Camp Carolina Football In North

In what can only be described as a tale of heroes and villains, one current and two former Florida football players were arrested after causing a disturbance at a campus sandwich shop. One of the accused is now a professional runner and tried to flee on foot but was apprehended (maybe he was wearing Crocs). According to the Gainesville police report, an employee asked the trio to pay for a bag of snacks, and they responded by throwing items at the worker. Talk about not responding well when the chips are down.

The Patriots-Ravens telecast last Monday pulled in an audience of 17.5 million, the largest ever for a cable program, topping the 17.2 million who watched "High School Musical 2" in August. Perhaps the Ravens should view the Disney drama - they might learn something about harmony.

Express delivery for championship weekend

What about a monster all-football mailbag before we tackle this week's conference championship picks? Is that something you might be interested in? As always, these are actual e-mails from actual readers.

Q: Last Sunday's games were a beautiful reminder of why sports is the best reality show of all time, why fans go shirtless in 32-degree weather, why men flock to bars to get wasted and stuff themselves full of buffalo wings, why bookies exist, and why there will be pregame shows with three panels separated in groups of fours some day. You never know. If you told me before the season that Eli -- and not Peyton -- would be playing to go to the Super Bowl, the Chargers would come back to beat Peyton at home with Billy Volek and Norv Turner, and old fogeys in nursing homes would be doing the Superman dance and lining up to buy a Nintendo Wii, I would not only bet my mortgage against those three things, I would have wagered stapling my buns together.

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La-La Land of the Giants

I should have listened to my wife. She told me to wash my car. But I'd been on the road just about every weekend for three months, covering NFL games, and a carwash didn't register on my list of priorities.

So the other day I wheezed up to the Beverly Hills Hotel in my one-headlight Volvo that's covered in dust and bird droppings, and filled with old newspapers, water bottles, my son's basketball, and -- disturbingly -- my daughter's collection of stripped-bare Barbie dolls.

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Perseverance paid off for 8 inductees

There will be a common theme tonight when the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame welcomes eight new members.

TEXT-Fitch release on Eni Spa

Fitch notes that the project is likely to benefit from a strengthening of relationships and the sharing of greater responsibilities with its host country. State intervention in the oil and gas sector has become more frequent in the current high oil price environment, especially in countries where economies rely heavily on royalties and /or taxes and dividends from oil and gas companies.

Although the agreement may have a financial impact on the Kashagan project economics, it is difficult to assess the magnitude of it at this stage as the compensation payment structure is linked to oil prices at the start of commercial operations. Additionally, the project was originally conceived in a much lower oil price environment, so any adjustments to the project economics may well be compensated for by a higher price environment.

Couric mocks Rather in pre-broadcast taping

Though battles between news anchors have historically been between rival networks, today's ripest feud is a purely CBS affair: Katie vs. Dan.The rivalry took a humorous turn Thursday when a video was posted on the Web showing Katie Couric mocking Dan Rather while preparing to anchor a broadcast from Nashville, Tenn., last week.While her CBS crew prepared for the Nov. 8 evening broadcast and makeup was applied to her, Couric mocked Rather. A video of Rather surfaced last month, showing the former "CBS Evening News" anchor obsessing over his appearance before a remote broadcast - particularly questioning the wearing of an overcoat."I'm going to be like Dan Rather on YouTube," joked Couric, alluding to Rather by fiddling with her coat. "Geez, don't you think he deserves a little payback?"She then added, laughing: "This tart is ready to go!"Rather, who left CBS News in March 2005, in June referred to his successor as "a nice person," but said "the mistake was to try to bring the `Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News,' and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."The video of Couric (http://tinyurl.com/2w6y6a) was posted by comedian Harry Shearer on MyDamnChannel.com, a video Web site co-founded by Shearer.Letterman edges Leno in rerun battleIn the final count, the first week of the writers strike helped ABC's "Nightline" gain viewers but not enough to pull past its late-night competition.But even in repeats, NBC's "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman" had more eyeballs - 3.87 million viewers and 3.96 million viewers, respectively.The big news: The perennially second-place Letterman beat Leno, who fell from a season average of nearly 5 million viewers.