By RAY McNULTY, Scripps Howard News Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - There's no point in arguing whether Danica Patrick deserves to be here, or whining about how her team owner bought her way onto the track, or ripping her for using her marketing magic to get to the Super Bowl of her sport.

She's here.

She's in.

The worst part about the Dwight Howard drama in Orlando Fla., is that someone else still wants him.

That's today's NBA.

If a guy can play -- if he can put you in the championship chase, pack your arena and sell lots of jerseys -- you want him.

You want his talent, his marquee presence, his lucrative marketability.

VERO BEACH, Fla. - He wouldn't do it.

Peter O'Malley would not blame the people responsible for turning the Los Angeles Dodgers -- considered baseball royalty for so many years -- into a punch line.

Peyton Manning is a four-time NFL Most Valuable Player, a Super Bowl champion who has twice taken his team to the title bout and, if he retired today, would be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

But he'll be 36 in March.

He missed the entire 2011 season after undergoing career-threatening neck surgery.

He's still recovering.

My guess is, folks in Jacksonville, Fla., now have a whole new appreciation for Tom Coughlin, who, in his first five years as the Jaguars' coach, treated North Florida to the most successful opening run in NFL expansion history.

Four playoff years. Two AFC championship games. A 14-2 regular season in 1999.

Ivan Lendl doesn't want to say too much about his new tennis venture as Andy Murray's coach.

Not now.

Not yet.

"There's so much pressure on the guy right now, especially from the British (press)," Lendl said this week as he prepared to travel to Australia to mentor Murray for the year's first Grand Slam tournament. "I don't want to say anything that might add to it."

Even those of us rooting hard for Tim Tebow -- because we want to see a young man of his character and conviction succeed on such a grand stage -- know this can't last.

We know why NFL teams don't run the spread-option offense in which Tebow excelled at Florida. We know this is a gimmick.

No touchdowns.

Four interceptions.

Four botched field goals.

Does anyone really want to see a rematch of the snooze-fest brought to you by No. 1-ranked LSU and No. 2 Alabama, who combined for a whopping 15 points in a game that plodded all the way to overtime?

Give me LSU and Oklahoma State. Or LSU and Stanford. Or even LSU and Boise State.

His last real chance at baseball immortality.
His best chance, after more than two decades of eligibility, to be voted into the Hall of Fame.

And Jim Kaat knows it.

The college football world's eyes turn toward Tuscaloosa, Ala., this week for the appropriately hyped Deep South showdown between No. 1-ranked LSU and No. 2 Alabama.

And if I may tap into the folksy, down-home charm of longtime broadcaster Keith Jackson: "Whoa, Nellie, we've got a dandy in Dixie."