National Basketball Association News Blog @newzblogz.com

Before cell phones and BlackBerries, the wireless device for people who couldn't afford to be out of touch was the electronic pager. Its initial purpose was to keep you within reach of the boss, anytime and anywhere. But eventually some enterprising sports geeks found a higher use for it: In 1994, Motorola and Stats Inc. teamed up to provide continuous game updates via pagers.

Stats Inc. hired people all over the country to watch games on TV or at the stadium and send updates that were transmitted to subscribers via satellite. Nobody in their right mind would try to "watch" a sports event on a pager if they had access to a television, but it was an OK way to keep up with the Sox game while you were supposed to be working or attending mass or enjoying your daughter's ballet recital.

Those same arguments would seem to apply to Brian Bennett, a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter who was kicked out of the press box for blogging during a Louisville-Oklahoma State baseball game. The National Collegiate Athletic Association says reporting on the game in progress violates the exclusive broadcasting rights it sold to ESPN and CBS SportsLine.com.

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The California State Fair's facilities, known as Cal Expo, occupy 360 acres of prime land in the heart of Sacramento. All of Cal Expo's operations generate about $30 million a year in revenue. If the fair itself was purring along as an increasingly popular destination, those numbers might not be significant. But they're telling of the overall enterprise and the state of the fair itself. Attendance is down more than 20 percent in five years.Cal Expo needs more than some modernized buildings and a...

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Well I've been on top, and then it seems I lost my dream

But I got it back, I'm feelin' better every day

Tell all those pencil pushers, better get out of my way

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If a school district opened an academic year with a beautiful new elementary school "or" witnessed its first-ever boys basketball State Championship Title, either of those would be a pretty big news story.

And if a school district got both a new superintendent and a new treasurer in the same year "or" dedicated a softball field in memory of a beloved teacher who had died the year before, either or those would be a pretty big story as well.

In the case of the Georgetown School District, however, all of the above occurred during the 2006-2007 Academic Year, which ends Saturday, June 30.

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THE LOWDOWN: The Kings sign Reggie Theus, who played nearly five seasons for the team in the 1980s, as their new head coach.

? It's his first job as an NBA coach, though he spent two years coaching New Mexico State and three years playing a high school coach on "Hang Time," a Saturday morning sitcom.

? "I've come full circle," Theus says at his inaugural press conference. "This is an amazing dream to me to be sitting here, having been one of the first players to ever play in this city."

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