In 2005 Pittsburgh won the lottery to draft Sidney Crosby. The Ducks had the No. 2 pick./

“I asked my scouts where the dropoff in this draft was,” general manager Brian Burke said. “They said, after the first pick.”

So the Ducks picked Bobby Ryan and waited. And waited. He had a chance to win a job in training camp two years ago and couldn’t. He wasn’t so good this year either. Meanwhile, such ‘05 draftees as Carey Price, Devin Setoguchi, Anze Kopitar, and Jack Johnson established themselves in the NHL.

Finally we can include the names of Ryan and Crosby in the same sentence without defaming Ryan.

The kid had a hat trick in the Ducks’ 4-3 loss to the Kings in L.A. Thursday, including a revolving-door move for the third goal that Crosby might have envied.

And it came with ample warning.

Since Nov. 16, Ryan has 11 goals and 14 assists.

Since Nov. 20, Crosby has 10 goals and 21 assists.

But Crosby has scored only three goals since Nov. 29. Ryan has nine.

Ryan’s play will make the Ducks deep enough to put on a surge when Corey Perry and then Teemu Selanne return.

By the way, a sportscaster said the Kings were now at .500. Not true. They are 17-17-6. Since the “6″ is for overtime or shootout losses, that means they’re six games below .500. You want a .500 team, then you want the Ducks. They’re 21-16-5. That explains their plus-2 goal differential.

Wrapping up the (very) loose ends from another BCS Championship Game:

_ Florida didn’t look overpowering enough to devalue Utah’s claims on No. 1. The Gators made a ton of mistakes offensively and couldn’t dominate Oklahoma’s defensive line, or any other aspect of the 63rd best defense in the nation. Utah was far better against Alabama _ and was far better than Florida was against Alabama, in the SEC championship game. Sixteen AP voters agreed, putting Utah No. 1, and the Utes finished second to Florida. Respect, of a sort, but not fulfillment.

_ USC was third and Texas fourth. Who knows why.

_ At least Oklahoma showed up this time. It didn’t in the past two Fiesta Bowls, when it was routed by West Virginia and then beaten by Boise State even though the Sooners had Adrian Peterson.

_ Weirdest call was the fourth-and-goal from the one that Oklahoma had in the first quarter. Instead of running a sneak, a straight dive or play-action, the Sooners tried some sort of slow off-tackle play that took more time to develop than Florida needed to stop it. Then Percy Harvin took off on a long run to flip the field position. Florida later intercepted a pass at its own one and blocked a field goal. Just the two touchdowns would have put Oklahoma in fine shape.

_ Some recruiting battles really matter. USC was a close second for both Harvin and Tim Tebow.

_ Nobody had held Oklahoma under 35 points all year and the past five Big 12 opponents had given up 60 or more. Oklahoma scored 14 on Florida, primarily because of a secondary that could really cover the deep ball _ apparently the first one that Sam Bradford had seen. So when does Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong get a head coaching job? When he speculated he didn’t have one because he’s married to a white woman, he probably didn’t help himself. But you would think two national championshps would be help enough. What if Notre Dame opens up after 2009? Strong coached for Lou Holtz there.

_ Oklahoma did its share of woofing about Florida, with one player saying Tebow would be the fourth best quarterback in the Big 12. The Sooners also talked a lot before their last previous BCS Final in Miami. You remember USC 55, Oklahoma 19.

_ It’s obvious the Pac-10 was 5-0 in bowls because it didn’t play an SEC team, and it’s also obvious that Big 12 games were almost as hard-hitting as the game in Brett Favre’s Wrangler commercial. The SEC still rules. Florida is the third consecutive SEC team to win the BCS title.South Carolina and Alabama lost bowl games, but Florida, Georgia, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Kentucky and LSU all won.

_ Florida-Utah? I think Tebow would win it for the Gators. So why would I pick Utah No. 1? Because it doesn’t matter what I think. It only matters what the teams did, and Utah didn’t lose to anybody.

_ Besides, that game would have lots of subplots. Utah coach Kyle Whittingham was Urban Meyer’s defensive coordinator at Utah. He also ran the defense when Utah pasted Pete Carroll’s first USC team in the 2001 Las Vegas Bowl.

_ Afterward Meyer said this victory meant more than 2006 because “that was a good team, but a bad program,” which seemed a little self-indulgent.

_ The championshp game is in the Rose Bowl next January. We can only hope the participants are as clear-cut as they were last time, when USC played (and lost to) Texas.

When the Angels extended Mike Scioscia, you just nodded. Of course they did. It was a given. But it certainly didn’t seem like a given when Scioscia was hired in the fall of 1999.

Things weren’t good. Tim Salmon lamented that the Angels were “the joke of baseball.” The franchise had not won a playoff series yet. Disney still owned the team. New general manager Bill Stoneman bypassed Don Baylor, Chris Chambliss, Willie Randolph, Joel Skinner and Ken Macha, plus a little-known coach named Joe Maddon, and hired Scioscia, who had no connection with the Angels. It was believed that Scioscia got the job because he came cheap.

It was a day that transformed the Angels. They have now won four playoff series and have been in the playoffs five times in a seven year period. Arte Moreno’s ownership, plus all that winning, have pushed attendance from below 2 million to well over 3 million.

Scioscia now has more power than any other manager and is the hardest one to imagine working somewhere else.

Teams managed by Scioscia have been the first in Angels history to win 95, 99 and 100 games, and his .551 winning percentage is easily the best among Angel skippers.

But the biggest change is in Angel pitching. The 2000 team did not have a starter who won double-figure games, even though the club went 82-80. The top winner was reliever Shige Hasegawa, who won 10. The rotation was Scott Schoeneweis, Ken Hill, Kent Bottenfield, Brian Cooper and Ramon Ortiz.

Jarrod Washburn and Seth Etherton came up near the end of the year and pitched well, but Washburn was the only starter with an ERA under 5.00. The Angels ERA was an even 5.00, ninth in the league.

Now, of course, the Angels are built on solid starting pitching. Their ERA rank has ranged from third to sixth in the AL every year since. John Lackey, Ervin Santana and Joe Saunders are all homegrown all-star starters and Francisco Rodriguez was a homegrown closer who set a major league record with 62 saves last year. The Angels somehow won 100 games last year with a plus-68 run differential. No one in baseball history has won 100 with such a small margin.

 Jered Weaver is a candidate to become an All-Star, too, someday. And it is Scioscia’s insistence on the catcher-pitcher relationship _ calling games, presenting a target, pounding the philosophy of locating the fastball _ that has made that work.

The silly second-guessing over the Erick Aybar squeeze in Game 4 of the Division Series is not something that will haunt Scioscia. If you want to second-guess something, fault him on choosing a series format that squeezed Weaver out of the rotation and robbed the Angels of their one big advantage _ rotation depth. But, as I recall, no one mentioned that at the BEGINNING of the series, when Scioscia had to make that call. Just as I didn’t hear anybody in the Fenway press box say, “Boy, he better not squeeze here.”

Scioscia also has stuck with the running game, flying in the face of the Moneyball movement, and now he finds baseball coming around to his viewpoint.

Scioscia can be immovably stubborn at times, but that also translates into giving his players a prolonged chance. His intensity and his belief that he is right have also shown through a lot more in recent years, but then most of what he believes has been validated.

Anyone who criticizes Scioscia should be challenged to present the case that another manager would have revived the Angels franchise as profoundly. As long as he is here, the Angels can begin each spring with the conviction that they can win. Before he showed up, that conviction was merely sand-based hope.

Brad May wasn’t playing very much and wasn’t key to the Ducks’ future, so Brian Burke did his old team a favor when he brought him to Toronto for a conditional pick.

It also helps, a little, in salary cap room. May was making $600,000, a figure that would have disappeared anyway when he became an unrestricted free agent after the season.

May came to the Ducks at the trade deadline in ‘07 and was an immediate hit, and not just with his fists. He was a leader and made the Ducks’ fourth line difficult to play against.

He had his bad moments, like his punch-out of Minnesota’s Kim Jonsson in the first round of the playoffs, but he played well when he wasn’t suspended or penalized.

George Parros’ improvement in other phases of the game made May somewhat expendable. Now May will try to give the Maple Leafs a little more backbone as they try to make the playoffs, and the Ducks have room to bring up another young player or two.

Rickey Henderson is heavily favored to get voted into the Hall of Fame in first year of eligibility on Monday. Jim Rice, who missed by 16 votes last year, is in his final year on the writers’ ballot.

As for the Bert Blylevens and Andre Dawsons, they probably will have to look to 2010 and beyond.

Do any of these first-time eligibles look like locks to you?

2010: Roberto Alomar, Barry Larkin.

2011: Jeff Bagwell, Rafael Palmeiro.

2012: Bernie Williams.

 Bagwell probably gets into the Hall at some point. He had 449 home runs, a .948 lifetime OPS, nine 100-run seasons and eight 100-RBI seasons.

Alomar had 2,724 hits and ten Gold Gloves and also hit 210 home runs. If Ryne Sandberg is in, Alomar probably should be.

Palmeiro has the numbers, but too many voters question his methods for him to be sitting by the phone for the call in 2011.

I can’t say any of them are sure things on the first ballot.

So 2010-12 is the window for Blyleven and Dawson, and some others.

It closes in 2013 when perhaps the most volatile election in Hall of Fame history will come around.

Among the eligibles: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Sammy Sosa. Wow.

The forecast is a high of 21 and low of 18 in Pittsburgh Sunday. Much warmer, in other words, than it was in Foxboro last year when the Chargers lost the AFC title game to New England.

If they lose this playoff game Sunday it won’t be because of the cold _ although, don’t expect Mike Scifres to boot the brick 60 yards very often in Heinz Field.

The Chargers are actually built to play January games back East. Here’s some of their key personnel and their alma maters:

Center Nick Hardwick…Purdue.

Guard Kris Dielman……Indiana

Receiver Chris Chambers….Wisconsin.

Receiver Vincent Jackson (who apparently warmed himself up the other night when he was pulled for suspicion of DUI)….Northern Colorado

Defensive end Luis Castillo….Northwestern

Running back Darren Sproles….Kansas State

Tight end Antonio Gates….Kent State (although he played mostly indoors there, on the hardwood)

Guard Mike Goff………Iowa

Safety Eric Weddle….Utah

Linebacker Stephen Cooper…Maine

Linebacker Matt Wilhelm…..Ohio State

Linebacker Shaun Phillips….Purdue

How did a team with so many Big 10 players get so good, by the way?

I’m sure the Scottsdale cops were laughing their holsters off the other day when Charles Barkley offered to tattoo his picture, or their pictures, on his hindquarters if they would only let him walk away from his DUI.

I’m also sure that his blunt motivations for driving so fast _ something about the talents of his passenger _ also gave them plenty of storytelling fodder at the diner the next morning.

And most of my colleagues have laughed this off as another episode of The Chuck Show, which has amused us all for over 20 years now.

But if you care about Barkley and you have a sense of objectivity, it’s a little more serious.

Just because Barkley is one of our favorite alltime people doesn’t exempt him from the boundaries of society. Driving drunk is not too far removed from leaning out the window and firing pistol shots. Potentially it’s just as lethal and the punishment should be significant.

Barkley’s various addictions have made us laugh. But there’s nothing inherently humorous about throwing away your fortune in Vegas, or eating yourself into heart-attack territory, or bypassing sleep. No one is larger than life.

The TNT people should do two things, even if it endangers their unsurpassed “Inside The NBA” show on Thursday nights. They should suspend Chuck for a couple of months and they should strongly encourage him to get help on various levels. He’ll still be funny and honest if he’s lighter, more prosperous and sober.

This presupposes that Barkley will listen to somebody, which is dubious.

But, hey, Alabama needs a governor.

And we need to see this great character straighten out his life.

Just think: What would we have said if this had been the typical NFL player?  Or Alex Rodriguez? John Daly? Or Barry Bonds? We’d be looking for the electric chair.

Few areas in the country have as many distinguished coaches or managers as Southern California these days.

Among them, they’ve produced nine NBA championships, five World Series titles, two national college football titles, a Stanley Cup and three Final Four trips.

So who’s your favorite?

Philip Rivers, showing off his North Carolina State education, said he and punter Mike Scifres do a lot of “conversating” every week in practice.

It is not true that Rivers wanted to be the drum major for the N.C. State marching band because he wanted to dot the “i” in Wolfpack. That was another student.

(Full disclosure: I went to North Carolina, which is at least within eight miles of a real university.)

Anyway, there will be a lot of conversating about the Chargers this week as they prepare for Pittsburgh and, if you think it’s good to look ahead….

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Here are the numbers for Andruw Jones during the six seasons prior to 2008, in average, homers, RBI, on-base, and slugging:

2002: .264-35-94-.366-.513

2003: .277-36-116-.338-.513

2004: .261-29-91-.345-.488

2005: .263-51-128-.347-.575

2006: .262-41-129-.363-.531

2007: .222-26-94-.311.-.413

In 2008: .158-3-14-.256-.249

This is one of the more astounding collapses ever by a quality hitter in his prime years. But it’s not the only example of why it’s risky to use raw numbers to predict a hitter’s future _ i.e., Paul Konerko and Travis Hafner on the downside, Carlos Pena and Ryan Ludwick going up.