Era

Michael Vick, according to head coach Andy Reid, will finish his career as an Eagles quarterback right where he started, low on the depth chart and with little expectation of moving up. It is not official that Vick's tenure is over, but common sense and financial expediency - one of which is a specialty of the organization - indicate he will not be back for whatever fresh excitement the 2013 season might hold. Vick, who suffered a concussion Nov. 11, has been cleared to play, but Reid said Nick Foles will remain the starting quarterback for the last two games.

Righthander Zack Greinke has agreed to a six-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, multiple sources reported Saturday. The deal was said to be worth about $147 million. Greinke, 29, went 15-5 with a 3.48 ERA with the Los Angeles Angels and Milwaukee Brewers last year. Ludwick stays. Outfielder Ryan Ludwick (.275, 26 HRs, 80 RBIs) is returning to the Cincinnati Reds for a two-year contract worth $15 million, a source told the Associated Press.  

The last time the Eagles demoted one quarterback and promoted another, the locker room at the NovaCare Complex was as crowded with reporters as it has ever been. There was so little space at Michael Vick's locker and Kevin Kolb's adjoining stall that Kolb had to move to another area to answer questions. Two years later, Vick's benching and Nick Foles' ascension has generated much less interest. The hopelessness of the season and the fact that many already believed a switch was a foregone conclusion were reasons for the reduced fanfare on Wednesday.

Look all the way to the bottom and you won't find Kentucky in the Associated Press poll. For the first time since John Calipari became coach of the Wildcats, they're not ranked. The Wildcats opened the season at No. 3, then dropped to No. 8, and after back-to-back losses to unranked Notre Dame and Baylor, their poll run ended at 61 straight. The stretch included 11 weeks at No. 1 under Calipari. According to STATS L.L.C, the Wildcats are the highest-ranked team to fall out of the poll in one week since it expanded to 25 in 1989-90 season.

MIDDLE TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Authorities have removed and destroyed a World War II-era explosive shell found in a local yard. The Atlantic City Bomb Squad responded to the home around 2:20 p.m. Saturday after a person using a metal detector found an object that appeared to be unexploded ordnance. Middle Township police said officers found a large projectile had been partially unearthed, but it appeared to be inert. It was not clear how or when it was put on the property, but bomb squad members determined it was a 155 mm howitzer shell.

LANDOVER, Md. - It isn't just the rest of the football world that is talking about the end of the Andy Reid era with the Eagles. The players are starting to see the writing on the wall. Three veteran Eagles said that Sunday's 31-6 loss to the Redskins was likely the final nail in the coffin for their head coach. "I know it. I know it," said one defensive player who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject. "And the only reason I'm here is because of Andy.

Like all tragedies, the Petraeus saga is a tale of how things get beyond your control. It began as a sexual affair that, if of questionable morality, was at least not illegal. But with the speed of e-mail, it shot out runners where no one could have predicted. The FBI investigated. A CIA head resigned. A big military nomination was frozen. Reputations and perhaps families were riven. E-mail was key. It's vulnerable to surveillance - even when you try to hide it, as Gen. David Petraeus and his biographer/paramour, Paula Broadwell, did. Petraeus and Broadwell used a clever ruse to hide their contact: They shared a Gmail account under a pseudonym.

DOUG COLLINS was hired 2 years ago. The Doug Collins era began Wednesday. The Sixers this offseason handed Collins the reins, tossed him the keys, sent him the combination to the safe; whatever metaphor fits total commitment, they did that. They remade their front office. They gutted a team that came within a win of reaching the Eastern Conference Finals. They did so with the guidance of their 61-year-old head coach. "I'm thrilled that the team believes in me and wants me to be here," Collins said.

Greece is spiraling into the kind of decline that the United States and Germany endured during the Great Depression, showing the scale of the challenge involved in attempting to regain competitiveness through austerity. The economy shrank 18.4 percent in the last four years and the International Monetary Fund forecasts that it will contract 4 percent more in 2013 as Greece struggles to reduce debt in exchange for its $300 billion rescue programs. That's the biggest cumulative loss of output of a developed-country economy in at least three decades, coming within spitting distance of the 27 percent drop in the U.S. economy between 1929 and 1933, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington.

NEW HOUSTON manager Bo Porter inherits a team that has been the worst in baseball the past two seasons. But he remembers the excitement in the city just a few years ago when Houston went to its only World Series, and is determined to get the Astros back into contention as soon as possible. Turning around a team that lost 100 games in each of the last two seasons won't be easy, but he's confident it can be done. Porter is the former third base coach for the Nationals, who went from losing 93 games in 2010 to a major league-best 98 wins this regular season.