Matt Doherty will go to UNC with one year of major college coaching experience under his belt. Supposedly PJ Carlissimo is high on the list of candidates for the Notre Dame job. Digger Phelps said it is time for Notre Dame to emulate UNC and put the job in the hands of someone in the ND family. He even said he would be willing to take the job again to bring a sense of family and stability to the program.

Doherty will bring his entire staff with him to UNC. Phil Ford will be "kicked upstairs" in the athletic department somewhere doing something. Since Phil is clearly "in the family" and does not qualify as a "red-headed stepchild", he must be the family member that everyone wishes would have a flat tire on the way to the annual reunion.

Derek Jeter is the first Yankee to be named the MVP in the all-star game. How can that be? Well, they did not name MVPs until the early 60s so many of the great Yankees of the past never had a shot at the award. Twenty years from now, that will be a great trivia question.

Speaking of the Yankees, they went out and traded for pitching help today getting Denny Nagle from Cincinnati for 4 prospects. That smells to me like the Reds have written off this season since they just got rid of one of their top starters. But then again, the Reds' pitching has not been all that hot this year anyway.

Corey Maggette did in fact take $2000 from his AAU coach while in high school according to his testimony yesterday and that means that Duke may be stripped of its runner-up status in the 99 tournament and it will have to repay about $250K to the NCAA as part of its share of that tournament participation. Since this all happened prior to Maggette's arrival at Duke and there seems to be no allegation of any continuation of it happening once there, I wonder about the logic and fairness of this NCAA rule. (Talk about oxymorons; logic, fairness, NCAA!!) It is simply not reasonable to expect - or even to allow - schools to do meaningful background checks on potential students. Yes, they can do public records checks to find out that the kid is not a felon at large. Jerry Tarkanian did that all the time and used it as a mark against the kid if he had fewer than three arrests for potential felonies. But to find out that a kid took money from an AAU coach when no crime was committed in his taking that money and therefore there is no record of it would require a school to do an in depth check and maybe even begin to monitor the activities of some of these straphangers in the athletic world. While we may want that to happen, it is not going to happen and so the punishment of a university for these prior events seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Danny Boy Snyder said on draft day when he helicoptered his two top draft choices from NY to FedEx Field for a "celebration" that "Redskins don't hold out." Well, training camp is next week and neither of these choices are signed and neither is franchise player Stephen Davis. It seems like Arrington's agents claim that LaVar is really the #1 draft pick because everyone except the Cleveland Browns thought he was the better player and so he needs a deal that is bigger than the one Courtney Brown signed. Brown got a $10M signing bonus and a $900K bonus for reporting to camp. LaVar's agents want more. That deal has to get done before Chris Samuels' deal gets done because it provides the framework for the numbers for the #3 pick in the draft. And those deals make the Stephen Davis deal harder to do.

Davis' agent says that if these rookies who have never done diddley-squat for the Redskins are worth $10M to sign, then his client needs some of that long green tossed his way too. He also points to the big signing bonuses handed out to Deion Sanders and Bruce Smith and Mark Carrier in the off season. And wouldn't you know it, Danny Boy is on vacation in Europe so the deals languish. But Danny Boy needs this time off because he will be putting in long and arduous hours starting next week as he pores over the list of people who will be invited to his box for each of the games. These are not trivial matters, you know.

According to ESPN, the five top money earners in the NFL for the coming season will be:

And so the question is, are these the top five players that you would build your franchise around if you were just awarded the 33rd team in the league? I doubt it.

But even scarier is the ESPN list of the top five money earners for next season in the NBA:

I knew that Howard made a lot of money and that made trading him for anything worth more than a bucket of warm spit very difficult. But he is being paid at to top of the scale and he is Mr. Journeyman. Another brilliant decision made by Abe Pollin, Wes Unseld and La Sooz!!

Former Syracuse basketball player Conrad McRae collapsed and died on his first day of practice with the Orlando Magic summer team. That is bad enough, but it turns out that he was signed to a 10 day contract last year with Denver and that contract was rendered void when he blacked out during pre-game warm-ups there. How do you get some people to seek and respect medical advice and diagnosis?

And finally, I want to introduce a new feature here - The Fool of the Fortnight. This inaugural awarding has to go to Sebastian Janikowski who dodged a bullet when he was acquitted of a charge of trying to bribe a police officer in Tallahassee. A conviction could have gotten him deported to Poland where his first round draft status for the Oakland Raiduhs would have been worth about 3 zlotniks. Did Sebby learn anything? No way. He is now charged with possession of BHP (the date-rape drug). Once again, he puts his residency here in jeopardy AND he automatically goes on the NFL list of people to watch closely for substance abuse. Sebastian Janikowski, you are the Fool of the Fortnight.

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