Sports

The news that disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong might be willing to confess to the doping charges he spent years denying has reopened interest in his case — and in the question of whether his lifetime ban from competitive sports could be eased in exchange for Armstrong's cooperation.

The NHL and the players' association have announced a tentative labor agreement that will save at least part of the hockey season in Columbus and other NHL cities.

The NFL has four wild-card playoff games this weekend, and millions of people will settle back in sofas to scream at their televisions in joy or frustration on Saturday and Sunday.

Burry Stander, one of the world's elite mountain bikers, was killed Thursday as he rode his bike in his native South Africa. Stander, 25, a two-time Olympian who placed fifth in his event at the London 2012 Olympics, was reportedly struck by a taxi van as he trained near his home in Shelley Beach, on South Africa's southeastern coast.

The close proximity of the accident to his childhood home apparently allowed Stander's family members, reportedly including his wife, mother and father, to arrive at the scene quickly.

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis' announcement of his retirement Wednesday was cause for reflection, celebration, some sadness — and not a single mention by two of the largest purveyors of NFL information of his role in a murder trial.

Baseball: The San Francisco Giants, in winning the 2012 World Series, participated in 16 playoff games — and they'd have had more, had they not swept Detroit 4-0 in the World Series itself.

Football: The San Francisco 49ers played 16 games in their entire regular season. Three more wins would make them Super Bowl champions.

Throughout most of its 86 years, Los Angeles' premier tennis tournament attracted the biggest names in the game. But over the years, stars stopped coming, and so did fans.

Now the Farmers Classic, which has been in L.A. since 1927, is headed to Bogota after it was bought by a Colombian sports marketing and entertainment company.

"There's a big hole in my heart. And believe me, this is something we didn't see coming, I'll be honest," says Bob Kramer, longtime tournament director of the Farmers Classic.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R), says the NCAA badly overreached itself when it imposed punitive financial sanctions on Penn State over the handling of sexual predator and former Penn State assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky. Corbett is filing a federal anti-trust lawsuit against the collegiate athletic association, saying it ignored its own disciplinary rules in its rush to castigate the Pennsylvania university.

They're calling it "Black Monday" over at NFL.com.

It's the Monday morning after the end of the National Football League's regular season, and some teams that didn't make the playoffs are wasting no time in parting ways with their coaches.

So far, no huge surprises in who's being fired:

-- Lovie Smith, from the Chicago Bears.

-- Chan Gailey, from the Buffalo Bills.

-- Pat Shurmur, from the Cleveland Browns.

For those dearly devoted of you who paid attention to me in September, I noted that the best bet in the NFL had proven to be whenever a West Coast team played an East Coast team at night, because the Pacific players had their body clocks better set.