LOS ANGELES--Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman is ready to hit the mat. Rodman will square off Dec. 1 against former wrestling champion Curt Hennig, son of legendary Larry "The Axe" Hennig, in a $20 pay-per-view special, "Rodman Down Under." Rodman wrestled before at a 1997 WCW event. The 39 -year-old Rodman won't say how much he is getting paid. "I don't really need the money. I can live off a couple of thousand dollars a month. It doesn't matter to me," Rodman said. The match will be held at the Superdome in Sydney, Australia.

One of the gut-wrenching debates on sports radio these days is why Miami is behind FSU in the Bowl Championship Series ratings when Miami beat FSU. The answer is very simple; strength of schedule is a factor in the ratings and Miami plays in the big East which is not as strong top to bottom as the ACC. But much more importantly, Miami went out and played McNeese State earlier this year and they are a Division 1-AA school and that game is 9% of the strength of schedule calculation. No one made them play McNeese State and even with a contract, they could have bought their way out. And now their only chance to pass FSU is to have Florida beat FSU in that shootout.

In case you need a reason to root against the New Orleans Saints who have won five games in a row for the first time since 1993, you should know that Saints' owner Tom Benson reprised his "Benson Boogie" after last week's win. The boogie is his lame umbrella dance on the sidelines that seeks to imitate a New Orleans funeral procession. Problem is that he is about 70 years old and has all the grace and rhythmic fluidity of granite.

Memo to Mr. Benson: Go back to the owners' box and pound down a few cocktails and eat some prawns and gumbo and leave the dancing to some of your graceful 300lb offensive linemen.

Educational Note: For those of you who did not know it, "gumbo" is the Cajun word for "yeah, throw some of that in the pot too!"

Juwann Howard       F
Danny Ferry             F
Larry Johnson          F
Damon Stoudamire  G

Meanwhile, quietly the Vancouver Grizzlies have opened the year at 3-1. Their owner may be doomed to lose money because he says he lose money even if every game is a sellout, but the Griz seem to be on their way to an improved season. Of course, 30 wins for the Griz would be one of the top years in franchise history.

Speaking of sellouts, the Bulls snapped their streak of 610 consecutive sellouts last night when Les Wiz visited the United Center and beat the Bulls. The last Bulls home game that was not sold out was in November of 1987 and the opponents on that occasion were the Bullets - or Les Wiz in a former incarnation.

There is a lot of buzz that the Atlanta Hawks could be convinced to trade Dikembe Mutombo and that Mutombo will be ready to play again in about 2 weeks. Mutombo is a free agent at the end of this season but he earns a big salary this year so the offer to Atlanta will have to be a good one because even if he leaves, Mutombo will create a lot of cap room for the Hawks. Supposedly the Knicks have offered Alan Houston and Marcus Camby. I think Houston is a free agent at the end of this year too and so I would not make that trade if I were the Hawks without a contract extension signed and notarized. The Denver papers are urging the Nuggets to trade to get Mutombo back there and have suggested Raef LaFrentz, Keon Clark and Nick Van Exel to Atlanta for Mutombo and Jason Terry. If LaFrentz and Clark reach their potential, this could be a good move for the Hawks; if they don't that puts the Hawks dangerously close to "Clipper Status".

Personally, I like Mutombo as a defensive player and a rebounder and a player who gives 100% effort, but he is almost useless on offense. For someone making close to $15M a year, I would want something a bit closer to a complete package on the court. I agree that the Hawks should look to trade Mutombo because he is about 33 or 34 years old and they are nowhere near good enough to think that he might be a piece of the puzzle when they make a serious run at a championship.

The US Swimming Federation - or whatever the governing body of US swimming is called - has decided that bribing athletes is OK, as long as it is the Federation that is doing it. They have offered a $1M "bonus" to a woman swimmer who wins the gold medal in 800 meter freestyle in the 2004 Olympics and sets a world record while doing it. They have made the same offer to any male swimmer who achieves the same "double" in the 1500 meter freestyle. And the coaches of any swimmer that earns such a "bonus" will also get a $500K "appreciation fee". Frankly, I don't care much about swimming and I think that a good way to get records set would be to let crocodiles loose in the pool just as the lead swimmers turn home for the final lap. But this is bribery and if done by someone that the Federation poobahs did not like would be moaned about at 120 decibels from morning to night.

FIFA is the organization that governs soccer internationally. One of the "Fs" in that acronym stands for "football" and internationally that means "soccer". FIFA has suspended a South African player for two games and fined him for making an "obscene gesture" to the fans after scoring a goal in a game between South Africa and Zimbabwe. In case that sounds a bit extreme, given the kinds of displays that some US pro athletes put on, the "gesture" caused the fans to begin to throw "objects" onto the field which then caused security folks to lob a few tear gas grenades into the stands which then caused something that can only be called a stampede which then elicited further reaction from the security officials leading to a riot and 13 people winding up in the proverbial "paws up" position. All this over soccer? Now I understand why the new women's soccer league is planning on crowds of 7000-8000; if one of the women players makes a wrong gesture, we might have to call out the National Guard.

Despite what you should have been taught in geometry class, the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of the parts. This is a lesson that seems to be sailing over the heads of Tiger Woods and Tim Fincham. Woods told one of the myriad golf magazines that he is frustrated with the PGA Tour and Fincham specifically and that this "could escalate into a bigger situation." Tiger is not happy with the way the PGA uses his image and likeness to promote the tour; Tiger says that the only time Fincham calls him is to ask him to do something (remember Peter Angelos trying to tell you that he fired Davey Johnson because Davey would not call him and go to lunch with him?); Tiger is upset that the public does not understand what he understands because he says "I understand the whole picture. What amazes me is how much the public does not understand." Deep into the magazine story, we learn that the relationship between Fincham and Tiger began to hit the skids last year when the PGA officials would not allow Tiger's father to follow along in a cart during his "showdown" match with David Duvall.

Here is what I understand and here is a big part of "the whole picture". Tiger Woods is the greatest attraction in golf, but Tiger Woods can't draw flies if there are no tournaments. And the PGA will have TV ratings comparable with bowling if they do something stupid that alienates Tiger Woods and gets him to play in even fewer tournaments than he already does. No one will pay money twice to see Tiger play in some concocted event; no one will pay money to watch Davis Love III and Notah Begay III battle it out for four days to see who is the "Top III on the tour". And isn't it ironic that a golf cart is at the middle of this contretemps for the PGA too?

Memo to Tiger and Tim Fincham: You need to read the Aesop fable about the goose that lays the golden eggs. You are in possession of that goose at the moment. It will eventually die of old age, but either or both of you would have to be the dumbest excuse for a member of humankind to do anything to screw up what you have now. Using the trendy wisdom of Robert Fulgham, you both need to take your blankies and go to opposite ends of the mat and take a time-out.

You need to sign Heather Sue Mercer. She can miss field goals as well as anyone you have had on your team so far and may be as "distance challenged" as Eddie Murray.

The Tampa Bay assistant coach is still missing but he has evidently contacted someone on the team and left a message on a voice mail system. The team spokesperson said, "Because of the extremely personal nature of this situation, it would be inappropriate to comment on the specifics of the contact at this time." The Atlanta police still consider him to be a "missing person" and continue to try to find him and pointed out officially that it is not a crime to be missing. Given the calm associated with the team reporting him missing when he did not show up at the stadium for a game and the statements attributed to team officials about the "personal nature" of this situation, the full story here is bound to be a little over the edge but not something particularly surprising to the Bucs. Stay tuned here…

Finally, in sports jurisprudence, a Federal Appeals Court refused to reinstate a $30M lawsuit filed by Latrell Spreewell against the NBA and the Golden State Warriors for their actions that caused him to be suspended and to have his contract voided and all that stuff in the aftermath of his attempts to leave permanent fingerprints on the larynx of PJ Carlissimo. The court described the suit as a "baseless complaint" which I presume is legalese for,

"Bring that back into this court room one more time and we will declare that you are a menace to society for consuming the finite oxygen supply on the planet."