The 2004 Sprint Cup champion came to Indy this week to test himself on the 2.5-mile oval in one of Michael Andretti’s IndyCars. He wound up completing all three phases of the rookie test, the last requiring him to turn 10 laps in excess of 210 mph. He posted a lap of 214 mph early in the practice that lasted a little more than five hours.

Busch’s name does not actually appear on Indy’s entry list yet.

But he has three advantages over other drivers looking for late rides — a fitted seat, a complete rookie test and an interested team owner with an available car.

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The announcement was made on the team’s Twitter account and confirmed by Sabres spokesman Michael Gilbert on Wednesday. Ruff was relieved of his duties shortly after the team held a 90-minute practice, and a day after the Sabres were booed several times by their home fans during a 2-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets.

The Sabres (6-10-1) have gone 4-10-1 since opening the season with two wins.

With a 571-432-162 record, Ruff was the team’s winningest coach. In his 16th season, he was also the active leader among NHL coaches with the same team.

The Sabres, who play at Toronto on Thursday, have not yet named a replacement. General manager Darcy Regier was scheduled to address reporters later Wednesday.

The news came as a surprise only because Sabres management, including team president Ted Black, had spent much of the past week voicing its support of Ruff. Team owner Terry Pegula was also regarded as a big fan of Ruff.

Pegula, however, was running out of options in his bid to turn the Sabres into a Stanley Cup contender, an objective he made clear upon purchasing the team two years ago. Ruff’s firing comes nearly two years to the day Pegula formally took over as the Sabres owner on Feb. 22, 2011.

Ruff was becoming increasingly aware that his job was on the line. Last week, he described the Sabres’ struggles as being “his mess,” while adding he wasn’t done trying to clean them up.

On Wednesday, he abruptly cut short his availability with reporters by hinting that changes were coming because “it isn’t working the way we’re going.” He didn’t specify what those changes might be.

Under Ruff, the Sabres made the playoffs in each of his first four seasons and eight times overall. That included a surprising run to the Stanley Cup finals in 1999, when Buffalo was eliminated by Dallas in six games.

The Sabres, however, haven’t been the same since they reached the Eastern Conference finals — losing both times — in both 2006 and ’07. Buffalo has missed the playoffs in three of the past five seasons.

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“It would have been a good chance,” team owner Rick Hendrick said on Saturday at Daytona International Speedway. “As a matter of fact, I’m sure they might have.”

Hendrick, the owner of Hendrick Motorsports and one of the top owners of automobile dealerships in the United States, made the comment during the unveiling of the 2014 Chevrolet SS production car that will debut in NASCAR this season.

“When Mark took over, he said if we’re going to be in the sport it needs to be relevant,” Hendrick said of Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors North America. “That’s when everybody started talking and Ford and Toyota.

“But Mark pushed the button with NASCAR and I’m glad that he did. It sure paid off.”

NASCAR president Mike Helton said Chevrolet led the charge two years ago for a return to manufacturer identity that was lost with the CoT that was used from 2007 through last season.

“Mark kind of voiced that, that if we can’t be relevant we don’t race,” Hendrick said. “We had a lot riding on that, and we needed it anyway. We had beaten that COT to death.”

NASCAR introduced fuel injection to its cars last season because manufacturers wanted it, then worked with Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota to make the body of the cars look like those on the showroom floor for this season.

“They backed us in a corner and said, ‘Here’s what you guys need to think about doing,'” Helton said.

Reuss tempered his comments on whether Chevrolet would have left the sport were it not for the changes.

“Any really successful motorsports activity has to have a really good technical focus on what you’re racing, great personalities that drive it, wonderful people running the teams and the great fan bases will come,” he said.

“Once you start losing any one of those things there’s dangerous things that happen. To get these fuel injected, to get them looking like cars you can buy again … and to have people understand what they are and what they represent from a brand and driver standpoint, that’s what we were working on.”

Hendrick said it was time for the CoT to go even though he won 60 races and four titles — all with Jimmie Johnson — with it.

“Wins are one thing,” Hendrick said. “But if the fans don’t like it and the manufacturers don’t like it, we can’t survive that way. The fans grew up, I grew up, going to the track wanting to outrun the Fords and the Pontiacs and all those guys. I think we missed that.

“The CoT, we had a lot of success with it and won championships with it, but it was time to get back to our roots and a production car we could race.”

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In a news conference introducing the Dallas Cowboys coaches for the 2013 season, Callahan downplayed any potential changes within the structure of the offensive staff.

“I checked my ego at the door a long time ago,” said Callahan, who has called the offensive plays with the Oakland Raiders and the University of Nebraska, where he was a head coach.

“It doesn’t matter who calls the plays. We know what the play is going to be so there’s no guessers, no surprises and I think the players can tell you that as well. If you’re a good football team and you have an identity of what you’re doing, they can tell you the play that’s going to be called and featured in that particular down and distance, there’s no mystery,” he said.

There seems to be a mystery regarding the playcaller, especially after team owner/general manager Jerry Jones wanted to make change within the coaching staff by saying he wanted people uncomfortable. Jones said it would be Garrett’s decision to decide if he didn’t want to call the offensive plays anymore.

Callahan said he embraces Jones’ thoughts and he hasn’t spoken to the owner regarding the playcalling but, “I would be very happy to speak with him.”

The Cowboys had the seventh-best offense in the league yet there was some game mismanagement issues with Garrett and the running attack finished 31st overall. Each year, Garrett said he’s delegated duties to other offensive coaches. However, after the 2012 season, Garrett said he expected the status quo to remain in terms of calling the plays.

Jones changed the dynamic at Valley Ranch insisting his coaching staff be open minded about things. Garrett has agreed, however, he won’t reveal if one of those changes is giving the play-calling duties to Callahan.

Garrett said the mechanics needed to be worked out before a final decision is made about the playcaller. When asked about the specifics, Garrett wouldn’t say.
“I got the upmost confidence in Coach Garrett and what he believes and how he wants to go about the process of going through playcalling, whatever it may be,” Callahan said. “So be it. My job and my function as an assistant is to serve the head coach and I’m going to do that to the best of my ability every day I come to work you put your best foot forward and compete.”

Callahan dismissed the notion that he would have to implement the West Coast offense, something he used with the Raiders, over Garrett’s timing-based passing attack.

Callahan said he’s been around long-enough to work with any offensive system. The only difference is the terminology.

“Again, I’ve partaken in playcalling during the games here,” Callahan said. “I’ve done it at several places. It’s a group effort whether it’s collecting thoughts on the sidelines between series as to what plays we’d like to run and getting those ideas from the staff, whether it’s doing it while we are online during the course of a series, whether it’s on the sidelines and somebody’s the primary caller, it really doesn’t matter because I just hearken back to the point I made about preparation of the game plan. It’s a group effort.”

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The announcement was made Monday, a day after the Bills closed out another disappointing season with a 28-9 win over the New York Jets.

Buffalo finished 6-10, and Gailey leaves with a 16-32 record. There was no immediate word on the status of general manager Buddy Nix.

In a hopeful season after signing star defensive end Mario Williams to a $100 million contract, the Bills reverted to their ways of the past, failing to make the playoffs for a 13th straight year, the NFL’s longest active drought.

Gailey met with his players during the team’s annual exit meetings and informed at least one of his players that he expected to be fired.

Gailey addressed reporters for a little over a minute, and declined to take questions.

He thanked both Nix and team owner Ralph Wilson for the opportunity, and said he understood the reasons behind the decision. Gailey also announced that his entire staff had been fired.

“I understand this is a business. We didn’t get the job done,” Gailey said, reading from a Bills pad on which he had jotted down a few notes. “I’ve been called two other times to get things turned around, was able to do it. We weren’t able to get this one done soon enough and I understand that completely.”

Gailey’s eyes then welled with tears when he credited Bills fans for their loyalty, and Buffalo for being a passionate football city.

“I think that the next staff will have a great opportunity for success, and make this another great football franchise,” Gailey said. “This will probably be, and I say probably, but I think it will be the first place that’s ever fired me that I’ll pull for.”

Gailey had at least one more season left on his contract.

It’s the latest twirl of the coaching carousel in Buffalo.

The Bills are on their fifth coaching search since Wade Phillips was fired following the 2001 season. Phillips, who took over in 1998 after Hall of Famer Marv Levy retired, was the last coach to get the Bills to the playoffs. That was in the 1999 season, when Buffalo lost the AFC wild-card playoff to Tennessee on a last-second kickoff return, the “Music City Miracle.”

Gailey took over in January 2010 after a tumultuous season in which Dick Jauron was fired in November, leaving defensive coordinator Perry Fewell to finish out the season on an interim basis.

It’s unclear whether Nix will be overseeing the next coaching search. Nix was at the Bills’ facility on Monday.

This was Gailey’s second NFL head coaching job. He went a combined 18-16 in two seasons at Dallas before being fired following the 1999 season despite leading the Cowboys to the playoffs each year. He spent six years as head coach at Georgia Tech, where he had a 44-32 record before being fired after the 2007 season.

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There will be no repeat championship for the Giants, not even a playoff berth. A 9-7 season wasn’t good enough this time around.

The Giants saw their playoff hopes end Sunday, minutes after a 42-7 win over the Philadelphia Eagles when Chicago beat Detroit 26-24.

“It happens that way,” Tuck said after the Giants rebounded from two bad losses and routed the Eagles in what might have been Andy Reid’s final game at coach. “I’ve been 10-6 and not made the playoffs. You’ve got to win the ones you’re supposed to. That’s why the division games mean so much. If we’d won the division games, we’d still be in the driver’s seat.”

Instead, they are headed home early.

“We are certainly disappointed we are not in the playoffs,” coach Tom Coughlin said after New York missed the postseason for the third time in four years. “Our goal was certainly to be there. Our goal was to win the division. We didn’t do that either. We won nine games and there is no way anyone can talk us out of that. We do have the nine wins, but it’s not good enough.”

A year ago it was. The Giants won their last two games in 2011 to get into the playoffs, and finished the season with six straight wins in earning their second NFL title in five seasons.

This marks the seventh straight season the Super Bowl champion has failed to win a playoff game the following year.

A little more than an hour after Reid finished his worst season with the Eagles (4-12), three people familiar with the decision told The Associated Press that his 14-year tenure as Philadelphia’s coach was over.

Reid and team owner Jeffrey Lurie are scheduled to meet Monday, and a team official insisted to ESPN that Reid has yet to be informed that he will be fired.

Another Eagles source told ESPN that Lurie and Reid met Friday, but the Eagles’ owner did not inform him at that time that he would be let go.

Reid is due to make $6 million in 2013 in the final year of his contract. He said he wants to coach next year, but it’s possible Lurie could persuade him to take a season off and perhaps help out in the front office in an “advisory” role.

Eagles spokesman Derek Boyko denied several reports that Lurie had already fired Reid, saying they were “absolutely, 100 percent” untrue.

“I’ve been doing it a long time. I have respect for Jeff Lurie. I go in eyes wide open,” Reid said. “Either way, I understand. Whatever he chooses will be the right thing. He always does things for the best interests of the Eagles.”

Eli Manning did his part to keep the Giants in the chase with a career-best five touchdown passes. Fans who stuck around were chanting “Let’s Go Lions” as the final moments ticked off in the Chicago-Detroit game.

“It hurts,” said Manning, who finished 13 of 21 for 208 yards and no interceptions. “Each year you want to make the playoffs to give yourself an opportunity to win a championship; 9-7 last year was good enough. It wasn’t good enough this year and we knew it wouldn’t be.”

After going 6-2, they lost five of eight, including two games by a combined 67-14 to playoff-bound Atlanta and Baltimore.

“The first thing is you don’t ever rely on anybody else in this business,” said Coughlin. “You’ve got to take care of your own business. We certainly had our chances. That will be the No. 1 thing I’ll talk to the team about.”

Manning woke up the offense with touchdown passes of 3 and 38 yards to rookie Rueben Randle, a 15-yarder to David Wilson and a 24-yarder to Victor Cruz just before halftime for a 35-7 lead. He’s the first Giant to throw five TD passes in a game since Phil Simms in 1980. His fifth score was a 1-yard pass to fullback Henry Hynoski in the fourth quarter.

Ahmad Bradshaw, who rushed for 107 yards and passed the 1,000-yard mark for the second time in his career, also scored on a 1-yard run.

Starting for the first time since a concussion against Dallas in early November, Michael Vick threw a 7-yard touchdown to Jeremy Maclin. Vick finished 19 of 35 for 197 yards and one interception before being replaced by Trent Edwards.

The Eagles had hoped to send Reid out on a positive note, but they played poorly.

“We came, we stunk it up and we lost,” defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins said. “It was terrible. No heart.”

Vick, replacing injured rookie Nick Foles, was also reluctant to discuss his future, but he felt for Reid, who gave him a second chance after he got out of prison.

“He’s a great man and I love him to death,” Vick said. “I wish I could’ve done more. A lot of players wish they could’ve done more. Coaches can’t play the games.”

The Eagles surprised the Giants on a cold and windy day with an onside kick to open the game. However, turnovers have hurt the Eagles all season, and it happened again when Stevie Brown came up with his eighth interception.

Manning needed four plays, finding Randle over the middle for his second touchdown of his rookie season. His third came on the following series when New York went 74 yards in five plays.

The third touchdown was another pass to a rookie, with Wilson catching a 15-yarder, then doing his usual back flip to celebrate.

Game notes

About 400 residents of Newtown, Conn., attended the New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles game Sunday. Among them were a few families who lost children in the massacre this month, the Giants said. One was the family of Jack Pinto, the 6-year-old boy buried in a No. 80 jersey of Giants receiver Victor Cruz. … Bradshaw finished with 1,015 yards rushing. …Manning fell 52 yards shy of his fourth straight 4,000 yard passing season. …Brown’s 48-yard return gave him 307 yards in interception returns this season, extending his Giants’ single-season record. … Eagles safety Colt Anderson led them with 10 tackles.

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