Of course, Davis said he was only interested in staying in Miami and got a contract extension there, but then the dream job of a lifetime came along. How could he turn down a chance to spend his winters in Cleveland? Why stay with a program where a winning season is all but guaranteed for the next 20 years when you have the chance to go and coach the Browns who are going to draft in the top ten for a while? Might there be more than just a little "coin of the realm" changing hands in this deal? You bet!

With the Ravens' victory clearly attributable to their dominating defense, the NFL will now charge to the defensive side of the ball and look for defensive minded coaches. Frankly, I think that is a mistake. I think that the best alignment of a; coaching staff is an "offensive head coach" who is sufficiently secure to get himself a really good defensive coordinator and to get that coordinator the right players and then to let the coordinator do his thing with the defense. You could argue that the mirror image of that should work just as well, except that it seems that most really successful defensive coaches are not willing to let the offensive coaches do anything that might be "risky" and that limits what the really good offensive coach can do in that system.

Last night, the Wizards won their fifth straight game and the Grizzlies also won. Vancouver had a run of 21 consecutive points in their defeat of the NJ Nets. Allowing the Griz to score that many points in succession is like a Miss America contestant losing out in the bathing suit competition to Rosie O'Donnell. This tandem of wins puts both the Wiz and the Griz at 12 wins for the season which means that the Chicago Bulls now have only half the number of wins as the next worst teams in the league.

Memo to Jerry Krause: You said you had a plan to rebuild the franchise when MJ retired and Scottie Pippin "left town". Well, after a couple of years of watching the plan unfold, I think it is fair to conclude that - - - it's not working.

The alleged victim of "non consensual sex" in the Mark Chmura case testified that she never did anything to lead anyone to believe that she wanted to have sex with Chmura. Yesterday, her best friend was testifying and said that the alleged victim had talked about getting money from Chmura. I'm starting to find it difficult to root for either side here.

The press made a big deal out of the families of the victims in the killings that got Ray Lewis into court last year. These folks are filing a civil suit against Ray Lewis and they "got their story out" during the early part of media week in Tampa. Lots of journalists opined that it was tragic that Ray Lewis had not found a way to contact these people and to acknowledge their suffering and grief. One network put on an interview with the 15 year old brother of one of the victims who said that he had nothing to say to Lewis because "he killed my brother." At least a dozen times I heard it said that these people are confused and frustrated by the fact that no one has been apprehended and there is no investigation ongoing to find the killers here. TIME OUT here!!!

Ray Lewis is no saint; Ray Lewis did not do his citizen's duty and cooperate with the police in the course of a murder investigation. But there is no evidence to say that Ray Lewis stabbed either one of these men. To put that segment on the air is abject sensationalism. And the reason there are no arrests and investigations is that the Atlanta police and DA think they already arrested and tried the people who actually did the stabbing and the accused were acquitted by a jury meaning - hold your breath here sports journalists - they are innocent of the crime. Do you think the LA Police are still looking for who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman? The reason they are not is that they believe they already found him but could not convince a jury of that fact.

These families suffered a great tragedy, to be sure. But portraying Ray Lewis as a murderer and allowing these people to have access to national TV to make charges of that kind is a tad irresponsible.

At the other end of the jurisprudence scale is Rae "Child support? I don't think so!" Carruth - as he has been called by the Imus in the Morning folks. If he actually does his 19 years in the slammer, at least his family will know what the perfect Christmas gift will be for him for a long time to come - - - Soap-on-a-rope.

Finally, the international organization that governs the Paralympics has reacted to the scandal of the 2000 Games where most of the Spanish "intellectually disabled" basketball team were nothing more than "intellectually challenged". They suspended all the Spanish players, recalled all the medals and ditched several coaches and officials of the offending team. Now they announced that there will be no games for intellectually disabled athletes because they found that it was too difficult to make a determination of eligibility. Funny how the NCAA has the mirror image problem; they have intellectually deficient people posing as college students pursuing academic goals. Put the governing bodies of the Paralympics and the NCAA together and form a select committee of the two bodies and you would create a group of people who could find a way to kill a pet rock.

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