LAS VEGAS – Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out the great Manny Pacquiao last Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

After the referee counted Pac-man out, doctors rushed in to make sure he was okay. He slowly regained consciousness. Meanwhile, all over town, sports books directors were feeling just as woozy. Marquez might as well have landed his strong right hand upside their heads.

Fair warning. Win the Hollywood Turf Cup and you might end up in Australia.

For anyone clinging to the idea that the way things are today are not the way they have always been, it undoubtedly does their heart good to know that somewhere there is a horse race named for Damon Runyon.

Last June 21, as New York lawmakers hurried toward a summer recess, both houses of the state legislature passed a bill that would give the Catskill Regional Offtrack Betting Corporation the right to operate OTB parlors in New York City.

LAS VEGAS – As expected Alabama beat Georgia in the SEC title game last Saturday (though it wasn’t as easy as many expected and wasn’t decided until the final gun with the Bulldogs five yards short as Bama held on for a 32-28 victory).

What a kick. For the first time in eight years one of these late-season stakes races at Betfair Hollywood Park actually might mean something in terms of deciding a national championship.

The North American Graded Stakes Committee takes so many barbs that it’s only fair to toss a laurel its way when it gets things right – which is exactly what it did Friday when it announced its grade changes for the 2013 stakes schedule.

There are always stories behind the headlines, some far afield, others hitting close to home. We report, you decide:

WASHINGTON, D.C.– Bipartisan optimism gave way to a partisan reality on Capitol Hill as congressional leaders acknowledged Thursday that little progress as been made with the White House to reach a deal to avert the ”fiscal cliff” coming at year’s end when all of the Bush era tax cuts will expire and billions in automatic spending cuts are triggered. -- USA Today

LAS VEGAS – So much for the NFL Year of the Underdog.

Yes, underdogs are 94-76-5 (55.3  percent) against the spread so far this season, but that’s nothing compared to how well they were faring. After Week 6, dogs were 56-32-2 (63.4 percent), and I was in fourth place in the LVH SuperContest at 21-9. But as I’ve often written about, there’s always a regression to the mean (even if it takes more than the six weeks we’re seeing here) as all trends work themselves back toward .500.

It’s not a soap opera. Really it’s not. It has been a perfectly normal chain of events that, arranged in order, appear to be quite rational and seem to make absolute sense, although having the cast of “Dynasty” on call wouldn’t hurt.

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: