Skier Rainer Shoenfelder (not to be confused with Rainier Wolfcastle) does not back down from a dare. He went for a practice run. Naked. OK, not buck naked, but wearing only skis, boots and an orange helmet. He said he was happy it wasn’t very cold. Seriously, he did.

Kobe Bryant has the most popular jersey in the NBA. That’s according to a press release we received about an hour ago. The list only includes the top 15. KG? Not on it.

We’ll allow you to make any mental leaps between what caused us to search for this video clip of a past “Celebrity Jeopardy” from Saturday Night Live.

That quip was thieved from a RandBall correspondent, but it has to be thrown out there. How else can you explain the news that Smoot broke his jaw in a one-car accident Friday in Mississippi? There are few details at this point, but this sort of negative publicity has to be attractive to the Cin-city Bengals, who have had eight players arrested this season. Don’t be surprised when Smoot signs there in the offseason. Just wait. It’s going to happen. And yes, we’re linking from one Star Tribune blog to another. We’re just one big blog family. Whee! The Interweb is fun!

We’re not sure that chess qualifies as a sport — OK, we’re sure, and it doesn’t – but it is hoping to be included in the Olympics in the future. No, seriously. they have drug testing and everything. But that’s not why we’re here. The real reason: A chess player was caught cheating and banned from competition for 10 years. The crazy part? He appears to have been cheating for the past 18 months by doing nothing more than communicating with co-conspirators via a mobile phone and a Bluetooth. That seems as obvious as a goalie cheating by placing a giant block of steel over part of the net, but maybe that’s just us. Oh, and for the less technologically savvy, this is a picture of a guy wearing a Bluetooth. Never use one.

We’ve become rather de-sensitized to stories about athletes on steroids, which seem to come out every day. But man, we didn’t think we’d see the pure sport of wheelchair tennis fall into the evil arms of drugs. What’s next? Billiards? Dog shows? Fantasy football?

But we feel the need to ask anyway: What was your favorite part of Tuesday night’s San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl? The pageantry? The 37-7 TCU victory over Northern Illinois, putting those, um, hang on … Huskies! … in their place? Or the fact that the San Diego County Credit Union is finally getting some press?