Lawyer Milloy was cut by the Pats one day and signed with the Bills the next day. People are making a lot of the fact that the Pats and Bills play each other this weekend. That is not the supreme irony in this story as far as I'm concerned. Here we have a player named Lawyer and he did not get hired by Al Davis and the Raiders. Now there's irony.

Albert Einstein once said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Big Al may have been a genius, but he wasn't exactly a bucket of laughs.] Recently, Cubs' pitcher, Shawn Estes, made a comment after giving up 5 runs in two innings to the Brewers that tells me he is either very much in tune with Einstein's work or he would not know Albert Einstein from Fat Albert. Said Estes, "I made the pitches I wanted to make. It just didn't work out. I'll go out and still make pitches; and after I let go of the ball, there's really nothing I can do about it."

On one level, Estes is profoundly philosophical and cognizant of the physical laws of motion. Indeed, once the ball leaves his hand, there is nothing he can do about it. Conversely, if he continues to throw the same pitches in the same way, he will get the same results - which include an ERA that is threatening to go north of 6.00 this season.

Memo to Shawn: Try doing something different with the ball while it is still in your hand.

Later today - or maybe tomorrow if I get lazy - I will post my annual NFL pre-season predictions for 2003. I know that the clamor for this offering has not been loud enough to be heard across a small room, but I'm going to do it anyway. In the 29 August edition of the Rocky Mountain News, Bernie Lincicome made some predictions for the upcoming season, but his did not have to do with records and who will make the playoffs. I commend that column to your reading and offer a few appetizers here:

"Bill Parcells will turn the Cowboys around because he can't stand to look at them."

"Several Oakland Raiders will not be in custody."

"Al Davis will move the Raiders to Hawaii dress them in aloha shirts and change the team slogan to "Pride and Poi."

"Jeremy Shockey will try to rip off his helmet and find he can't get it out of his rear end."

In accordance with my need to raise my NASCAR awareness so that I don't make a complete fool of myself in front of my wife and The NASCAR Babe, I learned that the folks who run NASCAR suspended a driver named Jimmy Spencer for punching out another driver named Kurt Busch. That sounded like a good idea to me since the NASCAR folks would not want to begin to emulate the NHL and see their TV ratings head for the storm cellar. However, I read on in the story and found out why Mr. Spencer tapped out a terrible tattoo on Mr. Busch.

The NASCAR folks also put Busch on probation for trying to ram Spencer's car off the track - or maybe into a wall - certainly at a speed in excess of 100 mph. Now, that makes me think that Mr. Spencer had a plausible reason to be angry with Mr. Busch. He should not have "acted out" and his suspension is the perfect extension of the "time out" he would have been given in a perfectly politically correct kindergarten class these days. And in the extended allegory of today's society, NASCAR takes money out of Spencer's pocket by not letting him race and leaves Busch on the track with the opportunity to earn more money and to create more mayhem. It sounds to me like the folks who run NASCAR may be running a training program for judges who hand out sentences to criminals.

I'm not sure I understand why NFL coaches and GMs treat draft choices as such precious commodities. Deals rise and fall over the conditions attached to draft choices involved and trading away a first round draft pick - or conversely acquiring one - in a deal involves the same kind of decision-making as major surgery. On yourself of course, not anyone else. Minor surgery is defined as any surgery happening to anyone else. But why the big deal with draft picks? It's not as if teams use them with such accuracy that they actually cure the team's ills. If that were true, then the Bengals should be winning Super Bowls now because they've been drafting in the top 5 of the draft for most of the last 13 years.

Look at the vaunted "Class of 1999" where five QBs went in the top 12 picks. There was maneuvering within that draft to adjust various teams' drafting orders so that teams would be able to get whom they wanted. Now four years later, what is the result of those intense thought processes? Is it better than a crapshoot or a Ouija Board? You make the call:

Tim Couch: #1 pick. He's now the backup on a team that is mired in mediocrity while carrying his huge contract. Kelly Holcomb beat him out. To clarify things for Browns' fans: that is not good news.

Donovan McNabb: #2 pick. Starting QB for a playoff caliber team. This pick was worth something very valuable to the Eagles.

Akili Smith: #3 pick. He stunk so bad he could not play for the Bengals and was just cut by the Packers. On the field he had the look of a cigar store Indian.

Duante Culpepper: #10 pick. Starting QB - with a new huge contract - for a team that tanked the last two seasons. This pick provided a valuable commodity to the Vikings.

Cade McNown: #12 pick. He stunk so bad he could not make it with the Bears. The last QB the Bears had who was really good was Sid Luckman in the 40s and 50s. The only comparison between McNown and Luckman is that both are out of the league now.

Finally, Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR has the nickname The Boxers. I went looking for a school that could be their archrival, but could not find one called The Briefs. Too bad.

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

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