The sun rose bright in Boston Monday morning, fending off one final chilly surge from old man winter. Runners of the 112th Boston Marathon were ascending Heartbreak Hill and charging down Copley Square. Manny Ramirez and the reigning champion Red Sox were taking batting practice at Fenway, preparing to lay the wood to the lowly Texas Rangers.

I’ve never been the biggest Kobe Bryant fan. I’ve always found him to be a bit selfish, a tad aloof and somewhat disrespectful toward women. He is a fantastic basketball player — quite possibly the best of his generation — but his habit of refusing to share the ball with his teammates and then ripping them in the sports pages is unbecoming.

The New York Yankees. The Dallas Cowboys. The Los Angeles Lakers. Behold the sports worlds’ axis of evil. Rooting for them to lose has become as much fun as pulling for your team to win.

Carolina fans have plenty to cheer about these days. When your team has outscored its four tournament opponents 372-271 and has a National Player of the Year and four future pros in the starting five, you tend to spend a lot of time exercising your vocal chords.

The feeling has festered within you for days. Sadness soured into anger. Anger acidified into vengefulness. Now, you find yourself hopelessly longing, wishing for a chance to see Sunday afternoon’s atrocity in Raleigh vindicated. You are hollow and empty, jonesing for just one more taste.

You need some consolation (games).

Brady Campbell memorized the mental checklist long ago. Bushy red beard? Yep. Tattered buckskins? Got ‘em. Mid-19th century musket and powder horn? Good to go.

When a new collective bargaining agreement between NBA commissioner David Stern and the players union set a league age limit in the summer of 2005, it had a sweeping impact on the college game.

What would it be like if all the Wisconsin cheese suddenly turned green? Or if every jazz musician in New Orleans developed a tin ear? Or the beer flowing from Milwaukee breweries began to taste like watered-down apple juice? It would be not unlike what is happening in New York City these days, where something is amiss.

The funniest mental image in college basketball is not gangly Roy Hibbert standing confidently at the top of the key, game-winning three-point shot in hand and that Michael Jordan poster look in his eye.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that one night, you and your buddies are minding your own business at a neighborhood gentlemen’s club, when a little tussle breaks out. A couple haymakers, a few bullets and a shower of dollar bills fly through the air, but in the end, only one person is seriously injured. No biggie.