Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Take a break from removing the water lilies from your front yard and consider these random items:
Good news for local football fans that the Orange County honchos figured a way to finance the long-overdue renovations at the Citrus Bowl.
Simply by hanging on to the three big annual events the stadium now hosts: The Capital One Bowl, the newly-designated Russell Sports Bowl and the FAMU-Bethune Cookman game, the renovations will pay for themselves.
More importantly, as the Orange County officials pointed out, the renovations pave the way for the Citrus Bowl to become a major player in the quest to land a part of the upcoming college football playoff series.
Just one bowl game pumps anywhere from $40 to $100 million into the Central Florida economy; landing another game or two makes the renovation a big winner.
When the plan was announced five years ago for Orlando to build a new arena, a new performing arts center and to redo the Citrus Bowl, it never made sense to put he stadium renovations at No. 3, behind the arts center. It takes a lot of Broadway shows to equal 1/10th of the economic impact of a college bowl game.
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They got the college football playoff format half right. There should be eight playoff teams, not four.
During most football seasons, it eventually becomes obvious that three or four teams stand above everyone else and deserve to play for the championship.
That, however, is the fallacy that doomed the current BCS format to enduring controversy.
What makes sense to the eye, and to a committee, often means zilch when the games begin.
I won’t bore you with how many upsets occur in the NFL each season. How many had the Giants winning the Super Bowl last year, especially after they stood at .500 in December?
The four-team playoff format will automatically exclude two major conference champions and leaves next to no room for minor conference teams to wedge into the playoffs.
The positive is that there is a playoff format that can, eventually, be expanded.
It should.
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There’s no way to tell how good the Magic’s new general manager, Rob Hennigan, will be, but he made a statement by quickly firing many of those responsible for a decade’s worth of dismal draft choices.
We’ll see if his own picks at the NBA draft held Thursday work out better.
Hennigan’s main job, of course, is to retain the services of center Dwight Howard – and good luck, there.
At the minimum, Hennigan has to find value for Howard in a trade.
Part of Hennigan’s problem, shared with 90 percent of his peers, is that there simply are too many NBA teams and not enough great players.
It’s a situation that has long plagued the NBA. During the Michael Jordan era, it generally was the Bulls at the top with 29 bit players providing some form of competition. Utah did what it could to provide drama.
In the early ‘80s, it was the Celtics, the Lakers and the 76ers with occasional cameos by Milwaukee and Atlanta. Detroit had a three- or four-year run in the sun after that.
I’m not sure how to do it, but it would be nice if just half of the NBA could be competitive.
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The recently concluded NBA championship series turned out about as well as it could for the league. LeBron James became legitimized with his first championship, and Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant proved that he might be the most exciting player to enter the league since Jordan.
He’s one of those guys who is worth the ticket.
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Yea, Miami wins another championship. That’s three pro titles over the past decade (one for the Marlins, two for the Heat) for a town that is as rabid about its sports as, say, Vatican City.