This weeks Barron's (subscription required) talks about The Next Warren Buffett. Of course nobody believes that's going to happen. The headline is cast to grab attention and sell papers, just like mine, but it's not happening: no way, no how!

Barron's discusses in it's story the strong possibilty that David Sokol, 51, the curent chairman of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company is the most likely to succeed Buffett. MidAmerican has $39 billion in assets and is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A). The headline should really have read "succeed" not be the "next".

The last ball knocked out of the park by all-time home run king Barry Bonds has sold at auction for $376,612.

That's either a bargain or a rip-off, depending on what happens next. Barry Bonds is an unsigned free agent as of now, but he and his agent have insisted that the slugger intends to continue his Hall of Fame career that has been tarnished by allegations of performance enhancing drug use.

The president of the auction house told the Associated Press that "If Barry Bonds never plays again, whoever bought this ball has a valuable piece that's worth seven figures." Of course, if Bonds does make a comeback, the ball is worth a fraction of what it sold for.

The sale of the Barry Bonds ball is actually a pretty good metaphor for the stock market. Given the tremendous uncertainty surrounding Barry Bonds' career, the sale price represents the market's best estimate of what will happen. That is, in a nutshell, the premise behind discounted cash flow.

Given the large discrepancy between the ball's sale price and its probable value if it is indeed his last home run, it seems that many baseball enthusiasts are betting we haven't seen the last of one of the most hated men in the history of the game.

Alternatively, it could be that the increasing scandal surrounding Bonds' accomplishments have driven down the ball's value -- kind of like how investors will pay a lower P/E ratio for a company's stock if they believe it's inflating its numbers.

No matter how much you plan, calculate, speculate and research sometimes you just cannot avoid turmoil and it is going to affect your business. It does not matter what kind of business you're in, you are going to have surprises.

This week when I read Miami Heat forward Shawn Marion out for season with foot injury, I could not help but think how ironic. When the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball franchise traded all-star forward Shawn Marion (and guard Marcus Banks) to the Heat for Shaquille O'Neal I am quite certain that there was unanimity of thought that it was Shaq that would be more prone to injury. He had already missed many games this season and was just coming off an injury right before the trade.

After a very slow (losing) start with the Suns Shaq has done well (ignoring his pitiful free-throw shooting) and they have reversed course over the last ten games. The Suns are still in the same hunt for a Championship they were before, but now with a monster in the middle perhaps giving them greater hope for a storybook ending.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of the Phoenix Suns or Miami Heat , but I am saving up to buy the Los Angeles Lakers.

I'm puzzled by a lot of things about the market, but the ascent of former Major League Baseball All-Star Lenny Dykstra to the throne of options trading pundit is pretty interesting.

He writes regularly for TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM), with a focus on the trading of deep in the money calls, one of the less risky options trading strategies out there. A 2006 look at his background in Fortune summed his market experience up this way: "After his mutual funds tanked, Lenny Dykstra leaned on some heavy hitters to transform him from an ex-major leaguer to a minor-league stock picker. At the time, he was talking to the reporter about a stock he owned called Lipid Sciences (NASDAQ: LIPD), which has steadily declined in value since that article. It was the only stock he owned.

Outside of his columns and appearances on CNBC, Mr. Dykstra's media attention has been less than positive. His name appears 28 times in the Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, but he declined to speak with Mitchell's team. In an affidavit, for Major Leaguer and steroid user Jason Grimsley accused Dykstra of using steroids.

This post is one of several on business heirs apparent. Let us know in the comments whether you think Jeffrey Jordan live up to the legacy of his father, and be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

By Mike Brewster, guest blogger.

Since legendary hoopster Michael Jordan retired for good in 2003, none of the "next Michael Jordans"-- from Tracy McGrady to Jerry Stackhouse to Vince Carter -- have come close to matching Jordan's gaudy stats, six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, or impact on the game (not to mention his poker losses, but that's another story). Perhaps we have to look closer to home to find the real heir to Air Jordan?

Son Jeff Jordan is a freshman at the University of Illinois, and the first thing that strikes you about the younger Jordan is that he earned an academic scholarship to Illinois, certainly impressive but not exactly predictive of a Hall of Fame NBA career. Jeff's stats -- he's averaging five minutes and under one point per game this season for one of the worst Illinois squads in memory -- suggest that he might have been better off playing at one of the schools where he was offered a basketball scholarship, such as Loyola University of Chicago or Valparaiso.

I often spend a little time over at Blogmaverick.com, where Mark Cuban recently sought to give the world of blogging a little of his insightful perspective. It seems that Mr. Cuban finds little to respect in the world of blogging, or at least in the world of slipshod ,cookie-cutter blogging. Though I found Mark's blog entry a trifle difficult to read, which is quite unusual coming from him, I nonetheless agree with most of the body of his post. I especially agree with his assertion that just because a blog is backed by the name of a well-known media organization does not in itself render that blog worthy of special notice.

Mark Cuban wrote, "...newspapers having 'bloggers' is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years." If newspapers are going in a wrong direction by producing blogs, perhaps they need to reinstall the title reporter and drop the title blogger to give a different perspective to the reader. If newspapers are using the term blog simply as a culture hook, then they have it all wrong and they're just selling their reporters short. I believe that I'm in agreement with Mark Cuban when I say that true reporters should be releasing content within some format other than blogs. Blogging is what I do, and I'll be the first to tell you that I'm no reporter. The titles are absolutely not interchangeable, though they may sometimes be used correctly in tandem.

Hoping to capitalize on the shuttering of NFL Europe, the All American Football League is scheduled to kickoff its inaugural season on April 12 ... or, it was.

In a statement on the league's website, the AAFL stated the following:

Since inception, the League's finances have been indirectly tied to the $300 billion federally guaranteed student loan asset backed securities market. [...] Every effort is being made to insure that the '08 season will be played as planned, but this depends upon a locating new majority owner with the needed liquidity [...] Otherwise, the inaugural season will be postponed to '09.

Eek. Is there no end to the reach of subprime's wretched tentacles? Is nothing sacred? Not even football? The league was set to pay its players an average of $100,000 for year-round players, and $50,000 for part-timers. The goal is/was to attract the best non-NFL players in the world, but instability could make that tough. In addition, the league has not yet secured a TV deal -- which could also be made difficult by the uncertainty.

Maybe we can get Ben Bernanke on this one. If we're going to help people stay in homes they shouldn't have bought in the first place, then Uncle Sam should definitely intervene to give football fans something better than Arena Football during the long off-season.

In case you missed it, Congressmen Henry Waxman of California and Tom Davis of Virginia, the Democratic and Republican leaders on the House Oversight Committee, have sent a letter to the Justice Department asking them to investigate whether Roger Clemens "committed perjury and made knowingly false statements" when he told the committee that he had never used steroids or human growth hormone.

The letter also said that "We are not in a position to reach a definitive judgment as to whether Mr. Clemens lied to the Committee. Our only conclusion is that significant questions have been raised about Mr. Clemens's truthfulness and that further investigation by the Department of Justice is warranted."

Newsday reports that the Justice Department "may already have decided to begin its own investigation prior to this recommendation, considering its continued involvement with this case."

Last night's Super Bowl may have been the most watched telecast ever, according to preliminary data compiled by Nielsen Media Research.

Ratings for the contest between the New York Giants and New England Patriots were up 9% from last year. Figures for the number of viewers weren't immediately available from Nielsen. The most watched program of all time was the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H." Until now, the most-watched Super Bowl was in 1996 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Shares of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), whose Fox Network broadcast last night's game, are down 18% over the past year as Wall Street worried that Rupert Murdoch's media empire would be hurt by a slowdown in advertising spending and the Hollywod writers' strike.

As an imperfect New England Patriots fan, I stopped watching last night's Super Bowl at half time. After squirming as the New York Giants defense tore through the Patriot's front line and repeatedly sacked quarterback Tom Brady, I had a strong feeling that the Patriots would not win.

Nevertheless, the bad news for me and the many far more loyal Patriots fans, could be good news for investors. According to ITtoolbox, that's because of the Super Bowl Predictor (SBP) -- whenever an "original" NFL team wins the big game, in this case, the Giants -- the market rises. The SBP has been right on the direction of the DOW in 33 of 41 Super Bowls which is an 81% success rate.

Of all the idiotic predictors of market performance (and I would argue that nearly all of them are idiotic: predicting the future direction of the stock market as a whole is darn near impossible), the Super Bowl Indicator has to be the dumbest.

Here's how it work: When an "original" National Football League team wins the big game, the market rises; it falls when the winner is a team that joined the NFL in the merger with the American Football League in 1970. The indicator has an 81% success rate historically.

So if the Patriots win the Super Bowl, that's a bad omen.

The Wall Street Journal devoted an article to this nonsense today [subscription], without any hint of irony or explanation of how incredibly dumb this indicator is.

Porkbelly futures and plain-vanilla interest rate swaps not exciting enough?

Well now you can invest in a pitcher! For $50,000, you can buy 4% of 25-year-old minor league relief pitcher Randy Newsom's future Major League earnings. That means that he'll need to earn $1.25 million in the majors before you start raking it in.

Newsom has set up Real Sports Investments LLC to broker the deal, and he describes it this way:

Investing in a player is similar to investing in a company. If the company makes money, the investors get paid in the form of a dividend. If an athlete you own shares in makes it to the big leagues, then you will be paid a percentage of his contract .... Investors can also trade their shares to other willing buyers and sellers via this website. Shares will increase or decrease in value based on the athlete's future earning potential and supply and demand.

It's certainly an interesting idea, and Newsom is hoping to get other players to sign up to offer a portion of their future earnings.

One concern is that at 25, Newsom has never pitched past Double-A, although he did notch 18 saves there last year. But the idea certainly makes sense and Newsom definitely has a future in business, if not in pitching.

Ready to start your due diligence? Watch this YouTube video of him pitching and decide whether you think he has a future.

In my day job as an analyst, I hear time and time again the conspiracy theorists, claiming that "the big guys" are out to get us, making it impossible to make money in the market. While insider buying is a good divining stick when analyzing companies, the idea that the institutions and insiders are just sitting, crouching in waiting, to sucker us into making investments decisions just to swipe our money is ludicrous.

While there are certainly cases of misdeed or asymmetrical information, this is not the case. Playing fields are generally level for all parties. That's what the SEC, FINRA and many governing bodies are there for -- to protect investors.

So, I find it interesting to read, on a couple of accounts, about Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee sprinter making a go at qualifying for the 2008 Olympics in China. The NY Times ran a story today that cites that the amazing sprinter may hold an unfair advantage with his prosthetics and may subsequently be disallowed to compete.

With New Year's in a few days, everyone is busy making their resolutions. The most popular of all New Year's resolutions is the need to lose weight. So with that in mind, here are two stocks that could benefit from weight-loss resolutions.

Nike (NYSE: NKE) engages in the design, development, and marketing of footwear, apparel, equipment, and accessory products worldwide. You can't start your exercise program without going out and buying a pair of shoes, and a sweat suit. The stock is trading just off their all time high and with a P/E of about 19 the stock look attractive. With '08 being an Olympic year, Nike is sure to benefit from all the exposure. With its recent 19.9% purchase of the UK Umbro, Nike looks to grow its European business, which has been growing strongly anyway. Expect Nike to continue moving higher in '08.

With the New England Patriots one game away from becoming the first team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins to go undefeated in the regular season, a showdown between the NFL's NFL Network and the networks was ready.

Saturday's season finale featuring the Patriots and the New York Giants was to be run exclusively on the NFL Network, which isn't carried by most cable operators. Blocking cable-watching fans from all over country from access to the fans would have given the league horns but, after receiving a letter from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the league has relented. The game will also appear on CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) and General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s NBC.

In a statement, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league made the decision to please fans: "We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans. What we have seen for the past year is a very strong consumer demand for NFL Network. We appreciate CBS and NBC delivering the NFL Network telecast on Saturday night to the broad audience that deserves to see this potentially historic game. Our commitment to the NFL Network is stronger than ever."

This has to score the NFL Network some major points in the PR battle between itself and the cable companies that refuse to carry its programming because of the league's huge pay requests. The NFL has a site where it urges fans to demand the NFL Network, and has wasted no time in posting the news of its generosity on that site.

The league also has a letter it wants you to send to your elected officials (who clearly have nothing better to do...) accusing cable companies of taking advantage of football fans.

Having perhaps played some small role in bringing the Patriots game to network television, John Kerry has accomplished far more than the man who beat him in the last Presidential election.