In my experience, one of the things that UCLA sports supporters always like to crow about is the superior academic standards of their athletic program: The kids who play for USC, they're barely-literate mercenaries. But UCLA, ah, UCLA has student-athletes!

Well, let's roll this around on our tongues and savor it's flavor. This article is about a month old by now, but even so, it's interesting. The Daily Beast took all of the BCS schools and did a little computation using the NCAA's own statistical measures of academic progress. And what did they find?

USC in the top tier, 21st from the top. Respectable, I'd say.

UCLA in the bottom tier, 21st from the bottom.

And, BTW, Oregon 4th from the bottom. Surprise, surprise.

The news is too easily lost amidst Cirque du Kovalchuk's visit to Los Angeles, but Darryl Sydor announced his retirement today. And this is from nhl.com, so it's far more substantial than anything that has been reported about a certain Russian forward over the last 24 hours. Sydor is one of a long list of defensemen, going back to Gary Sargent, whom the Kings let go in their prime and could have used later on. This offseason, I had seen a couple of stray blog comments suggesting that the Kings bring him back to replace Sean O'Donnell, yet another d-man who left the Kings while still a youth and went on to bigger and better things. But I guess that's not going to happen now.

Happy trails, Syd. Enjoy your golden years.