The NBA suspended Raptors' Charles Oakley for three games because he punched Clippers' point guard, Jeff McInnes at a morning shoot-around in Toronto prior to a Raptors/Clippers game. FOX Sports Net reported last night that the basis of this altercation might nave been a woman with whom both players were "associated". They played the game without Oakley and the Clippers lost the game in OT. In that game, the Clippers as a team shot 15-34 from the foul line. High school teams shoot better free throws than that.

Jerry Stackhouse missed a game with the flu and all eleven players for the Pistons that night scored and the Pistons beat the Cavs by 10. Normally, Stackhouse takes about 30% of the shots for the Pistons when he is there. Maybe there is a message for the coaching staff…

ESPN Magazine reports that Cavaliers point guard Bimbo Coles would not sign with the team last summer until he was sure that Shawn Kemp was outta town. Coles is quoted as calling Kemp a "cancer."

The same magazine echoes reports in other places that Derrick Coleman has adjusted to his new heart medication but is not playing because his weight is "somewhere north of 285 pounds". At the moment, the Hornets are leading their division at 11-7 so maybe they are not worrying too much if he happens to hit a cheeseburger stand once a day.

On TNT, Charles Barkley was commenting on Don MacLean's suspension for steroid use and said that he had seen MacLean naked and was confident that MacLean did not use steroids. Probably not the "testimonial" MacLean was looking for…

Remember the Wizards traded Obina Ekisie to the Clippers as part of the deal for Tyrone Nesby? Then the Clippers cut Ekisie the next day. Well, the Wizards just resigned him. Why did I suspect that was going to happen?

College football coaching jobs are filling up quickly but maybe Mike Garrett at USC knows what he is doing by taking his time. If he actually has his eye on Norv Turner, he may get his chance to talk to him very soon - if you believe the Washington Post stories this morning. And if he really wants Mike Riley from San Diego, he knows that he will have to tread water until Christmas Day when the Chargers' season is officially over. Or maybe there is a secret candidate that will restore the Trojan glory days??? Has anyone seen OJ recently; was he driving that Ryder truck with the ballots in it to Tallahassee…

Settling the bowl picture, Oklahoma beat K-State simply because Josh Heupel is a better quarterback than Jonathan Beasley. The three point difference in the game is a little misleading because K-State scored a TD with about 5 seconds to play. So OU will play FSU for the championship in the Orange Bowl, and it will be Florida against Miami in the Sugar Bowl in another game that could be very interesting.

Jockey Chris Antley was found dead in his home and police are considering the possibility that it was a homicide. FOX Sports last night quoted Gary Stevens as saying that Antley had been concerned that something like this might happen for the past couple of weeks and they reported that there was a "severe trauma to the back of (Antley's) head".

The first weekend in December always begins the real sifting process for NFL teams. This is when the teams that are going to the playoffs get their act together and the flashes in the pan get snuffed. Based on what has been going down in the past couple of weeks, I am going to predict here that the St. Louis Rams will not make the playoffs. Seven turnovers and less than 300 yards of offense lost a game to a mediocre Carolina team on the first occasion when the Rams' defense played well. The final three games are Minnesota, Tampa and New Orleans. After a 6-0 start, the Rams will win at most only one of these final three games and finish at 9-7 - or maybe 8-8.

I am also ready to pronounce the Colts out of the playoffs and it is the Colt defense that takes the rap here. That defense is not very good at man coverage and they do not stop the run very well (Curtis Martin got over 200 yards yesterday setting a Jet team record) but they compound these shortcomings by not tackling well. I do not believe they can run the table against Buffalo, Miami and Minnesota - unless Minnesota has home field wrapped up by the final game of the season.

By the way, four different runners went for over 200 yards on the same day yesterday. In the history of the NFL, never had three runners done so on the same day. That is not "eclipsing" a record; that is transporting it to a galaxy far away.

I'll have more to say about the Redskins later, but the league should pass a special rule to keep them out of the playoffs no matter what the record because they lost to Arizona and the Cardinals were spanked by the Bungles yesterday. Cincy put 24 points up against the Cardinals; the Skins would have won handily with that total. Here is a moneymaker for the NFL. Find a way to get rid of the owners of the Cardinals, Chargers and Bengals; merge these three teams into one team that might actually be competitive; sell the remaining players' contracts to the XFL for "three easy payments of $29.95"; then assign two new franchises somewhere and collect the franchise fees.

Cincy may be making their traditional "December run"; the Bungles have a way of stinking until December and then winning a couple of games which deludes the management into keeping bad coaches around (Shula and Coslett) and into thinking that they are just two players away from serious contending and that the franchise is on the right track. For the record, no; it is not.

The Browns showed that they are still an expansion team when they were able to get only 2 first downs against the Jaguars yesterday and they were held to negative net yards passing for the game. The Browns only snapped the ball 36 times and the Jags had 80 offensive plays. This was simply - a rout. Jax has Arizona and Cincy in the next two weeks and the Giants in the final week. Even if they win out, the best they can do is 9-7 and that is not likely to be good enough for post-season play.

Al Del Greco won a game with a field goal as time expired against the Eagles who have won games in exactly this fashion - or in OT - earlier in the year. Del Greco had been having a kicking slump the past couple of weeks. This was a Hollywood finish to the Titans/Eagles game except in the movie version, the final field goal would have traveled in slow motion and taken 45 seconds to make the 50 yard journey. The Titans are for real and closing the schedule with Cleveland, Cincy and Dallas makes them look like a 13-3 team. The Eagles by all rights should close out at 11-5 because their last two games are with Clevleand and Cincy. And they should beat those teams. And for all the people in Philly who think Andy Reid should be "Coach of the Year", they better show up and handle both of these teams in games that mean something to the Eagles and mean nothing to the other teams.

The Jets keep hanging in there but they have Oakland, Detroit and Baltimore left and all three opponents harbor playoff expectations. Oakland and Baltimore look safe as playoff participants; Detroit is a "who knows?" So the Jets have a tough road to travel, but they have played very well the last couple of weeks.

The Broncos keep scoring points in bunches even with Gus Frerotte at the helm. Against the Saints defense ranked #1 in the league, Denver ran for 283 yards and threw for another 200 yards and scored 38 points. Like the Jets, they are 9-4, but their last 3 opponents are Seattle, SF and KC and that is a lot easier than the Jets schedule!

Finally, let me say that the Redskins are imploding. There is no fire in that team; when you look at them on the sidelines, they are standing there looking like a bunch of guys waiting to hear the announcement of the winner in the contest to guess Sally Stuthers' weight to the nearest 50 lbs. I'll bet that if you kept a bunch of cameras focused on faces on those sidelines that you'd find a yawn or two. Is that Norv Turner's fault? Partially; he is not a fire-breathing charismatic kind of guy. Is that the players' fault: Partially; they are mostly veterans making lots of money in the twilight of their careers. I believe that some of the fault lies in the front office where the team was constructed like a fantasy team; no one thought about who would be the guy to keep this team charged up or who would be the one to "kick ass and take names" when things got rough. Perhaps that is because such a tough guy role has been reserved for the owner who really wants everyone to think he is a tough guy and not the kid who holds the school record for wedgies in a semester.

The Redskins lost 9-7 yesterday and their kicker (4th of the year because of the "tough guy owner") doinked a 39 yard field goal in the first half and then could not reach the endline with a 49 yard attempt with a minute to play. If there was a bad coaching decision by the Skins it was the time management in the first half. Losing 3-0, the Giants moved inside the Skins 10 with two minutes to play. The Giants ran the ball and threw a short pass that went nowhere and ran again and kicked a field goal with 4 seconds to play. The Redskins had 3 timeouts that they took with them into the locker room. You do not save these up and trade them in for a toaster-oven at the end of the year. Call the time-outs and if the Giants score, you at least have some time left to try to do something on your own. Getting the ball at your own 30 with 3 seconds on the clock is hardly an "offensive opportunity."

The Giants' defense had the Skins reeling all day; through the first 52 minutes of the game, the Skins had a net of about 150 yards. They accomplished this by blitzing and rushing the passer and disrupting whatever tendencies the Skins coaches thought they had going for them. Then the Giants pinned the Skins at the three yardline with a punt with about 8 minutes to play. Jeff George came into the game and the blitzing stopped. In fact, there were several plays where they only rushed three guys and one where they only rushed two men. George is not going to beat you with his running; if you have a blitzing regimen going that is working, you keep doing it so that you can put George on his back a few times; you do not let him stand there and try to pick out a receiver! Once again, the prevent defense almost prevented a victory - except that the kicker once again took gas for the Skins.

All these kicking woes have their roots in the situation at the beginning of the year when the impatient owner would not wait for his original kicker's bruised quadriceps to heal. The Redskins need to win in Pittsburgh in the final game ever to be played in Three Rivers Stadium to run the table and have a chance at the playoffs - assuming that the league does not pass the rule I think is justified to bar the Skins from the playoffs under any circumstances this year. The other games are Dallas and Arizona; and if they lose to either of those teams twice in the same year, the league should also declare them ineligible for the playoffs next year.

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...