As a former tivo user, you're pretty much SOL. You'll spend the same amount of time setting up recordings whether you do it manually each week or babysitting various dishpass or timers. I've tried without luck to figure a way to set a timer or dishpass and never have to mess with it to record my Los Angeles Kings, but I've struck out. I either end up with a ton of missed recordings or a ton of extra recordings. I severly miss the wishlists that tivo has. I set up my wishlist for sports, hockey, live events, los angeles kings in October of 2003 and between a move from cable to satellite and a move from one city to another till I had to give my tivo for all HD tv's a year ago I had exactly 3 missed recordings; and 2 of those were because the tivo tried to record on a channel that it was blacked out on.
All that being said, I wouldn't go back to tivo, as it would mean either SD tv or worse, Time Warner cable. The 722 is a darn good DVR and overall functionality is on par with tivo. One other thing if you're used to tivo --- the 722 doesn't continue to record to the live tv buffer when you are watching a previously recorded program. I can't tell you the number of times I would finish watching a recording, drop to live tv, find the program that was on interesting, attempt to skip back to the beginning, only to to find out that it started the live tv buffer when I started watching.
Anyways, good luck ... if anyone comes up with a foolproof way to record sporting events, you're my hero!