It’s a nail-biter in Raleigh, where it’s Sabres 3, Hurricanes 3 with 6:13 left in the third period of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals. (Previous post here.)

OLN has shown a couple of shots of Hurricanes fans wearing Whalers jerseys, which is awesome. But I’m solidly rooting against the “Whalers” in this case. LET’S GO, BUFF-A-LO!

UPDATE: Overtime!

DAMMIT! ‘Canes win, 4-3 in OT. :(

So now the Sabres need to win Game 6 at home on Tuesday, and then come back to Carolina and win Game 7 on Thursday.

P.S. Sunday was a night of unpleasant firsts for the Buffalo Sabres. They lost in overtime for the first time in this year’s playoffs (after going 4-0 in previous overtimes), and lost a Game 5 for the first time. For the first time, they failed to follow up a home loss with a road win. As a result, they have now fallen behind in a series for the first time, and on Tuesday they will face their first elimination game. It’s win or go golfing.

Mark at Bfloblog is angry.

Has anyone else noticed that the Dodge Caliber commercial involving a fairy — a literal fairy, a winged female creature with a magic wand — has mysteriously changed? The line “silly little fairy” has been removed from the ad. Presumably this was in response to pressure from gay-rights groups. Timothy Kincaid was not amused by the ad, and Bob Garfield called it “hate speech in disguise.” But Cicero’s Son at the conservative site Free Republic says, “Without that line, the ad is pretty incoherent and pointless.”

Personally, I think the commercial is stupid, with or without the line.

(According to Free Republic, the “altered” version was appearing as long ago as May 1. But I can personally testify that the unedited, “silly little fairy” version was still appearing — at least on OLN — as recently as a few days ago.)

At last, the game that foul-mouthed fans and t-shirt hawkers have been waiting for: USC vs. USC, the Southern California Trojans against the South Carolina Gamecocks! It’ll be the Trojans’ home basketball opener next fall, the first game at the new Galen Center.

Can the Trojans cover the Cocks? What about the Cocks’ dribble penetration? Oh, this is going to be fun. :)

Check out the Flash graphic of Barry Bonds on CNNSI’s homepage right now. Heh.

CORRECTION: It’s an animated GIF, not Flash. If SI removes it, you can see it here.

The biggest game of the Buffalo Sabres’ season is about to begin. After a disheartening 4-0 home loss on Friday, the injury-plagued Sabres are in Raleigh with the series tied 2-2, needing to win two of the next three to reach the Stanley Cup finals. That means they’ll need to win at least one more game on the road, since tonight’s game and Game 7 (if necessary) are on the Hurricanes’ home ice. Tonight would be an excellent time to notch that needed road win. Lose, and they’ll trail a series for the first time all postseason long, and will head back to Buffalo with their backs against the wall.

There has been much talk about the Sabres’ injury problems on the defensive end. Three starters have been injured during the playoffs. After Henrik Tallinder went down in Game 3, Mark on Bfloblog wrote: “The Sabres have been able to overcome injuries all season but this injury might be too much to overcome. Tallinder has been one of the league’s top defensemen during the playoffs. It is hard to imagine any team advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals without three of their six starting defensemen.”

On the other hand, defense isn’t everything. After the 4-0 disaster in Game 4, Bfloblog’s Kevin wrote: “Did anyone notice that the Sabres were shut out last night? I don’t mean to oversimplify things here, but generally speaking you need to score at least one goal to win a hockey game. … So while having three AHL defensemen out there certainly contributed to the Sabres loss last night, I find it difficult to say it was as big a factor as many would like to make it out to be.”

Clearly, the Sabres’ offense and defense will need to better tonight. One piece of good news: Teppo Numminen, one of the three injured defensive starters, is returning to the ice. [UPDATE: Or not.] Hopefully that’ll help, and hopefully the forwards will remember that when you have a power play, shooting the puck is generally a good thing. Rarely do you score goals by passing the puck around for 90 seconds.

Anyway, the game is about to begin. GO SABRES!!!

UPDATE: You know you’re at a hockey game in North Carolina when there’s a guy in the front row are wearing not a Hurricanes shirt, but a Tar Heels shirt. Heh.

UPDATE 2: Live play-by-play here.

SI has ranked the Bush Push as the #1 greatest play of all-time in college football. (Hat tip: Mad Max.)

As much as I love the glorification of the October 15, 2005 Irish-Trojan game, I have a serious problem with this decision, because the Bush Push was neither the greatest play nor the greatest moment of that game, let alone of all-time.

The greatest play of the game, bar none, was Matt Leinart’s 4th-and-9 completion to Dwayne Jarrett, a truly perfect pass — beating perfect coverage — which rescued USC from certain doom (pretty much everyone in that stadium, myself included, thought it was over) and ultimately made the Bush Push possible.

The greatest moment of the game — and the closest analogue to the Cal-Stanford play (which, c’mon, really should be ranked #1 regardless) — was the chaos portrayed in this video clip, after Leinart fumbled the ball out-of-bounds at the 1 yard line, the clock prematurely ran out, the crowd rushed the field honestly believing Notre Dame had won one of the biggest victories in its storied history (”We won for 10 seconds, and no one can ever take that feeling away from me. It was the best 10 seconds of my life, and even though it set me up for a terrible letdown, it was amazing.” –Kelly Green), then the crowd rushed off the field almost as quickly when the public-address announcer told them Notre Dame could be penalized if they stayed. (I swear, if he had said, “The National Guard will descend on the field and shoot you on sight,” no one would have moved. But “Notre Dame will be penalized”? POOF! They were gone like that.) The 4th-and-9 play that preceded it, and the Bush Push that followed it, are both big parts of the reason that moment was so historic, amazing, and downright “great” — the storied rivalry, the incredible pre-game hype, and the pins-and-needles competitiveness of the entire game are also big parts of it — but to single out the Bush Push as the single greatest play/moment of that game (and of all-time) totally misses the point. After the whole crowd-rushing/Bush-pushing sequence of events was over, I said to Becky, “You do realize, we just witnessed one of the most amazing moments in college-football history, right?” And I stand by that.

Absent the surrounding context, the Bush Push was a relatively ordinary play. But both the 4th-and-9 pass and the premature field-rushing were truly amazing plays/moments whose greatness is only enhanced, rather than basically created, by the context in which they occurred.

Barry Bonds hits homer No. 715, passing Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time home run list. Visit CNN for the latest.