Here's what's been going on in the wide world of sports while we've been fighting off the flu......

Here's a roundup of today's sporting news...

Reporting from spa-side in Santa Ana, it's your American Football Spectacular preview of the next rung of pain on the agony ladder that is the 49ers' '07 season....

After staunching out the Arizona Cardinals last week, the Niners head to St. Louis to try to get ahead at the expense of the reeling Rams and claw ahead in the NFC West race....

Here's todays sports news...

The lovely local ladies in Von Iva are gearing up to release a brand new CD called Our Own Island. They're doing their part to heat up the chilly San Francisco summer by having a special CD release party on August 4th at 12 Galaxies (in addition to tomorrow's party at the Blank Club in San Jose). They promise a bikini bonanza (use your imagination) so risque that you have to be over 18......

We have to admit to becoming positively stoked about all the All Star Festivities these days, especially as tonight is the big Home Run Derby. Local sports talk radio is all over it, ESPN is here, Fox has been promoting the hell out of it, and Jay Z is even throwing a party for it (and hey, Hovah, if you happen to be reading this and want to help hype it by having an on the spot reporter, just drop us a line). And we're not the only ones excited-- reports say that the All Star Game is bringing the city big bucks. ...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

The first weekend of the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments is in the books -- are you still alive in your office pool? Not if you took the Road to the Final Four less traveled.

If you went with the favorites, chances are you're sitting pretty. With the exception of the toothless male Badgers of Wisconsin, all first and second seeds in both tourneys advanced to the Sweet 16. That's not to say that a few high seeds didn't get a scare or that some middling seeds will never get a chance to germinate into full-blown Cinderellas, but overall, both tournaments are sticking to the script.

-We pick up today's "Morning After" column looking at the aftermath of the 49ers loss to the Cardinals on Sunday. The game knocked the 49ers out of the playoff hunt, probably as it should be as the game proved the Niners just aren't ready for playoff time yet (Niners Nation calls them the "Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda 49ers"). The loss has the team looking at next year even if there's still one game left in the season....

The Oakland Raiders' 2006 slog of a season continues this Sunday at the Coliseum with their Week 15 scrap with the St. Louis Rams. Plenty of good tickets still available for the game. Well, there must be tickets, since the NFL is blacking the game out on TV....

This Week 15 sends the 49ers up to Seattle mid-week to grapple desperately in hopes of keeping their mathematically-possible playoff hopes alive....

Raiders 20, Steelers 13- Okay, we're going to say this and we know we're being your typical wishy washy sports reporter, but we think the Raiders a better team than the 49ers. Not just because they beat the Superbowl Champs (it's the in-thing to do these days) but because even when they do lose, they don't get blown out like a certain team across the Bay. We think too that it's mainly because the Raiders can play some D while the 49ers can't. Case in point, the particular game in question in which the D scored two TDs on interception returns and sacked Big Ben five times. That's positively Bear-like and it's even more impressive when you consider the offense still stinks like day old socks. ...

Yes indeed, it's Week Eight of the National Football League's 2006 regular season here in the Bay Area. Almost Halloween. There will be as few Halloween-related puns as is possible. It's not like we're SI's Peter King or something. Don't forget to wake up as early as you care to on November 1 to go grab cheap candy at the store! Here at American Football Spectacular we are big fans of cheap candy, kittens, the......

Yatta! Our Raiders got that first win over the pathetic Arizona American football Cardinals! Thank goodness. Well, phew, that means no more "winless season" jabs. "The only thing more embarrassing than the franchise are the fans that support them," said American Football Spectacular's Arizona correspondent Chesko. "They've accepted perennial defeat to the point that Bengals and Browns fans can turn their noses up at the desert simply because they were good at least once." The Cards have fans? Must be a tough road to hoe. Unenviable. ...

Raiders 22, Cardinals 9-- Stupid Raiders can't even win for winning these days. Here they were with an opportunity to do something historic, something almost impossible, something for which they'd be remembered for years and they had to go blow it by winning. Now they are what they are and only what they are-- a crappy football team. Oh, they could’ a been a contender, but no. ...

Quick note on todays ALCS game-- the game is scheduled to start around 1:30 PST. The reason MLB is giving is because it's supposed to, yes, snow late Friday night and they'd like to get the game in before winter hits. The not quite said reason is because the Mets/Cardinals have to make up their rained out Game 1 and Fox would rather show the Mets/Cardinals game in prime time than the A's/Tigers game. ...

Training camp. Whether you're fans of the Chicago Cubs, the Arizona Cardinals, the Boston Bruins, or even the Golden State Warriors, it is a time of hope. A time to believe. A time to go all in with the Karma chips and think the unthinkable. A time to take a flyer on 125-1 odds that the hometown squad can rise up and revel in the glory of a championship.

After the first two games of the season, Niners fans are all giddy and glowing about things. They have the same look on their face one has when one finally hooks up with their obsessive infatuation and starts dreaming up whole relationships/trysts in their heads. But the problem with all this giddiness is that, well, said infatuation was also really, really, really drunk and pissed off because their obsessive infatuation blew them off. And no, we're not projecting. At all. What we mean is that while the Niners are 1-1 and played well even in their loss, their two opponents in those games were not exactly the top of the line in NFL teams. The Cardinals are the Cardinals, perpetually doomed to doormatness, and the Rams appear to be still trying to find their way in a post-Martz world. ...

Before the series with the Indians started up, Ken Macha was talking about how worried he was about the upcoming series. Didn't like the matchups. We weren't sure whether or not he meant it or whether or not he was pulling a Lou Holtz and trying to keep his team on their toes by playing up a totally inferior opponent. Regardless, the A's took the second game of a three game series as Bobby Kielty hit a grand slam home run in the sixth inning. Kirk Saarloos struck out eleven and added another vowel to his name for the effort. The Angels won but with the A's winning, the magic number is 6. ...

Okay, so yes, it's not mathematically impossible for the Giants to make the playoffs. Technically, they are still in it. But for all intents and purposes, last Monday night pretty much put the nail in the coffin. This is now an ex-baseball season. ...

Not that we watched a lot of football yesterday, but we saw that red haired woman in the Nissan commercial enough times to make us feel like we need to introduce her to our parents. ...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... A's 4 White Sox 2- Esteban Loaiza held the White Sox to just enough runs to allow a pretty week A's O to win the game. The A's were 0 for 16 with runners in scoring position but still scraped together four runs. How'd they do it-- aggressive base running, defense, situational hitting-- small ball. Now how about that? The game so pissed off Sox manager Ozzie Guillen that after the game he launched into a profanity filled tirade about the lack of booze in the visiting locker room. Anyways, the Angels won so the A's remain five up but the magic number is now 11....

Sometimes a loss can be a victory and this is one of those losses that looks like a victory. Except in the win column where it really counts. The Niners came out right from the start loaded for bear and scored a TD with Alex Smith hooking up with Vernon Davis on their very first drive. The Cards then went on to take a 21-7 lead but the Niners kept coming and coming and coming, only to finally go down in defeat when Smith's Hail Mary pass fell incomplete. In fact, the Niners could claim they won all the big things but lost due to the small things, like penalties and missed passes and one missed field goal. Which sounds pretty bad if you're a contending team but really good if you're pretty much not. Oh, and Frank Gore is the man. His two-yard TD run where he basically just pushed himself into the end zone was the kind of football that would have made Vince Lombardi smile. ...

The Giants won (won!) their tenth out of thirteen games as Noah "Mr. August" Lowry pitched a 4-1 win over the Wild Card leading Cincinnati Reds, their second win in a row over the Reds. Sabaen's mid-season pickups are finally showing signs of life as Mike Stanton got the save and Shea Hillenbrand hit a two run home run. The Giants now find themselves three games back in the NL and 3 1/2 out of the Wild Card and with the Mets and Cardinals now flailing..... ...

As much as we said we were going to avoid the NFL Draft, we found ourselves on a lazy Saturday morning tuning in and getting hooked. In it's way, it's got that same addictive quality as a good reality show-- it's totally mindless yet totally absorbing. And like your good reality show, there's all the suspense going on once you figure out all the various ...

With the start of the upcoming baseball season less than a week away, SFist's sports desk will try and break the new season down for y'all, round-table, free-form, discussion style. In the next few days, we'll debate the winners, the losers, and all the in-betweens. This discussion could be great, it could be lame, it could be meh. We guess we'll find out ...

Alas, Stanford University is currently mascotless, after the debacle involving a tree drinking a little too much of its own sap. We're not Stanford folks, so we can't explain to you why their mascot is a tree when they're called the Stanford Cardinal -- Cardinals/Trees, please feel free to provide the story in the comments. So it's Tree Week, where the Stanford band picks next year's tree. Today, the Stanford paper reports that psych professor William Dement's "Sleep and Dreams" class was interrupted by a tree aspirant wearing ripped tights and a green shirt busting a move to "Come Sail Away," with a backup team in bunny tails, who then laid out a bed of leaves for the tree to fall asleep in. The sports editor of the Stanford Daily paper performed a striptease in White Plaza, at which point, two people known as The Chicken and The Rabbit then proceeded to wax him down, like in the 40 Year Old Virgin. And a junior walked down Palm Drive wearing nothing but green body paint. We're not even getting into the Kool-Aid and the medieval torture stunts, they're too hard to describe. You know, we write a number of odd posts (Chris Daly said what? Gavin Newsom's dating whom?) but this one has got to be the weirdest post ever. The Chicken and the Rabbit? New Tree gets named March 4. The winner is being encouraged not to drink. Picture of this year's deposed Tree by Rod Searcey from the Stanford Alumni Magazine...

You've got to wonder what it's like to be an old-school religious type in San Francisco, especially when the old-school religion in question condemns practicing homosexuals. (No, we're not talking about Falun Gong.) San Franciscans are a tough crowd to whom to preach chastity, abstinence, and temperance. While a protest against us by the venerable Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence might make for a stall in the average San Franciscan's career path, dealing with we......