SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- School's out. In so many ways.

It is a wet and raw and gray Thanksgiving eve day. Classes ended Tuesday for the holiday weekend. The Notre Dame campus is quiet except for the shuffling back and forth by various football players between the Gug and the athletic trainers' offices inside the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center (the J.A.C.C.).

Tailback Armando Allen, his right arm in a soft cast and a sling, is one of many players who can be seen (but not spoken to) walking at what can only be described as a leisurely pace. Allen's sling-and-cast get-up, by the way, appears less cumbersome than the one Charlie Jr. was sporting at Tuesday's practice following the surgery he underwent Monday for a broken finger.

Darth Visor, to answer your question, was nowhere to be seen.

Andruw Jones can start a day early on his Thanksgiving celebration, because word Wednesday afternoon is that the veteran outfielder has signed a one-year deal with the Chicago White Sox. There's no word on financial terms yet, but it appears the Sox are hellbent on shoring up their bench as they've now signed Jones and Omar Vizquel in the very young free agency season.

Jones resurrected his career in Texas a bit in 2009, hitting 17 homers and putting up a .782 OPS in 82 games despite his .214 batting average. That's not a great line, but it's a huge improvement over his .158/.256/.249 disaster with the Dodgers in 2008. He didn't play the field much for Texas in 2009, but he didn't really embarrass himself in his few showings out there, so he's probably a capable fourth outfielder, even if he's not the Gold Glove center fielder he once was.

SAN JOSE -- As if Wednesday night's matchup against the Western Conference's two top teams didn't have enough appeal, throw Marian Hossa into the mix for one heck of a showdown between star-studded top lines.

Hossa, Chicago's top offseason acquisition, hasn't played this season because of a shoulder injury, but tonight at HP Pavilion, he'll be joining the Blackhawks' great young players Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. San Jose, the NHL's best team to date, counters with the goal-happy line of Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau.

Whew. What a way to step onto the ice for the first time with a new team.

Urban Meyer almost cried at the mention of Notre Dame the other day. His heart and future is at Florida, and nothing short of a papal encyclical is going to change that.

Sorry, Irish fans. Such a thing is not on Pope Benedict's calendar.

If only Notre Dame had a bit more divine wisdom 10 years ago, it wouldn't be in this mess. The Fighting Irish had Meyer and let him go. Now, there's just a trail of tears that altered the college football universe.

How different would this decade have been if Notre Dame had locked up its former receivers coach in 2000?

About 20 years ago, an AP sports writer in Denver named John Mossman went through all of John Elway's games with the Broncos and wrote a story chronicling the number of times he had led fourth-quarter or overtime drives that either won or tied games.

It became an instant stat.

For the next decade, PR men extraordinaire Jim Saccomano in Denver and Harvey Greene in Miami battled annually with lists showing Elway ahead of Dan Marino, or vice versa. Joe Montana probably was ahead of both, but the 49ers PR department declined for a long time to play. But now it's standard -- teams keep lists like that on every quarterback right down to Matthew Stafford, who had his first game-winner on Sunday in the second win of his career.

SEATTLE -- If the scene occurred in Buenos Aires, London or Istanbul, it would prompt the sort of story you told your friends back home when you wanted to make a point about the difference in passion between foreign and American sports fans, or about soccer's unique ability to unite and galvanize people.

Except it occurred here, in the United States, in a city that has embraced the world's game with a colorful fervor that left an impact on everyone who attended Sunday's MLS Cup final. Fans in Seattle have set a standard that even the visiting supporters worked hard to match (see Real Salt Lake's effort above) and definitely have earned the right to hold their "No Equal" scarves aloft.

Vince Young continues to revive a career once thought dead. The third-overall pick in the 2006 draft had a fantastic rookie season, suffered through injuries and inconsistent play the next two years, and finally got a second chance after head coach Jeff Fisher begrudgingly benched 36-year-old Kerry Collins last month.

Zebra Report is FanHouse's analysis of actual NFL rules and how they are to be applied ... because most fans think they could do a better job than the NFL officials, yet definitely could not. Click here for an introduction as to how we do things.

As the clock struck zero in the Lions-Browns game, there was a pass interference penalty called on Cleveland in the end zone. In the aftermath of the play, Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford laid on the field injured. The officials called an injury timeout for Stafford. Also, Cleveland head coach Eric Mangini took a timeout to seemingly do nothing more than lambast the officials for what appeared a pretty obvious interference call.

Before every single NBA game, both teams line up at their respective ends of the court while the national anthem is performed live. It's a ritual that we've become so accustomed to seeing, that we're not exactly doing a roster check or a headcount to make sure that every player from each team is participating.

If we did, then we'd notice the conspicuous absence of Brandon Roy from the festivities.

Portland's all-world guard has chosen since last season to spend this time alone in the tunnel, instead of on the court with his teammates. And while he's not doing this as any kind of protest, it might be sending the wrong kind of message.