April 09, 2007 | Volume 106, Issue 15

Finding a Pearl Back in 1974, when Bruce Pearl blew out his knee in a high school football game, thus ending his playing days in football and basketball, he would have been the last person you'd...

AFTER MORE than 10 extraordinary seasons in Philadelphia—his gutsy, MVP-worthy performances unfolding against the backdrop of his numerous clashes with authority—Allen Iverson is aiming to lead...

WHO'S Hot

Who is the biggest hitter in the NHL?

Serena Williams's resurgence shows why tennis is so conducive to comebacks

HOW DO sports management majors do spring break? For a class called The Final Four Experience, 12 Lynn University students spent $3,250 each to hit the NCAA hoops carnival in Atlanta. They...

THERE MAY be no i in team, but there are three of the little buggers in Virginia. This will come as news to the folks at the NIT, who commissioned T-shirts for their tournament's champs that read...

Trouble at Toledo MANY PEOPLE like to bet on college sports, but not all of them like to gamble. The FBI said in a criminal complaint last week that Harvey (Scooter) McDougle, a running...

STEPHEN JACKSON, Warriors guard, on teammate Baron Davis: "Baron is just as important as our uniforms. We can't play without uniforms. We can play without Baron, but we'd rather not."

93 Consecutive wins for the softball team at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pa., one game longer than the North Carolina women's soccer team's streak and one of the longest in any...

Hong Kong police are searching for the men who planted devices in the turf at a racetrack that would shoot poison darts at horses.

Two goalies are close to the NHL wins record—or are they?

A REMARKABLE THING happened in pro wrestling last week, a couple of days before the much-hyped Wrestlemania stunt—WWE chief Vince McMahon, having lost a bet that involved his wrestler, Umaga,...

Meet Jarrod the Jokester

NATIONALS OUTFIELDER

A fighting champion gets intense

In a standard rowing machine, start with knees bent and bare feet strapped into footrests. Row 800 meters in less than 2 1/2 minutes. Roll off machine and onto adjacent mat. Wrestle opponent for 2...

Grip a 16-pound sledgehammer with left hand by base of handle and right hand halfway up. With knees bent, swing hammer above right shoulder and down onto a 300-pound tire with a steady rhythm. 100...

Place 275 pounds of free weights in a standard wheelbarrow. Grip wheelbarrow handles and sprint 100 yards up a 10-degree incline. Turn and run down, still holding wheelbarrow in front of...

Stand six feet away from wooden beam. Bend down, pick up a 125-pound medicine ball and raise it to chest height. Throw ball at beam by pushing arms straight out in front of you. Must bounce back...

11 a.m. Wake. Six to eight egg whites with hot sauce, two slices wheat toast. Water. "Fights are at night, so I wake late and train late to acclimate," says Liddell. "I want 9 p.m. to be like...

A new DVD shows the Babe's screen presence

WILL HE write about his former wife, Brooke Shields? His former girlfriend Barbra Streisand? His former hair? He must have something interesting to say because Alfred A. Knopf, a division of...

IT'S THE guiltiest of pleasures, a truly terrible song we can't help listening to this time of year. It's One Shining Moment, and CBS has been using it as the music for its NCAA tournament...

WHY DO we gamble? The better question, according to SI senior writer Richard Hoffer, is why wouldn't we? Risk taking, he says, is ingrained in America's DNA, and in Jackpot Nation: Rambling and...

What to watch and watch for

Justin Zeerip HESPERIA, MICH. > Wrestling Justin finished his wrestling career at Hesperia High by winning Michigan's 160-pound championship, his 260th victory against zero defeats. He is the...

A title is at stake on Friday Night Lights, but the real drama lies in surviving NBC's cut

SHOWS ABOUT youth sports have often struggled to find an audience.

STAR CHAMBER The new basketball court at H.L. Richards High (Oak Lawn, Ill.) will have Dwyane Wade's image on it, and for good reason. The alum and his sponsor, T Mobile, donated $150,000 for a...

The last two undecided All Americans may go as a package

• MICHAEL BEASLEY (below) scored 23 points on 10-of-13 shooting and had 12 rebounds to take MVP honors in the East's 114--112 win in the McDonald's All American game. The power forward from Notre...

Florida's NBA-ready stars postponed pro riches and returned to repeat as champions, securing a lofty place in college hoops history by outgunning a familiar foe--Ohio State--in the title game

Wait till next year? No way. Here's an early look at the teams that will be on top when Midnight Madness comes in October

Who says NBA teams don't game-plan? SI went behind closed doors with the Mavericks and the Suns to see how the two rivals strategized for their Western Conference showdown

He's sitting on a rock pile that's valued at $2.4 billion. That's an estimated $100 million more than Mark Cuban's net worth and almost 10 times more than A-Rod's record contract

Play Ball! A packed house was on hand in St. Louis on Sunday night when the Cardinals' Chris Carpenter threw the first pitch of the baseball season. The Cards unfurled a flag commemorating their...

Judgment Day is fast approaching for Stars goalie Marty Turco and four other top-tier players who are in danger of being branded postseason busts

Home Stretch

By demolishing records and winning seven--should have been eight--golds at the worlds, Michael Phelps left his sport awestruck

One for the Books

Fifty years ago segregationists trying to keep black students out of Little Rock Central High inadvertently broke up one of the country's greatest football dynasties

Baseball And they're off in the Rocket Derby • Washington's asking price for righty Chad Cordero: "Ridiculous" • Three players under the April microscope

And They're Off

If Jonathan Papelbon hadn't volunteered to go back to the bullpen, the Red Sox' best trade option, Nationals closer Chad Cordero, would have come at a high price. According to a league source,...

APRIL FOOLS IN BASEBALL. When the calendar turned to May in 2006, the Tigers' Chris Shelton was tied for the American League lead with 10 home runs—he would end his year with 16—while the Rockies,...

Reality Check

Like Matt Schaub, these promising young second-stringers would be intriguing to a team in need of a new quarterback.

Jeff's Back

1 The stock car education of Juan Pablo Montoya (right) continues to proceed much faster than expected. On Sunday, Montoya was once again aggressive (he nudged Tony Raines into the wall on lap...

FEDERER LOSES used to be a headline you'd read about as often as LION STARVES or CLOONEY WEDS.

There's a quiet, leisurely charm, and a lot to be learned about what might lie ahead, on the day before Masters week officially begins

Adam Scott's Masters muddle

WHO: Morgan Pressel

WIN AND IN On my wish list: that the Masters would give every PGA Tour winner in the past 12 months an invitation to the year's first major, a policy that was abandoned in 1999. As a fan, my...

As First Golf Nut, Eisenhower ignited a postwar boom

CBS's Nick Faldo will watch his words during his first Masters telecast

Ultimately it was the penultimate hole that would decide who'd win and who'd lose the LPGA's first major of the year, and Morgan Pressel played it best