The only one missing was Tiger Woods.
On Second Chance Monday for Fallen Athletes, there was Mark McGwire finally admitting to 20 years of steroid abuse, including the 1998 season he eclipsed Roger Maris's home run record - but even more surprising was the unexpected story coming out of Canada.
Mike Danton, a 29-year-old former player in the NHL, having just completed more than five years in prison on a conspiracy to commit murder conviction, is off to Halifax to play university hockey for the Saint Mary's Huskies.
How, people wanted to know, could a man as much as a dozen years older than his new classmates, a former professional with a record almost as unsavoury on the ice as off, be allowed to suit up for an amateur student hockey team?
"He met all CIS rules," says Marg McGregor, executive director of Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
"Saint Mary's has done their diligence, reviewed the situation and deemed that this is an athlete that they want wearing the Saint Mary's uniform."
Danton is signed up to take three sociology courses - to his credit, he took courses while in prison in Kingston - and will likely play for the Huskies, currently ranked eighth nationally.
And while no one would criticize his efforts to better himself, many are asking the Ottawa-based CIS how such a thing could be permissible. Danton not only comes with massive personal baggage - changing his name from Mike Jefferson after falling out with his father, falling under the spell of controversial hockey coach and agent David Frost, whom he denies he tried to have killed in St. Louis, showing little remorse for his conviction when interviewed recently on Sportsnet - he would be a grown man and former professional playing in a league that should, by definition, be for amateur youngsters.
Except it doesn't quite work that way.
It was widely noted during the recent world junior hockey championship in Regina and Saskatoon that the best team in the tournament, the United States, took more than half of its players from the U.S. college program, where scholarships are widely available, while the second-place Canadian team was composed completely of major-junior players.
There are, in fact, athletic scholarships available in Canada. It's just that hardly anyone seems to know about them. McGregor calculates that CIS universities handed out $9.9-million in scholarships this year - though schools are allowed only to offer tuition, whereas athletic scholarships in the United States can often be "full ride."
"We need to do a better job of getting the message out there," McGregor says.
But there is also the matter of how Canadian schools build their varsity teams. In Saskatoon this month, the Canadian Hockey League announced $4.45-million in academic scholarships, mostly for "graduating" junior players who are not going on to pro careers.
While this is admirable, it has the effect of sending players 20 and older into the university ranks, making it difficult for a 17-year-old freshman to crack a lineup made up of players who have already played major-junior hockey and are already mature men.
In the case of 29-year-old Danton, who will not be there on scholarship, this gap between man and child is even more alarming. The notion of a still-growing high school graduate challenging a mature man with three years of NHL hockey to his credit is simply preposterous. No wonder the academically and athletically gifted Canadian high school graduate looks south before looking around home.
The only CIS sport with an age limit is football, and the reason, interestingly, is physical safety.
"Do you want a 29-year-old tackling an 18-year-old high school graduate rookie?" McGregor asks.
Of course not - but what about a 29-year-old trying to put an 18-year-old through the boards? McGregor finds herself in a Catch-22 situation on this one. An age limit has, for bewildering reasons, never been set for university hockey though she says "it could be on the radar."
As for "professionalism," the rules are mild - one year of eligibility lost for every year of pro - which still leaves Danton with two years eligibility for university hockey.
A 31-year-old varsity player? "There will be pessimists and naysayers out there," Saint Mary's athletic director Steve Sarty told The Canadian Press yesterday, "but I prefer to think there's a ton of upside to this situation.
"I look forward to the day that Danton comes through my office and I shake his hand and let him know that we're behind him 100 per cent."
"Each university," McGregor says, "is the expert on what is appropriate for their campus.
"We will not weigh in."
Well, in this case they should. The CIS says it wishes to be "the destination of choice" for Canada's finest high school athletes. It says it wishes "to do a good job of retaining our top athletes."
All goals any Canadian will support.
In June, a task force will report to the CIS annual meeting on scholarship and eligibility.
They need to applaud second chances in education.
But they need to apply a little common sense to what a real first chance means in hockey.
Roy MacGregor