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• "I don't think he has very much of a chance," said Stanford Law School professor emeritus William B. Gould IV, the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. "There are many cases that are appealed from arbitration awards, but the case law at the Supreme Court level makes success very much a long shot."
• The Joint Drug Agreement between Major League Baseball and the players' association gives the sport's three-person arbitration panel -- the independent arbitrator plus one representative of management and the union -- jurisdiction to review discipline resulting from violations.
• The union filed a grievance after baseball Commissioner Bud Selig suspended Rodriguez for 211 games last August, and arbitrator Fredric Horowitz presided over 12 days of hearings last fall and cut the penalty Saturday to 162 games plus the 2014 postseason.
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• FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- LeGarrette Blount wasn't satisfied with three short touchdown runs, not against a team coming off the second greatest comeback in playoff history.
• So the 250-pound back who makes long runs routine took off on a 73-yarder and carried the New England Patriots to their third straight AFC championship game with a 43-22 victory over the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday night.
• Suddenly, the ground game has replaced Tom Brady as the heart of the Patriots' offense.
• "Once I get into the open field, they're going to have to chase me," Blount said. "And if they catch me, they do. And if they don't, they don't. They usually don't."
• They didn't two weeks earlier when he scored on runs of 36 and 35 yards in the regular-season finale against Buffalo. He also returned kickoffs 83 and 62 yards in that 34-20 victory that gave New England a first-round bye. And they didn't on his long touchdown that gave the Patriots (13-4) a 36-22 lead early in the fourth quarter against the Colts (12-6).
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