeness is an impediment. To be serious or respected, it is better to be real.

There's no doubt this transformation has been overwhelmingly excellent for people who care about reality. But we're losing something in this process. Because creatively imagined sex is, was, and always will be better than the sex we actually have. Some of the very first works of sex we ever had were with hugely fecund women who we imagined in our heads, plus our hands, or maybe that really soft pillow at Nana's house. American movies express that great fusion of sex and fake females, too. They are magnificent pagan dreams, utterly profane and glorious. Such fantasies need fake girlfriends. They need to consume fake flesh in their sacrifices. They need women like Lennay Kekua.

This blog post made possible by what we believe to be an authentic relationship of frequent online communication with Esquire. We have no reason to believe Esquire is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a vast network of female satirists online.

I should begin by noting that today is mostly a day of celebration and promise for the Knicks, injury-wise. Iman Shumpert is set to debut in London tonight (three o'clock EST), and Raymond Felton will hopefully be back within a few games. Barring other injuries — which you can never really bar, but still — those returns will replenish New York's backcourt in full, and that's great.

The frontcourt, however, will remain depleted for the foreseeable future. Marcus Camby's plantar fasciitis could be a long-term thing, and Rasheed Wallace's foot injury ... man, we have no idea what the term is on that one. Wallace's problem was originally deemed a "sore foot" and "day-to-day," but you know where this is going. Wallace hasn't played since mid-December while the injury has been identified as a flare-up of an old issue and labeled as either a "stress reaction" or an outright "stress fracture," depending on who you ask. There have been rumors of the Knicks pursuing Kenyon Martin or some other replacement big man, though Mike Woodson continues to dismiss them. Sheed himself claimed to be "good money" yesterday, but nobody has any idea when he'll be back. Per usual, the situation is fraught with uncertainty and doublespeak. In this sporting environment, we can't even be sure he EXISTS, right?

Anyway, the most recent pang of Sheed-lessness fear came yesterday, when Ian Begley's source suggested Wallace might actually be done for the season, which, for a 38-year-old, might mean sliding back into retirement. Such an outcome would lose the Knicks one of their best interior defenders and deprive the NBA as a whole of the "Ball don't lie!" resurgence they've so enjoyed. Serendipitous and unexpected as Sheed's contributions this season have been, he'd be a pretty meaningful loss.

The Knicks, as is their wont, started downplaying those rumors at today's shootaround. At the very least, it seems like Wallace could get himself ready for the final stretch/playoff run of springtime, but that's only if he's committed to rehabilitating that foot and staying in decent shape. At 38, that might not be the case. We shall see, but at the very least, don't expect to see Rasheed Wallace on the floor any time soon.

Later on today, Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame linebacker who was revealed to have a fake girlfriend in a wild, riveting story in Deadspin yesterday, is likely to take questions from the media, in what is certain to be the strangest press conference since Andrew Breitbart hijacked the microphone before Anthony Weiner's press conference back in 2011. (If Deadspin were like Breitbart, Tommy Craggs would leap in front of reporters today and scream at them to ask the REAL questions, man. Thank God Deadspin is not like Breitbart.) While Deadspin reported in its piece that a source was "80 percent sure" Te'o was in on the hoax, in the wake of a presser from Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick last night, Te'o defenders are stepping forward, including some who claim evidence that people on Twitter were mocking Te'o for not knowing Lennay Kukua wasn't real two weeks ago.

The narrative is starting to get set: Te'o was the victim of an elaborate hoax. It is worth noting that, still, believing this requires far more faith in Manti Te'o than in logic, reason, and sentient thought. There is some word that Te'o is not going to give a press conference at all, that he'll "do a 1-on-1 interview with a single TV reporter," which makes sense for Te'o, though it's unlikely to get us much closer to understanding any of this. Rather than grab the microphone at a possibly imaginary press conference, we thought we'd go over some of the logical questions it'd make sense to ask Te'o today.

• When did this "relationship" actually start?
• Why did you tell reporters stories of how you had met each other?
• When your Dad told reporters how Kukua would visit you in Hawaii, was he lying, or was he just blindly reporting information you had told him?
• If so, why did you tell him that?
• Do you commonly have relationships with women you have not met?
• Why did you never go see her when she was so ill and/or recovering from a serious car accident?
• Your family told Notre Dame about the "hoax" on December 26. Why did you continue to go along with the story after that?
• Seriously, you never once thought to mention, in all the heartwarming stories you went along with over the last six months, that the girlfriend who was so inspiring and broke your heart was someone you had never actually met? Why did you go along with this so long?
• Is this why you played so poorly in the BCS Championship Game?
• Do you fear that if you are this gullible while playing a sport that does not pay you, that you will be perhaps the easiest mark in the history of easy marks once you're at last richly compensated for it?
• Isn't it weird that you're up here answering questions like this?
• Like, we're running you — a 22-year-old Mormon kid who has made millions of dollars for network executives and university presidents but has never received a dime for it himself — out there to face the music on all this stuff, like this story is really just about you being a jerk?
• Shouldn't we be tarring and feathering a compliant media who just went along with the narrative — created by you, or for you, no one knows yet — rather than acting as if you (or Ronaiah Tuiasosopo) somehow did all this and broadcasted it to the world all by your lonesome?
• Okay, we're definitely curious: How well do you know Tuiasosopo?
• Still: Isn't this a story about the mythmaking of sports, about the blind acceptance of faux-heartwarming stories for the sake of easy consumption; about how, the day after the bombshell, people within the world of sports are already climbing back into the "this was just a rogue Internet jerk, who would have thought to do a Nexis search to see if she were actually dead, or real" defensive crouch rather than take a hard look at themselves and the way they conduct their business?
• How do you think this will affect your draft status?
• Are you gonna go out there and just take it one game at a time?
• Thank you, Manti. You're a very brave person, and we're all such brave people for talking to you today.

Brian De Palma is getting back together with his Scarface and Carlito's Way star Al Pacino for a biopic of Penn State's Joe Paterno. Pacino finds himself in a unique position to play Paterno, after doing the football coach thing in Any Given Sunday and portraying real-life controversial figures in HBO dramas about Jack Kevorkian and Phil Spector. Deadline reports the working title is Happy Valley and the specific Paterno focus is under wraps for now.

As we discussed on Monday, Jim Dolan reportedly ordered a Soundgarden roadie an MSG Network employee to listen in on everything Carmelo Anthony said, and had said to him, during last Friday's game against the Bulls. So what does Carmelo think of this highly unusual move? "I got an owner that looks out (for me)," he said in London, via the AP. "You can't beat that." Looks out for, listens in to — same difference.

Usually, hockey fans get a handful of preseason games to get to know the players the team acquired in the offseason. But this year, of course, the league is jumping right into the season after an extended lockout and a brief training camp. Here, now, a look at the newest Rangers, in advance of Saturday's Opening Night.

Rick Nash
Perhaps you've heard of him? Glen Sather wisely passed on him at the trade deadline last season, and waited until Columbus dropped its asking price to something reasonable. But now Nash, 28, is being heralded as the final piece of the Rangers' puzzle, and the hype is not without good reason: He's an elite scorer, joining a team that struggled to find offense at times last season. More exciting still: Nash is likely to skate on line with Brad Richards, a better centerman than he'd been playing with in Columbus. Without specifically naming Nash, John Tortorella said at the end of last season that the team wouldn't rule out adding some scoring punch, even if it came from a player who didn't exactly fit the forechecking-forward mold the coach prefers. But Nash has a big body and a sick reach. He should fit in just fine.

Arron Asham
Brandon Prust was a fan favorite in New York and was the definition of the modern enforcer: He could fight, for sure, but he contributed in other ways, like killing penalties. But Prust is in Montreal now after signing a four-year, $10 million free agent contract, and the 34-year-old Asham was brought in to provide some fourth-line grit. Asham — who doesn't kill penalties, in case you were wondering — was signed on the same day as Michael Haley, who brings little more than the ability to drop the gloves, and will ideally spend a lot of time in the minors. (For that reason, we're not including him here. We're also leaving out Matt Gilroy, a depth defenseman who Rangers fans should already be familiar with.) Asham won't be in the lineup on Opening Night Saturday, as he's still suspended for this fucked up cross-check (and punch) of Brayden Schenn during last year's playoffs:

Jeff Halpern
The 36-year-old center, who scored four goals and twelve assists for Washington last year and was a healthy scratch for all but two of Washington's playoff games, signed a cheap one-year deal with the Rangers in July, and could be of use on a penalty kill that lost Prust and Ruslan Fedotenko to free agency. He also won 58.3 percent of his 614 draws draws last year, good for fifth in the NHL. (Perhaps he can teach Derek Stepan some things.) Fun fact about Halpern: Both of his parents are from Brownsville in Brooklyn.

Taylor Pyatt
Pyatt's another big body — six foot four, 228 pounds — and made some noise in the playoffs last year, scoring four goals during Phoenix's run to the Western Conference Finals. As Pat Leonard noted on his Daily News blog over the summer, the twenty shots he blocked in the postseason were also surely attractive to Tortorella. That said, Pyatt, 31, scored just nine goals in 73 regular-season games last season — exactly half as many as he'd tallied the previous year — and saw his ice time cut from 2010–11, as well.

In 2011, Eli Manning was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, throwing for 4,933 yards, a career high and fourth best in the league. As a result, he was selected to his second Pro Bowl but did not play because his team was preparing for the following week’s Super Bowl.

In 2012, Eli Manning wasn't nearly as good: He threw for 3,948 yards (good for twelfth in the league) and had a rating of 87.2 (fourteenth in the league). He had some strong games, but he also turned in some stinkers late in the season when his team desperately needed wins. He was not originally chosen to play in the Pro Bowl because he did not deserve to play in the Pro Bowl. But with a quarterback spot opening up for the NFC, he's going to play in the Pro Bowl this year anyway.

Manning will replace Aaron Rodgers, who said yesterday he’s pulling out because of injuries to “multiple lower extremities.” Manning is the second alternate to be named to the NFC team; Drew Brees had already taken Robert Griffin III’s spot.

So why, again, do they actually play the Pro Bowl? Players routinely find reasons not to attend (some more legitimate than others), and now that the game takes place in the off week before the Super Bowl, the best players on the very best teams aren’t even allowed to play. Football doesn’t lend itself very well to meaningless exhibitions — particularly when the rosters get watered down by the time the game actually takes place.

The quality of play had gotten so poor, in fact, that the league and players union had reportedly discussed cancelling the game and simply picking a team on paper through voting. But the league and union announced in May that it would go on. (The league had also considered once again playing the game at the site of the Super Bowl, as it did in 2010, but the players wanted it to remain in Hawaii.)

Worth noting: The Pro Bowl, according to Fox Sports, isn't a moneymaker, but plenty of people still watch it on TV, regardless of all the issues mentioned above. Last year's game drew 12.5 million viewers — the most since 2001 — and was the highest-rated sporting event of the weekend.