I often have show record that follow sporting events. Often I miss the end of them due to football running over. Can SRE be augmented such that it will monitor shows that are after sporting events and extend them as well.. maybe a parameter of x hours after an event it will monitor recordings and extend them if necessary. (maybe this functionality exists already?)

This is not easily implemented. The reasons for that are discussed here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=215483&postcount=4

No matter what criteria you pick to extend recordings after games, you're success rate would be such that you're going to end up with too many partial recordings. The success rate would never be high enough to justify trying to implement it; people's expectations would be too high and could never be met.