There are lots of things in this world that I don't understand – such as why anyone likes to listen to Barbra Streisand or Celine Dion. I'm resigned to the fact that I will never understand things as deep as those two things. But I do believe that someone might be able to explain some other things to me in such a way that I might be able to comprehend how they happened:

If Dusty Baker is such a virtuoso at handling “difficult stars”, how come he and Sammy Sosa couldn't make it work?

Now that Dusty Baker has engineered the removal of Steve Stone from the Cubbies' broadcasting booth, whom will he blame when things go wrong this year? Steve Bartman?

Since baseball players are subject to random testing as soon as they report to spring training, is there any reason to suspect that Barry Bond's arthroscopic surgery on his knee might be – at least to some extent – “elective surgery”?

With the massive overhaul done to the Mets' roster this off-season, why are they starting the year with Mike Piazza as their #1 catcher when last year he only played in 129 games and at least a third of those were at first base?

Is it possible that George Karl took the job in Denver so he could be closer to Boise and see his son Cody play for the Boise State Broncos?

Have the suits in the NBA Front Office made any contingency plans for an NBA playoff bracket that does not include New York, Los Angeles and Chicago? Other than a swan dive out the 15th story window of course…

Why did the Houston Rockets waive Brandin Knight and sign Rod Strickland? Check these stats for Strickland at age 38 and with the reputation of “Teammate From Hell”:

8 games
FG% = 9.1%
14 points scored
11 rebounds
12 mpg

Maybe – just maybe – there is a chink in the armor of the Bowl Championship Series. We can only hope. FOX has the rights to the BCS games and it plans at the moment to spread the games out over the week following New Years Day. Only the Rose Bowl will be guaranteed a slot on New Years Day. The other Bowl Games in the BCS are not completely thrilled by all of this because New Years Day is a prime date for a bowl game in terms of exposure and in terms of drawing fans to the site and because the BCS contract forced one bowl game to take Pitt last year even though Pitt was ranked somewhere closer to #40 in the country than to #1. And to really cheese off the BCS participants, FOX won this bidding with a number less than ABC paid last year.

So, if all of this generates some internal bickering amongst the cabal that created and foisted the BCS upon us, maybe – just maybe – there is a chance to force a complete re-evaluation of the way that college football ends its season. One more time, let me say that the right answer is:

1. Eliminate one early season game for every team.

2. Play bowl games with the latest one on 1 January.

3. Panel picks and seeds top 4 teams – as they do the top 64 in basketball.

4. On-field playoff with final game in the “dark week” between the NFL conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

Speaking of bowl games, the Independence Bowl – held in Shreveport, LA every year – is the only bowl game at the moment with no corporate sponsor tie-in. It did get one offer but it turned it down. Déjà Vu is a company that runs more than 60 strip clubs in the US, Canada and France. The company offered to sponsor the Independence Bowl for a sponsorship fee of $1M. I thought at first that the NCAA would have a rule prohibiting this kind of sponsorship since it explicitly bars sponsorship by companies involved with gambling, alcohol and tobacco. But it does not have a prohibition on companies that provide pole-dancers and lap dances and “adult novelty toys”. It would almost be worth $1M to see Dr. Myles Brand try to explain how the omniscient NCAA - run by the leading academic minds in the world as represented by all those university presidents - managed to leave that loophole in their rules…

Yesterday, I told you about Yogi Berra's suit against TBS because that network assaulted his character by asking what a “Yogasm” was. Elliot Harris in the Chicago Sun-Times had the best answer to this. He said, “It's not over till it's over.”

According to an exec with “StubHub.com”, Super Bowl tickets this year are going for $2,500 – 7,800 a seat - - depending on the quality of the seat of course. You have got to be dumb enough to think that Rush Limbaugh will be invited into the Eagles' locker room to give a pre-game pep talk to spend $7,800 to see a football game that can also be seen on TV anywhere you would want to see it.

I'm not a huge fan of Steve Rushin in Sports Illustrated even though many consider him one of the best sportswriters in the country at this time. However, he recently channeled Johnny Carson and had Carnac the Magnificent deal with the Super Bowl. Here are the two best bits from that article:

A: Nosetackle.
Q: What's the fastest way to bring down Barbra Streisand?

A: Pats-Eagles.
Q: What does a lonely ornithologist do?

Finally, Greg Norman has invested in vineyards and wineries in his native Australia. One of his wines, Greg Norman Estates Reserve Shiraz, was designated as the eighth best wine of the year by Wine Spectator Magazine. Geoff Russell of Golf Digest impertinently noted:

“Unfortunately, it was Norman's only top-10 finish of the year.”

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

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