There will be no mythical picks for the next weekend. I am taking my annual fall pilgrimage to Las Vegas next weekend and will report next week on how some less mythical wagering fared. In our household, the annual Las Vegas trip is described in shorthand as "the high holy days."

In NBA news, Shaq signed a monster extension to his contract over the weekend. With the extension in place, he will be with the Lakers for the next six years at a guaranteed salary of $152.4M. When this contract is over, he will be 34 years old. If he keeps his weight under control - as he certainly did last year but has not always done successfully in his career - he could be a valuable free agent 6 years from now.

The rival Portland Trail Blazers who have signed every available large body they can find to accumulate fouls in the middle so they can counteract Shaq got a little bad news. Arvidas Sabonis needed arthroscopic surgery to repair some cartilage in his knee. The prognosis is for him to miss about the first 3 weeks of the season. But Sabonis has had knee/leg/ankle/foot problems his entire career and every new problem simply adds to all the others. And the fact of the matter is that even with all the big guys the Blazers have been stockpiling, Sabonis is the only one who is Shaq's size.

In worse news, Alonzo Mourning will miss the entire season with the same kidney disease/condition that afflicted Sean Elliot. Hopefully, Alonzo can come back to play just as Elliot did.

In really good news, Paul Pierce showed up in training camp with the Celtics and began working out with the team.

The President of Kansas State University chided Oklahoma President, David Boren, for canceling classes after OU kicked the snot out of Texas last week. He said that at K-State they were more interested in academics than that and it would just never happen that K-State would cancel classes to celebrate a football victory. Oklahoma did not tempt them because the Sooners went into K-State and beat the Wildcats 41-31. That was the first game of the year for K-State against a football team that would actually be an odds-on favorite to win the Patriot League championship. And by the way, when did K-State become the "Princeton of the Prairie"?

Elsewhere in NCAA football, you probably missed the fact that Puget Sound defeated Pomona-Pitzer over the weekend. Now for the bonus question: Where is Pomona-Pitzer? And when you find out, don't tell me because I don't care.

The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics has already had enough controversy to fill 22 sporting events. Now the committee and the city are haggling about whether or not spectators can be served beer at downtown venues during the games. Since a huge number of the events in any Winter Olympics involves gravity pulling someone down a hill/slope with a manufactured article between the person's body and the snow/ice surface, people will need beer - and probably things a lot stronger - just to feign interest after the first 30 minutes.

In horse racing leading to the Breeders' Cup, Lemon Drop Kid laid a large egg on Saturday at Belmont. After he won his last race in a time slow enough to make the race look like an expensive claiming event, he was supposed to bounce back here and show what he is made of. Well, he finished a distant fifth to a speedball that normally dies like a dog but who ran a very good mile and a quarter race here. And you may remember that I lost my bets on the Pacific Classic to a sprinter who was supposed to die in that race but would not. Well, he was in the race with Lemon Drop Kid yesterday and he died just as he should have in August. Winner of the race was Albert the Great. He will probably get the lead in a Breeders' Cup race - unless he is entered in the sprint - and will probably die like a dog on that day.

Riboletta won her race handily on Saturday at Belmont; she is the best filly/mare in training at the moment. But she is not eligible for the Breeders' Cup since she was bred in Brazil and would have to be a "supplemental nominee". That translates to: "owner puts up major amount of bread to let the horse compete". For her to run in the Distaff Breeders cup race, the entry fee is $400K; to run in the Classic it will be $800K. We'll have to wait and see what her owner does here.

The baseball playoff games are interminable. One Yankees/Mariners game took 4 hours and 14 minutes. These games need to take a note from NBC's coverage of the Olympics. They should be played and taped and edited and then shown in a nice tight showing of 2 hours and 45 minutes. Just eliminate all the time spent chewing and scratching and staring at whatever and get on with the game! Even Bob Costas has to be reaching for the throat lozenges at this point.

In the NFL this weekend people have begun picking on the Cowboys and Troy Aikman - and Jerry Jones just because that is fun - because Troy threw five INTs against the Giants on Sunday. Look, the Cowboys are not any good and the reason they are not any good is that Jerry Jones runs the draft and cannot pick an NFL prospect out of a picture with the Miss America contestants. But you have to look more carefully at that game. The Giants intercepted 4 passes in the first half and trailed 14-13 in the third quarter. If the Cowboys are so bad, how come the Giants needed a late score to win by 5 and to have the Cowboys throw a pass that hit a receivers' hands in the end zone as time ran out?

The Chargers are snake-bitten in addition to being awful. They were in OT against the Bills; they had sent starting QB Rob Johnson to the bench with a separated shoulder and Buffalo had just missed a field goal to win the game. But the Buffalo center had been whistled for a false start and so the play was dead and the Bills got to kick again. This time it was good and the Chargers are now 0-7. The only good news for the Chargers is that they will not lose next weekend because they have the bye week. But the week after that, you will all get the opportunity to watch them on Sunday night as they play Oakland. Such a treat.

The Rams put on another scoring fest. Kurt Warner is on pace to smash Dan Marino's record of just over 5000 yards passing in a season. Warner projects to just over 6000 yards for this year; that would break the existing mark by 20%. Here is another stat for you. The Rams lowest game score for this year is 37 points; the Cincinnati Bungles have scored a total of 37 points in their 6 games this year.

Cincy and Pittsburgh put on a show that only the players' mothers could love. There were 22 punts in the game. The Bengals punted 10 times for 443 yards; the Steelers punted 12 times for 526 yards. Between the two of them, they punted for 0.55 miles in the game!

In the Broncos romp over the Browns, Cleveland threw the ball 45 times and ran it 9 times. The Broncos ran the ball 31 times and threw it 40. And the time of possession was almost even. Hard to see how that could be!

The Cardinals only ran a total of 44 offensive plays against the Eagles on Sunday. It is a good thing that the offensive unit in Arizona does not get paid on a per-play-basis.

Tyrone Wheatley has had a reincarnation in Oakland and is now playing like the Giants had expected when they drafted him about 5 years ago. Additionally, Ricky Williams has now rushed for over 100 yards in 4 consecutive games. Ditka still gave up too much for him, but Williams is now showing that he is a quality running back.

The Ravens have now gone 186 minutes without scoring a TD including a possession of first and goal at the Redskins one yard line this weekend. Nonetheless, if the playoffs started today, the Ravens would be a wildcard team. The other thing to think about is that if the playoffs started today, it would be winter now... but I don't want to be too metaphysical so early on a Monday morning.

As we near the halfway point of the NFL season, we begin to see teams have games that are pivotal for the season. One is tonight when Jax plays at Tennessee. Jax is 2-4 and already have 3 losses in their division and all 4 in their conference. Those kinds of losses count heavily against them in tie-breakers to get into the playoffs and if they lose tonite they will be 4 games out of the division lead and behind a boatload of teams for the wildcard slots. If you believe that pro athletes achieve new levels of output when their backs are to the wall, then you should take Jax and get 5.5 tonite. If you believe that once the ball of string comes unraveled, the team is more likely to tie it in knots than re-wind it around the spindle, you should take the Titans. This is not a mythical bet for our recordkeeping, but I like Tennessee to do a number on Jax tonite. And if they put one of those recording blood pressure cuffs on Tom Coughlin tonite I would say that the over/under for his top systolic pressure is 242.5.

The Pats have given up 141 points in 7 games and are 2-5; the Broncos have given up 147 points in 7 games and are 4-3. Reason? Denver has scored 97 more points than New England! Next week is a big game for the Pats. They go to Indy and if they can find a win there that makes them 3-5. Then they get a bye week and then the schedule gets softer. Coming off the bye week they get Buffalo (at home), Cincy, Cleveland, Detroit, KC and Chicago. The Pats could win 5 of these 6 and be 8-6 in early December with a wild-card shot in view. But a loss next weekend would make them 2-6 and would give them four division losses. That spells "home for the holidays…"

By the same token, if Indy loses next weekend, they will be two loses behind someone in the AFC East. They will have three losses and the Dolphins and Jets play each other next week (on MNF) so one of them will end next week with only one loss. So it is a big game for the Colts too; but it does not mean the end of the line if they lose.

Next Thursday's game between Tampa and Detroit is a big game for Detroit. If they win, they will be two games up on Tampa and that could let them ride to a playoff spot. Tampa needs the win not because they have lots of teams to fear in the NFC, but because they need to do something right soon or risk losing confidence in themselves. At the moment, Tampa's record is identical with the Saints, Chiefs, Steelers and Bills. Clearly, Tampa is better than those teams but if they don't win a game here, they will probably be looking up at some of them. Important game for both teams on Thursday!

Finally, The President's Cup begins this week. Trust me, I will have more to say about this event tomorrow! But on Wednesday TNT network will do a tape delay of the opening ceremonies for this backwater of the sporting world. What happened? Did TNT hire Dick Ebersol away from NBC and not tell anyone? And what the hell are the opening ceremonies for a golf tournament? A bunch of guys in matching sans-a-belt pants and Izod shirts march out wearing goofy looking shoes?

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