In another area of law enforcement/jurisprudence, a starting CB at Univ of Missouri was arrested when police found 100 pounds of marijuana in his car about a month ago. He faces felony charges related to possession with intent to distribute the stuff; I suspect that a defense based on the fact that he was just stocking up for his frat's Halloween Party would not go over very well. When the coach suspended him from the team a couple of weeks ago , he did not say why; yesterday he told the team what the situation was. Rumor is that the team was very upset because they did not have a contingency plan for their stash for the season.

Athletes and coaches are now supposedly concerned that the number of unannounced drug tests by the Olympic authorities is too few and they have not been done for a while. What they are really afraid of is that the unannounced tests will be done just before the athletes board the planes to Sydney and every other day after they get there. But there is a new entrant in the drug testing arena. The International Modern Pentathlon Union will follow the protocols of the "World Anti-Doping Agency". Here is why this does not matter:

1. Less than 10% of sports fans can name even three of the events in the modern pentathlon.

2. 90% of sports fans would be far more interested in a "World Anti-Dope Agency" if that Agency would keep dopes out of sports.

3. 30% of sports fans would believe that the modern pentathlon consisted of events in three legged racing, brewski chugging, miniature golf, teeth flossing and harmonic flatulence.

The Major League Baseball Players Association has filed a grievance - not much of a news flash there. They believe that Royals OF Carlos Beltran was wronged when the team suspended him when he would not report to their training facility in Florida to rehab his injured knee.

According to the Redskins, they had about 60,000 people attend their training camp sessions this summer. Granted that they had to give away a lot of rainchecks so this does not translate directly to $600K in the coffers, but they obviously took in some of the "long-green" in this process. The have already applied to Loudon County to do this again next summer.

Jacksonville got another piece of bad injury news yesterday when Carnell Lake decided that he needed to undergo foot surgery and that will keep him out of action for the whole season. Jax continues to lose top quality players and given the lack of depth around the NFL, this looks to be a hurdle that the Jags will be scrambling to get over for the entire season.

After the Dolphins cut Jim Druckenmiller yesterday, they went out and signed another QB to get involved in the clipboard carrying activities of the team. They signed Gus Ornstein and I have to say that I don't know Gus Ornstein from a beer stein. My guess is that if Gus has to start a game for the Fish this season, Coach Wannstadt will slit his wrists.

The cable and over-the-air networks will televise a total of 27 hours of coverage for the PGA championship this weekend. And they will have Tiger on for more than half of it. Some people point to the fantastic increase in ratings when Tiger is on as opposed to when he is not as the catalyst that will make golf a bigger TV sport. Others say that "Tiger-fatigue" will set in. I think the problem is that people will tune in to watch Tiger in great numbers and not get fatigued by it, but when Tiger sits out a tournament or three - which he does very often - viewership for those events may plummet to levels where they cannot compete with The Dental Floss Channel. The PGA and the networks may want to think about "teaching" the viewers how much more entertaining it is to watch Tiger than the rest of the players; it is a lesson that may take a long time to "unlearn". Of course, I won't be one of their students because I already prefer The Dandruff Channel to televised golf.

Yesterday, I cracked on a college for naming 5 members of their football coaching staff so late in the cycle. Well, there must be some kind of momentum here because today two more schools, RPI and California University (PA), named the majority of their football coaching staffs. Somehow, I would prefer to have a coaching staff who actually had been introduced to one another more than 72 hours before practice started, but then again, I don't have my degree in Athletic Directing.

The Post has a story today saying that Ike Austin is in the process of reinventing himself and wants to be a contributor to the Wizards this year. For those of you who missed it, Ike tried to eat his way out of the NBA several years ago. He finally got off the "Hot Plate" Williams track and played well enough for the Heat that he became a top drawer free agent. Austin is a big man and when he hustles, he can be at the top of the list of "second tier centers". The Wizards traded for him and of course that put him on a course to STINK. Last year, he became disenchanted with the Wizards' coaches and front office and mascot and parking facilities and just about anything else you can imagine. Now Ike is supposed to be ready to eliminate any "negativity" he may have brought to the locker room. He managed to beat the rap as a "fatty"; now we will see if he can beat the rap as an "asshole". Spin-meister and assistant coach Tree Rollins said that Ike pushed himself to play too soon after he was injured and did not take the time to get completely healthy.

Memo to Tree: Ike played virtually not at all from early February forward so if time was the great healer, he should have been in A-1 condition by the end of the season. Ike's problems are between his ears and nowhere else.