Out: Missouri football star Michael Sam, a defensive end who’s expected to be an early round NFL draft pick, announced that he’s gay. He’s 6-2, 260 pounds and would be the first openly gay player in the NFL. But he’s taking a risk making the announcement before the draft. Many players are accepting, but owners can be Neanderthals. The NY Times quotes Sam describing how he told his Missouri team last August. “I looked in their eyes, and they just starting shaking their heads — like, finally, he came out.”

Joisey: A member of the Newark Star Ledger editorial board wrote a column saying the paper “blew” it by endorsing Chris Christie for re-election last fall. Tom Moran wrote that it was a close vote on the board. He said,  “We regard Christie as the most overrated politician in the country, at least until now, a man who is better at talking than governing. We criticized him for trashing the working poor, for his tea party approach to the environment, for his opposition to gay marriage and a livable minimum wage.”

Nation:  Eleven people died yesterday in wrong-way collisions on highways in California and Florida. Six people were killed just before dawn east of Los Angeles when a woman drove the wrong direction in a Camaro travelling speeds up to 100 mph. In Florida the driver of an SUV and four people in another car died in a fiery head-on collision. Three of the four people in the second car were fraternity brothers at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

World: Six hundred refugees were bused out of the war-torn city of Homs in Syria, according to the local governor. The evacuation came after an aid convoy was attacked two days in a row. Homs has been under government blockade, causing malnutrition and disease.

>Swiss voters just barely passed a law to limit immigration after a campaign that whipped up fear about rising numbers of Muslims in the mountain country. About a half million of Switzerland’s population of 8 million are Muslim. The new law sets quotas for all immigrants.

Sochi: All the following results have already appeared on television.

>Russia won the team figure skating event, the host country’s first gold medal in eight years. The Russians failed to win a single gold in 2010 in Vancouver. It’s a big comeback for a country that has fielded formidable skaters over the years. Canada finished second, and the US third.

>Crews are re-shaping the snowboarding halfpipe after a high number of crashes during training runs. Training was cancelled this morning. Warm temperatures are also causing trouble, slowing the snow and hindering elevation on tricks. The halfpipe is Shaun White’s event.

>Reporting the Sochi Olympics without being a spoiler for television viewers is difficult. Sochi is 15 hours ahead of New York, 12 hours ahead of Los Angeles. With the time delay for NBC’s evening broadcast, some events have concluded 24 hours before they appear on television.

Some Pig: Animal activists are outraged that the Copenhagen Zoo publicly killed an 18-month-old Giraffe, dismembered him, and fed him to the lions. It was done as a demonstration of normal zoo management. The giraffe named Marius was considered superfluous to the zoo’s breeding program and, because he was no longer a cute baby, he didn’t hold much interest to the public. A zoo spokesman said, “I don’t think anyone would have lifted an eyebrow if it was a pig.” They might have if the pig had a name like, say, Wilbur.

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