Is Vick already pulling the trigger for his jailbirds?

Looks like somebody picked a bad day to be a jail bird.

As comedian Dennis Miller noted on his Versus "Sports Unfiltered" show, dogfighting QB Michael Vick spent Thanksgiving at the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warshaw, Va.

"Prison officials say they're not treating their celebrity inmate any differently," Miller reported, "although they did allow him the small joy of electrocuting the turkey."

Stop the insanity

What hath Appalachian State wrought in college football? The season started with the Mountaineers upsetting Michigan, it might end with Missouri and West Virginia playing for the national championship, and in between ...

"Nebraska turned into Kansas," wrote David Whitley of the Orlando Sentinel. "Kansas turned into Notre Dame. Notre Dame turned into a pumpkin. Ron Zook turned into Vince Lombardi. ...

"Whichever team wins, historians are going to look back on 2007 and go, 'What the ... ?' "

Ben Hur, done that

Workers excavating the site for the 2012 Olympics' aquatic center in London have unearthed some Iron Age artifacts dating as far back as the year 330, Reuters reported.

Included among the find were a Roman coin, some pottery and a marked-up copy of The Chariot Racing Form.

Pass the remote

Green Bay mayor Jim Schmitt and Dallas counterpart Tom Leppert have made the predictable bet on tonight's Packers-Cowboys game, with Wisconsin cheese and sausage on the line against some Texas barbecue.

A better bet might have been to see who could find the game on TV first.

Brake dancing

In a stunning upset, two-time Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves and partner Julianne Hough won this year's "Dancing With the Stars" competition on ABC.

Veteran gearheads weren't surprised, though, crediting Helio's ability to draft off his partner, not to mention two well-timed pit stops for new right-side shoes.

Talking the talk

• David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, on Texas A&M paying new football coach Mike Sherman $200,000 a year less than predecessor Dennis Franchione: "But worry not, Sherman can easily make up that difference if he's half the e-mail columnist as Franchione."

• Tiger Woods text message to Charles Barkley, as reported by the L.A. Times, as Barkley droned on in a sideline interview during the USC-Arizona State game: "Shut up, so I can watch the game."

• Drew Curtis of Fark.com, after British police arrested four men as part of a soccer-corruption investigation: "Fairly certain that it isn't for point-shaving."

Knight-capped

Two Lubbock-area residents say Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight or his hunting companion hit them with stray birdshot when the hunters strayed too close to residences in separate incidents last month, The Associated Press reported, and basketball purists were shocked.

What, Mr. Fundamentals gets taken to task for bad shot selection?

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com