Starting Five

1. Jim Calhoun, who put Storrs on the map, to retire from UConn after 873 career wins and three national championships.

2. Happy Birds! Baltimore wins on Nate McLouth’s walk-off wallbanger to remain tied with the Yankees for first place. Every time the Orioles win, have you noticed, Tim Kurkjian’s voice rises an octave.

3. “Have you seen my new internet movie about the Prophet Muhamad?” “No, but I’ve seen the reviews.”

4. “You down with ACC?” “Yeah, you know me.” “You down with ACC?” “Hey, we’re ND.”

5. Thinner and faster? 2011: Michael Floyd. 2012: iPhone 5.

The Bench

Worth noting in the wedding of the Atlantic Coast Conference and Notre Dame (except for football, which is a little like marrying Padma Lakshmi under the terms that she will not cook for you: it’s still a great deal, buuuuut….): there are numerous ACC administrators with Fighting Irish roots: North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham played on Notre Dame’s golf team in the early 1980s and has both his bachelor’s degree and his MBA from Notre Dame. Cunningham worked in the Notre Dame athletic department from 1988-2002; Duke athletic director Kevin White was previously the athletic director at Notre Dame  (2000-2008) and directly preceded Jack Swarbrick; Clemson associate athletic director Tim Bourret is a class of ’77 alumnus who worked in the sports information department as a student in the 1970s; Gene Corrigan was Notre Dame’s athletic director from 1981-1987 (he hired Lou Holtz) and then left to become the commissioner of the ACC, a post he held for 11 years. Corrigan served as a consultant during this merger for ACC commissioner John Swofford. And, of course, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz once coached at N.C. State (then again Dr. Lou also coached in the SWC, the Big Ten and SEC)

Platform elevator in China plunges 30 stories, killing all 19 workers aboard it.

With all the chase scenes and all the bank heist films, nobody had ever thought of this. Genius, even though the four apprehended suspects also through the next five to ten years of their lives out the window as well.

Have you seen the play the Orioles made last night in which third baseman Manny Machado picked up the slow roller, faked the throw to first, and knew that shortstop J.J. Hardy would be covering the bag at third to trap the Tampa Bay Ray runner in a rundown? That’s the Buck Showalterest play we’ve ever seen.

The ACC accepted Notre Dame because the Fighting Irish met the conference’s minimum requirement of Hansbroughs (1).

Katylynn and Heather Welsch are Houston-area sisters, born on the same day two years apart. They’re also the fastest girls we know of who have yet to reach high school eighth grade. As an Outside magazine profile reveals, Katylynn, 12, recently won the XTERRA 21K Trail Run in Waco, Texas. Not for her age group. For all females. She finished 11th overall. Heather, who is 10, finished in third place in the women’s division.

Joan Walsh attacks Mitt Romney’s attack on Obama, in Salon. No, she is not the same person who sang “Life’s Been Good.” That’s Joe Walsh.

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Perhaps this is navel-gazing and the rest of you don’t care. The fourth paragraph of ESPN’s story on the Notre Dame-ACC merger begins, “The move, first reported by ESPN’s Brett McMurphy…” Brett is a good friend, and no one has broken more stories on conference realignment in the past two years. It’s one reason he jumped from AOL Fanhouse being dissolved to CBS Sports to ESPN in little more than one year.

However, we do not believe Brett broke this story. We believe Pete Sampson of Irish Illustrated, a partner of Rivals.com, broke this story on Tuesday night. Said Sampson, “I reported it at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday. If (Brett) beat that, he beat that. There’s a time-stamped post on our message board.”

There is nothing on McMurphy’s Twitter feed about the Notre Dame-ACC merger until about 9:45 a.m. yesterday (Wednesday). Sampson first reported it late Tuesday night, but he writes for a site that has a pay wall. Sampson does not tweet such breaking news, because the feeling is that it compromises the integrity of the site. Whether or not that true remains to be seen. But right now, people believe McMurphy broke this story (and Brett is the last person who would ever take undo credit; he doesn’t need to do so), but if he did, why did ESPN wait to report it until nearly 10 a.m. yesterday, when Sampson had already first reported it more than 10 hours earlier?

UPDATE: Brett just tweeted to me, “I never saw that report. If they had it first, they certainly deserve the credit.”

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Jim Calhoun: I remember watching the first game of the 2011 Big East tournament, which began shortly after noon on a Tuesday in March before a half-empty Madison Square Garden. Sitting inside the Garden, knowing that U Conn had lost four of its last five games as they tipped off versus DePaul. And yet, by the end of that game, I thought to myself — and tweeted something to the effect — that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Huskies won the Big East tourney.

As you know, behind charismatic point guard Kemba Walker, the Huskies far exceeded that prediction, capturing both the Big East tournament and the NCAA championship during an incredible 11-0 run. I doubt Calhoun had a more fulfilling month in his career. The final season was a disappointing denoument, but he’ll always have that March-April run of 2011. It’s a career-defining moment.

The Yankees beat Boston 5-4 on three home runs, two of them with one man on. Yeah, that’s a long-term recipe for October success.

Quotable: “I got emails as people wrote about it as people talked about it on television. It’s an awful lot of attention for a school that’s not relevant any more.” — Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, getting in a clean shot on Rick Reilly regarding the media attention devoted to the ACC-Notre Dame merger

With less than two weeks remaining in the WNBA schedule (as if I had to remind you), neither the Toxic Tulsa Shock (6-23) nor the Phoenix Valkryie (7-22) are in first place in the Brittney Griner sweepstakes. The Washington Mistakes have swooped in, courtesy of a nine-game losing streak, to move ahead/behind them both at (5-25). The worst team in the WNBA does not automatically receive the first pick, but they do have the best statistical chance of winning the lottery. Although, as Chuck Klosterman once wrote, “All odds are 50-50.”

Griner, by the way, has some familiarity with Washington, D.C.

So, to recap, the Big East lost its highest-profile program (Notre Dame) and its most successful men’s basketball coach (sorry, Jimmy B.). And so for those of you confused by all the realignment chatter, this is what the Big East looks like this morning.