1. I'll take Oakland minus 7 over the Chargers for $44.

2. I'll take KC minus 3 over the Seahawks for $44. I don't think the Chiefs are as good as they looked last week, but I think it is quite possible that Seattle is indeed as bad as it looked.

I wouldn't be as dumbfounded by all this if the Wolves had been trying to skirt the salary cap to sign and keep a top quality player. If this was about MJ or Magic or Larry Bird or Dr.J, then maybe you could look at the shenanigans and say, "Well, it was worth a shot." But now they lose 5 first round picks because they tried to squirrel away Joe Smith. How drunk would anyone have to be to trade 5 picks for Joe Smith? And now they lose Smith too.

This is a monstrous penalty which will probably doom the franchise to mediocrity for a long time; they will quickly become known as the Timberpoodles. This should hurt the fan base in Minneapolis because it will become clear that this team will not get better via the draft and cannot sign many free agents after they invested $125M in Kevin Garnett. And what happens if Garnett decides to pout; suppose he wants to be traded? Then again, basketball fans in Minneapolis cannot turn their attention to the University of Minnesota either…

The management of the Timberwolves are hereby awarded collectively The Fool of the Fortnight Award.

But before I leave this subject, maybe one of the readers who is also a member of the legal profession can explain something to me. Joe Smith gets off free and clear here. His "punishment" is that he will be allowed to leave the Wolves and be a free agent. Am I missing a key point here because I would have sworn that a signed contract that is postdated having his signature and his agent's signature on it would imply that he was a party to the wrongdoing? Now if you want to make the punishment fit the crime, you make him play out that contract he signed with the Bulls. And for any of you who even think of forcing him to play for the Clippers, I don't need any lawyers to explain to me how that would clearly be cruel and unusual punishment.

Darryl Strawberry was arrested for violation of his parole. It seems that he left his rehab center without the knowledge of those who are in charge of the "rehabbing" at about 11:00 PM one evening and did not return until about 3:00 AM. At that time, he tested positive for cocaine. Here is a guy who has colon cancer and a string of substance abuse problems and - supposedly - financial problems. He is about 40 years old and so it is not likely that he is going to "mature" and "begin to make good decisions in his life" any time soon. It has almost reached the point where you begin to wonder if he will succumb to cancer or if he will be found face down in a street somewhere for someone to draw a chalk line around. The penalty for this current transgressions seems to be 30 days in the county hoosegow followed by wearing an electronic ankle brace and continued treatment.

A bunch of sources reported yesterday that Rashard Casey (Penn State starting QB) was indicted by a grand jury regarding an alleged beating of an off-duty police officer in Hoboken NJ. Whether or not these reports are true, what has happened to the concept that grand jury testimony and deliberations are supposed to be confidential? Casey is still on the football team pending some kind of investigation by the university. Can anyone explain what the jurisdiction of the university is here since the alleged incident occurred in a different state and involves a criminal act and not something like getting someone to write a term paper for you?

There will be a black-tie fundraiser in Washington DC on November 2nd. No, it is not another political cash-rake, this one is for a compendium of children's charities in the area. It is called Fight Night for Children (I could not make that up) and it features a six boxing matches. The top headliner is Francois Botha - who presumably will some day answer the critically important question, "Botha what?" So the idea here is to use the violence of boxing and the cumulative brain damage that it inflicts on people to raise money to help disadvantaged kids. I must be missing something here.

The owner of Riboletta has put up a $400,000 supplemental entry fee to enter her in the Breeders' Cup Distaff on 4 November. If she wins, that will be better odds than he will get by betting her at the racetrack. She figures to go off at even money or shorter odds. The owners of Tiznow, Captain Steve and Gander are also paying supplemental fees to have their horses run on Breeders' Cup day. I've seen Tiznow and Captain Steve run some powerful races; every time I've seen Gander, he has been hanging around the lead for a while but not hanging around it near the finish line. The advance Racing Forms should be out soon and handicapping can begin.

Two jurors for the Rae Carruth trial have been selected in Charlotte. Assuming these are residents of the area for the last year or so, it is amazing that they found anyone who was "unaware" of the circumstances of the case as they had been reported in the press. I guess these people are the same undecided ones that are discovered by the networks to watch Presidential debates and then to talk about what the candidates tried to avoid saying during the debate. Why is it that all the "undecided voters" that I see during these events are also "dumb voters"? Has "undecided" become a synonym for "dumb"? Did I miss a memo?

Patrick Roy must have gotten caught up in the moment of his record-breaking win over the Washington Capitals last week. In his exuberance, he got himself arrested for "domestic violence" when his wife made at least one - and according to at least one report I read - two calls to "911". Game misconduct…

In a college soccer game, St. Mary's beat Gallaudet 10-0. Imagine what the score would have been if there was actually a lot of offense in the game of soccer! I happen to like soccer and watch international matches periodically. However, the attitude of most Americans can be captured in a comment made - I believe - by Tony Kornheisser:

Soccer keeps me on the edge of my chair waiting for boredom to be realized.

Lawrence Phillips is apparently interested in playing in the XFL. Probably none of his shenanigans would bother the WWF part of the ownership a whole lot, but then there are the suits who run GE which owns NBC…

Rulon Gardner was supposed to be offered a $1M contract by one of the pro rasslin organizations and he turned it down. Now here is a guy who won a gold medal and was front page news for a week and he grew up on a dairy farm in Wyoming or Wherever. So where is he in the ad campaign centered on the "milk mustache" routine?

Finally, it seems that the NY Post decided that it would begin to publish the results of pro rasslin matches. A California columnist, Randy Younger, thought this was not a good idea; he called this decision "Dangerous precedent. Before long, readers will start demanding the Post publish future results too."

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