By RAY RATTO, San Francisco Chronicle

When day dawned Thursday, the nation had decided that Pacific-10 Conference commissioner Larry Scott was the smartest man in the universe for eating half the Big 12 Conference and that Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe was a dolt. When day dawned Thursday, the world was a simpler place.

That was before chaos fought back, and won.

The problem with the Lakers and Celtics meeting for the umpty-umpth time in NBA Finals history is that the history tends to blot out the contemporary. Sure, a legitimate case can be made for Rajon Rondo being Bob Cousy for the new millennium, but after that, the analogies tend to strain their hamstrings a bit because, well, history is best used as a guide rather than as a template.

CHICAGO - San Jose coach Todd McLellan wasn't looking for a lot of solace when he walked up to shake Chicago coach Joel Quenneville's hand in the first few moments after the end of the Sharks' 19th season in the National Hockey League.

McLellan got some, but he knows it won't linger long.

These NHL Western Conference finals are starting to look more and more like a job for the Philadelphia Flyers. You know, the team that went down 3-0 to Boston in its second-round series, then down 3-0 in the seventh game, then won the series anyway simply by being too ornery to die.

It's a busy week for the National Football League, the world in which bad news is good news, good news is great news, and no news becomes big news.

While you were enjoying the Pro Bowl Sunday evening, no doubt because you'd been tied to your chair and had your eyelids glued open by your frat pals, two stories eased past you that help explain why sports cannot be left only to the sabermetricians.

Not one word about the unfairness of the NFL overtime rule, and we mean it. Not one word.

If NBA commissioner David Stern had the Gilbert Arenas mess to do over, he'd have channeled his inner Clint Eastwood. In such a target-rich environment, smacking everyone would have been considered fair and judicious.

The National Hockey League owners are meeting this week, presumably because Thetford Mines and Yuma were booked for the holidays, and they will be tackling the three most important issues aggrieving the league:

-- Where to eat, and whose turn it is to settle the bill.

-- Head shots, pro and con, and what to do about them.

Tiger Woods' descent into song lyric status continues to amaze and amuse. (One favorite, from The English Beat, "I confess that I've ruined three lives, and did not care 'til I found out that one of them was mine.")