With visions of Horseshoe Casino chips dancing in his head, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert will reportedly ask the NBA to bring the All-Star Game to Cleveland in a couple of years.

According to a report in The Beacon Journal, Gilbert will submit a proposal to have the game at Quicken Loans Arena in either 2016 or 2017.

Adam Silver, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, was in town recently looking to see if Cleveland would be a realistic host and he gave Gilbert the thumb’s up to submit a bid.

“The league is very receptive and open to it,” Gilbert told the paper. “As soon as this (weekend) is over, we’ll start talking more seriously about it. The city would be unreal. It would be a great weekend.”

Especially for the bottom line of the casino, no doubt, which would be filled with plenty of high rollers from out of town. And if those out-of-towners don’t get to see anything else about Cleveland in the middle of winter? Well, that’s the way it goes.

Seriously, though, this would obviously be a good thing for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. So much has changed in the region since the Cavs last played host to the game in 1997 and it would be nice to share that with a national audience.

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Terrell Owens has made a lot of bad decisions in his life. This is an unfortunate and incontrovertable fact. He has the mental stability of a North Korean dictator, and possesses the intelligence and wisdom of a medium-sized turnip. He once cried because someone was insulting his quarterback, insults that proved to be definitively true, and insults that were suspected to be true when Mr. Owens so emotively denied them. These qualities led Govbarney to select him with the #3 overall pick in the 1st Annual Misconduct Pool Draft.

So imagine the Govbarney's excitement as he lay awake listening to his police scanner (as all of us do these days) when he heard the LAPD were being called at 4:30 AM to remove one Terrell Owens from the porch of a yet-unknown woman. Was Mr. Owens drunk? High? About to commit a crime? In the process of a crime? Running from a crime? The drama was as thick as Bernie Kosar's lisp.

Apparently Mr. Owens has been on said woman's porch for approximately three hours, banging on her door with a yet unknown purpose. Was he longing for a lost love, or had he squandered all his NFL riches and was attempting to get this woman her double pepperoni and anchovy pie, demonstrating the commitment to excellence in customer service he demonstrated as an NFL wide receiver? We may never know.

What we do know is that knocking on someone's door in Los Angeles from 1:30 to 4:30 AM is apparently such a normal occurance that it is not an arrestable offense. The officers asked Mr. Owens to leave, and he did, peacefully, which in itself was a bit of an upset. And just like that, Govbarney's 20 point arrest, and the assured 20 point bonus for resisting arrest went poof into the morning smog of L.A. like Kayser Sose.

The pool still remains scoreless, but this situation merits watching in the near future...

Per the PD:

Just weeks after installing new leadership at the Cleveland Browns, Jimmy Haslam -- envisioned by many as an active and hands-on NFL owner -- is returning to the helm of the family business in Knoxville, Tenn.

Haslam said he misses running the nation's largest chain of truck stops and travel centers more than he expected.

The Browns, meanwhile, emphasized that Haslam remains a rabid sports fan committed to producing a winner in Cleveland.

"This is about me realizing my first love is running Pilot Flying J and wanting to return to that job," [Haslam said].

Let's be honest - this really shouldn't upset us.  So what if his first love is a truck stop and our football team is somewhere behind/below that?  I mean, he's been Owner of the Browns a couple months now, more than enough time to have a firm understanding of the job.  

So what if he's displaying wishy-washiness by first stating he will remain CEO, then resigning as CEO to spend more time with the Browns, then going back on that a little later to become CEO again (somewhat unfairly displacing the guy that he brought in to replace him)?  We don't really want the Owner running the football show in Berea anyway, right?

Really, Jimmy, the only issue is the impression that you're leaving Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi the keys to the Maserati (well, Minivan in the Browns' case) without really knowing if they can drive.

Apparently, you're assuming they can drive since the NFL told you they can drive, and why would the NFL steer you wrong?  But it seems that some fans are wary of a guy that drops the running of his billion dollar business into the hands of guys that you don't know that well.  These fans think they'll just joyride that Minivan around town until they wreck it into a McDonald's drive thru somewhere near Independence.

Kind of like Mike Holmgren did when Randy Lerner gave him the keys.

Yes, most NFL Owners leave the running of matters to their football people and spend plenty of time on their other business affairs.  But most NFL Owners have also been Owners a while and know their football people inside and out.

In the end, it really doesn't matter if you're around or not, Jimmy.  You hired your "team" - you will sink or swim with them now.  But blindly trusting these guys the way you blindly trusted the NFL when you hired Banner or when you blindly trusted Banner when he hired Lombardi... it's not what I'd expect a savvy businessman to do.  

And we've done the bad-businessman-as-Owner-of-the-Browns thing a couple times already.

Valparaiso continues to have Cleveland State's number on the basketball court.

The Crusaders' 80-72 victory Saturday afternoon at the Wolstein Center was their fourth straight over the Vikings. Valpo has won six of the last eight games against CSU.

"They didn't beat us today. We beat ourselves," CSU head coach Gary Waters said. "We scored 72 points. If we score 72 on anybody, we win. We didn't play any defense. That junk I seen today was the worst I've seen in history. And I'll put that on me."

Waters said he will take the blame for the defense because they were playing the "wrong defense."

"We could've guarded this team much easier," Waters said. "We were so concerned with them shooting threes. But, what you have to do is take away their layups and make them beat you."

The Crusaders (19-6, 9-2 Horizon League) shot 55.1 percent from the field and held advantages in points in the paint (36-28) and points off turnovers (27-13).

"I felt we didn't play disciplined defense," freshman guard Bryn Forbes said, who led the Vikings with a career-high 24 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the field. "We didn't have enough energy today."

Senior guard Ryan Broekhoff led a balanced scoring attack for Valparaiso with 15 points. The Crusaders also got double-digit scoring from Kevin Van Wijk (14 points), Bobby Capobianco (13 points), Will Bogan (11 points) and Erik Buggs (11 points, eight assists).

"I thought Buggs was the reason they won today," Waters said. "I thought he did a great job of executing their offense and getting great penetration."

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Surprise! 

No, the Indians play in Goodyear, not Surprise, this is more of the surprise you are used to.

After cutting off their pursuits of Jim Thome to play into their empty designated hitter spot and reportedly deciding to not commit that spot to one person, the Indians have potentially filled the spot.

Much to the surprise of, well, everyone, the Indians signed Jason Giambi to a minor league contract. A few months ago, Giambi was in the running to become the Rockies next manager. Now he's inking a deal to compete for a spot and his contract at the major league level is not guaranteed.

Colorado wanted Giambi as a coach, but he still wanted to play, and the Indians are going to give him that chance.

The former AL MVP has carved out a second, even third career, in Colorado as a pinch hitter. He's sitting at 429 home runs for his career after hitting one last season in 60 games with a .225 average. He's still valuable though, as Giambi had a .372 on-base percentage last season, and that's mostly as a pinch hitter.

Here's the deal though. Giambi is coming in to compete for a more than part-time designated hitter role. He's going to be hitting more than once or twice every few games. After several years in Colorado where he's been a part-time player, can he adjust? 

And the Indians? Did they not cut off talks with Jim Thome because they did not want to commit a roster spot to a designated hitter? Kind of. Right now, they are not committing a spot to Giambi. They'd eventually have to if they want to keep him on their 25 man roster and have him make the team, but right now, there is no commitment. 

It's a sneaky, play-it-by-ear sort of move. Bring him in to compete, give the young guys like Chris McGuiness, Yan Gomes, and Mike McDade some sort of experienced competition. Extremely low-risk, heady type of move by the Indians. For more on how this will play out in the spring, make sure you catch my Spring Training Primer coming up in the next day.

Gyro Ball! Whether it's real or not, the signing of Daisuke Matsuzaka to a minor league contract is real. The Indians have brought in the Japanese right-hander and invited him to spring training, as reported by CBS Sports' Jon Heyman. Jordan Bastian says it is pending a physical.

The man simply known as Dice-K is now reunited with manager Terry Francona and could compete for a rotation spot, but will have to do a whole heck of a lot to win one. The import debuted at the age of 26 for the Red Sox, coming over on a huge contract with an enormous posting price. Now he's 32 and coming of several years of injuries and ugly numbers.

Last year he made 11 starts and was downright abysmal. He went 1-7 with an ugly 8.28 ERA. He gave up 11 home runs, yes, the same number of starts he made.

A very decorated professional Japanese pitcher, Dice-K has a lot of accolades, having won a World Series with Boston, two World Baseball Classic MVP trophies, and numerous games between Japan and MLB (158). He has fallen on hard times since 2009 though. He seemingly was regaining some form in 2010 but wasn't the same in terms of effectiveness even in his debut year when he won 15 games. His best year was 2008 when he went 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA.

If you are not aware, Dice-K threw a lot of pitches early in his career. He has an extensive training regime and his downfall was likely the result of the amount of work he had put in prior to arriving to the Major Leagues in 2007. There's no telling how many pitches he actually threw when he was in Japan, but it is likely that his workload was far more than it was in Boston. Even the Red Sox had him throw a lot.

He comes to the Indians now, likely looking to re-establish himself. I think more than likely, he competes for a rotation spot, but is someone who starts in Columbus with the Indians intending to perhaps use him down the road if he rebuilds himself. He can earn up to $4 million according to Heyman.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are reportedly planning to offer center Greg Oden a two-year deal with a team option for a third year sometime after the NBA trade deadline of Feb. 21.

Just great.

There is some symmetry, we suppose, to offering a three-year contract to a player that has had three microfracture knee surgeries. Three years is also how long it has been since Oden played in an NBA game - Dec. 5, 2009, to be exact.

Meaning if the Cavs are truly planning to offer him a contract, it's one of the worst ideas we've heard from one of the local teams in a long time, and that is saying a lot.

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The Cleveland Browns released defensive end Frostee Rucker on Tuesday as they begin the transition to new defensive coordinator Ray Horton’s version of the 3-4 defense.

Rucker has spent his entire NFL career as a traditional 4-3 defensive end and the Browns clearly did not think the 29-year-old veteran would be a fit in Horton’s defensive scheme.

Signed in March as a free agent to a five-year deal worth $20.5 million with a $5 million signing bonus, Rucker was brought on board to help the Browns run defense. In that regard he paid off, as the defense went from giving up an average of 147 rushing yards per game in 2011 to 118 yards per game in 2012, moving from 30th in the NFL to 19th.

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The Cleveland State men's basketball team opens the second half of Horizon League play on Saturday night at Illinois-Chicago.

"We came into this year with a motto to finish strong," Vikings head coach Gary Waters said last week.

CSU (10-12, 2-6 Horizon League) is currently in eighth place in the nine-team league, but still has hopes of moving up in the standings and hosting a first-round game in the conference tournament next month.

With Butler leaving for the Atlantic 10 conference and the Horizon League only having nine teams this year, the conference tournament has been tweaked.

The top two seeds still get byes into the semifinals. However, the third seed now gets a bye into the second round, with the fourth, fifth and sixth seeds hosting first-round games.

Right now there is a four-team tie for third through sixth place. UIC, Wright State, Youngstown State and Green Bay are all 5-4, two-and-a-half games ahead of CSU.

The Vikings have a very friendly schedule down the stretch, with five of their last seven conference games being played at home, where CSU is 7-2 at the Wolstein Center this season.

If CSU is going to move up in the standings, it will have to figure out how to steal some wins on the road.

This season the Vikings have struggled on the road and are still searching for their first road win in league play (0-5).

Overall, they are 1-10 away from the Wolstein Center with their only road win coming against Ball State on Nov. 28.

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee made its choices on Saturday and the 2013 class includes three players who made it on their first try, a wide receiver who waited a number of years and one head coach.

And no Art Modell.

Elected this year were offensive linemen Larry Allen and Jonathan Ogden, wide receiver Cris Carter, defensive tackle Warren Sapp and head coach Bill Parcells.

And no Art Modell.

There were also two senior nominees elected, defensive tackle Curly Culp and linebacker Dave Robinson.

And no Art Modell.

Modell was one of the first finalists eliminated when the committee made its initial cut from 15 to 10 nominees. According to BaltimoreRavens.com, 16 people spoke about Modell during a 32-minute discussion.

“There was lively discussion and it was impassioned, and a lot of talk about the move from Cleveland,” said Clark Judge of CBSSports.com, a member of the selection committee. “I knew once it sort of focused on (the move), that it was going to be tough to get over. It was pretty clear from the discussion that this room was divided and there are too many ‘nays’ for this thing to get over the hump.”

Maybe God really doesn’t hate Cleveland.