The Seattle Seahawks have confirmed they will hold a tryout for Brian Banks, the former Long Beach Poly football star who was freed after serving five years in prison for a rape case in which he was falsely accused.

Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll did not speak to reporters after the Seahawks' off-season workout on Wednesday, but the team confirmed that Banks will work out for the team on June 7.

Banks, now 26, pleaded no contest 10 years ago on the advice of his lawyer after a childhood friend falsely accused him of attacking her on their high school campus. Last Thursday, a judge threw out the conviction that sent Banks to prison for more than five years.

ESPN.com reported earlier Wednesday that the Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins have all inquired about Banks.

Banks spent more than five years in prison, was required to register as a sex offender and was still on probation wearing an electronic monitoring device.

The reversal of the decision was won by the...

Venus Williams has been ousted from the French Open, one day and one round after her sister Serena also made an extremely early exit from the event.

Williams lost to third-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, 6-2, 6-3, in the second round Wednesday. The seven-time Grand Slam winner was playing in a major tournament for the first time since withdrawing before her second-round match at the U.S. Open last August.

She revealed at the time she had been diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome, which causes fatigue and joint pain.

It showed Wednesday, when Williams was dominated by Radwanska for most of the match, falling behind, 5-1, in the second set before mounting a small comeback. She pulled to 5-3 and was a point away from winning the next game when Radwanska sent the ball over her head to get to match point.

The match ended exactly an hour after it started on a forehand mistake by Williams.

“I felt like I played,” said Williams, who made 33 unforced errors to Radwanska's...

Alex Smith thinks passing yards are an overrated stat. And Joe Flacco thinks he's the best quarterback in the NFL. Seriously, what has gotten into the mediocre quarterbacks of the NFL this off-season?

Perhaps they're getting tired of being referred to as mediocre -- especially because both Smith and Flacco had fine seasons and had their teams heartbreakingly close to the Super Bowl last year.

Flacco's comments were made months ago, so we've had plenty of time to digest (and stop laughing about) them. Plus, they were kind of taken out of context. Basically, the Baltimore Ravens quarterback was trying to will himself into being the best in the NFL. Or something like that.

Smith's comments came last week when he was using the San Francisco 49ers' 13-3 record and advancement to the NFC championship to justify his 3,144 passing yards, which ranked 19th among the league's quarterbacks last season, and 197 yards per game, which ranked 27th.

And in the process he decided to take a shot at Cam...

Well, it's here, finally. Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils is hours away. Who do you think will win the Cup? Is this the year the Kings finally win that elusive title? A quick comparison of the two teams:

NEW JERSEY DEVILS

Regular season: 48-28-6 (102 points)
Playoffs: Def. Florida, 4-3; def. Philadelphia, 4-1; def. New York Rangers, 4-2
Regular-season power play: 17.2% (14th)
Postseason power play: 12 for 66 (18.2%)
Regular-season penalty killing: 89.6% (1st)
Postseason penalty killing: 46 for 62 (74.2%)
Regular-season scoring leader: Ilya Kovalchuk 37 goals, 46 assists, 83 points
Postseason scoring leader: Kovalchuk 7-11, 18

LOS ANGELES KINGS

Regular season: 40-27-15 (95 points)
Playoffs: Def. Vancouver, 4-1; def. St. Louis, 4-0; def. Phoenix, 4-1
Regular-season power play: 17.0% (17th)
Postseason power play: 6 for 74 (8.1%)
Regular-season penalty killing: 87% (4th)
Postseason penalty killing: 52 for 57 (91.2%)
Regular-season scoring leader: Anze...

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: A Penn State baseball player came up with the "Nittany Lion" mascot at a baseball game as a response to taunts from fans of another team.

As I have detailed in a number of legends over the years (like this tale of the Georgetown mascot that was a war hero), college fans and players have always taken a great deal of pride from their school mascots. What do you do, then, when your school does not have a mascot? That was the situation that a Penn State baseball player found himself in in 1904 when he managed to invent the Nittany Lion out of whole cloth as an answer to taunts from Princeton baseball supporters.

Penn St. is located in the Nittany Valley, which is appropriately enough nearby Mount Nittany. The mountains in the area were once patrolled by mountain lions but by the turn of the 20th Century, these lions were more or less extinct. One of the killed lions was stuffed and put on display in a "Brush Lion" exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago...

NEWARK, N.J. -- You see left wing Dustin Penner these days, really, any of the Kings with their massive playoff beards and you start humming the lyrics to an old favorite song, “Hair.”

“Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair  

Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen 

Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer  

Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy...”

Penner and defenseman Willie Mitchell are looking an awful lot like lumberjacks these days.

Shooting a remake of “Paul Bunyan”? Clearly, these would be your guys.

Penner says he gets his sense of humor from his mother. But it sounds as if she is not commenting much on her son’s facial hair growth.

“She doesn’t make fun of me too much,” Penner said after the Wednesday morning skate, hours before Game 1. “She did a lot of that probably early on in my life. Now she’s my No. 1 fan.”

Back to the immediate task. Penner won a Stanley Cup with...

On the surface, it seems pretty simple. Kobe Bryant has been a greater player than Tim Duncan. But is he really better? It's not so simple when you look at the numbers:

Kobe has won five NBA titles with the Lakers. Tim Duncan has won four titles with the San Antonio Spurs and could win his fifth this season.

Kobe has won two NBA Finals MVP awards. Duncan has won three NBA Finals MVP awards.

Kobe is a 14-time All-Star. Duncan is a 13-time All-Star.

Kobe has won one regular-season MVP award. Duncan has won two.

Kobe has been named to the all-defensive first team nine times. Duncan has been named to the all-defensive first team eight times.

Kobe is 10th in NBA history with a 25.4 points per game average. Duncan is 48th with 20.3 points per game.

Kobe is 207th in NBA history with 5.29 rebounds per game. Duncan is 21st with 11.28 rebounds per game.

Those are the numbers. There are plenty of intangibles to consider too, such as teammates' ability, etc.

So, who gets your vote?

Roy Oswalt had offers from several teams during the off-season. But the three-time All-Star pitcher decided to wait until the right situation came along before committing to his 12th major league season.

That situation arrived Tuesday, when the Texas Rangers -- the team with the best record in the American League -- agreed to a minor-league deal with the free-agent pitcher, who is expected to make his first start with Triple-A Round Rock on Saturday before joining the Rangers' rotation within a few weeks.

The deal is worth $4 million if he joins the team by July 1, with Oswalt able to make as much as $1 million more depending on how many starts he makes.

Oswalt had expressed interest in joining the two-time defending AL champs during the off-season, but the team already had its rotation set. Still, the Rangers kept in touch, with team officials going to Mississippi to watch him pitch two weeks ago, days before starter Neftali Feliz went on the disabled list.

Now the timing seems to be...

The Terrell Owens saga took yet another interesting turn on Tuesday.

Owens is the NFL's second all-time leader in receiving yards, but after burning one bridge after another in the league, he cannot find a team willing to use a roster spot on him. And now he cannot even hold a job in the Indoor Football League.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Allen (Texas) Wranglers announced that Owens had been cut from the team and would lose his ownership stake in the franchise as well. Wranglers owner Jon Frankel cited Owens' refusal to play in two upcoming road games with possible playoff implications, as well as his no-show for a scheduled appearance at a local children's hospital, as reasons for the dismissal.

"It is impossible to maintain a player when even our fans notice and comment on a player's lack of effort both on and off the field," Frankel saidof Owens, who was not contractually obligated to play in all of the team's road games. "We need to do what is best for this team, our fans...