The Wiz just acquired Tyrone Nesby from the Clips and he says the he had been agitating for management to trade him to get out of there. He may have just learned that sometimes you get what you wish for so… He said last night - after abut 5 days with the Wizards - that he saw the same "inconsistent intensity" on the Wizards that he noted on the Clippers.

Memo to Michael Jordan: Someone just said that your team has something in common with the Clippers - over and above the obvious comparison that both organizations pay grown men obscene amounts of money to run around in multi-colored underwear in public when they should be playing basketball. You should take those comments to heart; comparisons to the Clippers are sort of like saying you have the same personality as Al Gore or the same intellect as "Dubya". Not good!

Gary Crowton has indeed left the Chicago Bears to take the job of head coach at BYU. Crowton was the Bears' offensive coordinator and last time I looked, the Bears offense stunk. I wonder why the Bears did not demand he hang around until the final game?

Analogously, the Chargers are supposedly "blocking" Mike Riley from talking to USC about the coaching job there. That may be the first effective blocking scheme the Chargers have executed in the past two years. And it has to be frustrating to USC - if true - because that would mean that the only person on the planet that has even hinted that they might actually take the job there can't talk to them until Christmas. The last game of the season is on 24 December and unless the Florida Canvassing Boards get involved in recounting the records here, the Chargers are not going to the playoffs this year.

The University of Louisville is going to the Liberty Bowl. That is a big deal for the Cardinals; they are not a traditional football powerhouse. There was a frat party on campus and five of the football players seem to have come down with the same affliction that bothered Alan Greenspan so much - irrational exuberance. The five were arrested in a disturbance/brawl/scrum/drunken melee/whatever and one is charged with assaulting a police officer. I thought that stuff was supposed to wait till the team showed up at the hotel in the host city…

The NCAA enforcement folks are at it again. Richard Jefferson was suspended from the Arizona basketball team for receiving "illegal benefits". Here is what happened. Jefferson is a friend/teammate of Luke Walton who is Bill Walton's son. Last year, Bill Walton give them tickets to Game 1 of the NBA finals and paid for their tickets to the game venue. This is the "illegal benefit". This is also abject balderdash. Bill Walton is not an agent; he is allowed to take his kid and a friend to a basketball game. To conclude that it is Jefferson's basketball prowess that is the basis of his friendship with Luke Walton and thereby the sole reason that he got these tickets is mind reading on the part of the NCAA. In order to read minds, you have to stipulate that the mind-readers actually have minds. And I'm not ready to do that.

Andy Ashby signed a 3 year deal with the Dodgers for $22.5M. Ashby won 12 games last year and has a lifetime record below .500. (To keep The Encyclopedia from tripping over his coffee table as he races to check out that fact, Ashby is 84-87 lifetime.) That means that Mussina signed for chump change; Mussina actually wins more than he loses.

Something has been bothering me about the A-Rod soap opera. When he suggested to the Mariners that he would really like it if they moved the fences in about 20 feet in the power alleys, I remembered that Juan Gonzales suggested the same thing about the park in Detroit. So if these guys can even suggest - let alone demand - such a thing, why can't Andy Ashby suggest that the Dodgers move the fences back about 40 feet. Maybe the fences can be moveable. Bill Veeck used to do that in Cleveland - according to his book Veeck as in Wreck.

In the NFL, the Patriots signed RB, Raymont Harris - the self-proclaimed Ultimate Back. On the same day, the Giants signed RB, Omar Bacon. The Giants made a better move here because there is no body of evidence that can be introduced which would show conclusively that Bacon can't play. The jury is in on Harris.

Speaking of NFL running backs where the jury is in, former Cowboy RB, Sherman Williams was convicted of a bunch of things including "attempting to possess marijuana in a multi-state operation". According to the evidence, it seems that 1000 lbs of marijuana was involved. Hey, that could have just been for a weekend party at Valley Ranch in the old days…

Speaking of former Cowboys' running backs, Chris Warren was released yesterday. Evidently he dropped a couple of passes against the Bucs last week and was taken out of the game and began mouthing off to the coaching staff. So he is history in Dallas because the only person there who can tell the coaching staff what to do is Jerry Jones.

Keith Simms had something to say about the new coaching environment in Washington. He said that he thought it was a good idea that Terry Robiske was going to cut down on the playbook because Sims said that when the line was sure of what they were doing they were really physical but if they were confused… Let me get this straight, this is a veteran team going into the second week of December and they felt confused by the playbook that they had been working with since July??? How complicated can that playbook be? Did Norv Turner include in there some text that had the same obvious clarity and self-evident meaning as Ulysses.

I suspect that Pepper Rodgers sees the possibility of an NFL coaching gig for himself as part of his search. All he needs to do is to hope that Robiske's team comes apart at the seams and then he can use the Dick Cheyney model and continue to interview people who are not as qualified for the job as he is. To further that suspicion, I understand that he has been trying to schedule an interview with Knute Rockne for this weekend.

Finally, all you boxing fans will remember Mills Lane. He is the referee who was in the ring for the famous ear-biting incident and the one who always said to the fighters after their instructions in the most nasal voice ever, "Let's get it on!" Well, Mills has decided that whatever reputation he may enjoy in the public arena is far too pristine. Mills has joined with some guy from Oklahoma to create "Let's Get It On Promotions" and will go into the business of promoting boxing events. All I can say is, "sigh…"

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