In college football, Notre Dame gets one of the at-large bids to a BCS game because one of the contractual stipulations underpinning the entire concept of the BCS is that Notre Dame will be in one of the games if it ranks anywhere in the top twelve in the BCS standings. As things look now, either Virginia Tech or Oregon State will be leapfrogged by Notre Dame because of this special consideration. BCS now stands for Bogus Championship Shannanigans.

Oh, the way that Notre Dame capped off its season was to clobber USC leaving the Trojans with a losing record for the year and making them ineligible for any bowl game. Coach Paul Hackett is taking flack in LA but for some reason the Athletic Director, Mike Garrett seems to be getting a pass on the sorry state of USC football. Garrett had a news conference after the game and all the questions seemed to be about the future of Hackett (Garrett said he was "deliberating a decision" which is press conference talk for "haven't a clue what to do now") but I did not hear anyone ask him about his role in the mess that exists out there.

In the NBA, Charlie Ward needs to have arthroscopic surgery done to his knee to "clean out the debris". He will be gone for about 2 months; that makes Chris Childs the point guard for about 36 minutes a game and that may not be Jeff Van Gundy's preferred lineup. But the Knicks did improve over the weekend. Luc Longley is now ready to play and was activated to the roster; to make room for him, Felton Spencer was put on the injured list. If you take Spencer off the team and add Red Klotz, you have improved the squad.

The Chicago Bulls indeed finished their road trip with a record of 1-12 which is the disaster that I speculated about here a few days ago. The return home to host the Timberpoodles who are 7-6. This season is already ugly in Chicago; it could get really grotesque in the next month or so.

Do you think the Detroit Pistons offense is predictable? In their loss to the Jazz last night, the Pistons took 78 shots; 38 of those shots were by either Jerry Stackhouse or Joe Smith. Stackhouse pumped up 27 shots in 40 minutes on the court and Smith launched 11 shots in only 17 minutes.

Vince Carter injured his left quadriceps muscle in a game yesterday and had to be helped to the locker room by two teammates. Later, he was on the bench in "street clothes". This is not good for the Raptors and it is particularly bad news for David Stern who continues his desperate search for a marketable superstar. The NBA is in danger of sliding quickly into an inferior position in the sporting pantheon. Ticket prices are astronomical and out of the range of many people who would be fans. Season tickets for families are as rare as an outburst of total candor from either Bush or Gore. Too many players are fundamentally unsound so they are not consistently attractive on the court and far too many players are such spoiled brats that they are definitely unattractive off the court. The NFL drew over a million fans to outdoor stadiums in places where the weather was not always outstanding on two consecutive weekends; the NBA is playing to lots of arenas that are only 60% full.

Here is a baseball item to keep in mind when the labor problems there bubble over into a strike/lockout. Even before the rush to sign the megastars currently in free agency status at contract levels whose totals are comparable with the GDP of some Third World Nations, there are over 375 major league ballplayers making $1M a year or more. There are 117 that are making $5M or more and the average player in the league is making $2M. There will be lots of emoting and lots of blather about whose "fault" this is but the numbers say pretty clearly to me that the players are not being abused and exploited by evil management trolls and they say equally clearly to me that the owners are willing participants in this fiscal madness. Structural economic change is necessary and if the people leading the factions here can't get it done, then they need to be voted off the continent onto an island where they can eat rats until they are ready to come back and get it done right.

In NFL action, the Cowboys stunk on Thanksgiving day and then did something that would seem to assure that they will continue to stink for a while. They have cap problems and an aging set of top players that are earning lots of deferred money and they gave away their #1 pick in next year's draft to Seattle for Joey Galloway. Later on they traded a fourth and a seventh round pick to Atlanta for OJ Santiago. Well they just cut Santiago. Rookies and free agents are the only kinds of players that will fit comfortably in the salary cap situation of the Cowboys and they just gave away two more picks for nothing in return. The lesson to be learned here is probably not one that is capable of being learned - Jerry Jones needs to hire a General Manager and get the hell out of the personnel business.

And as difficult as that lesson will be for Smiley Face to learn, it will be equally difficult for Danny Boy Snyder to learn the same one. We've heard the bluster about "accountability" and we've seen four kickers in Redskin uniforms this year. And we've seen secretaries and elevator operators fired. And that makes Danny Boy look tough. What the press does not point out is that Danny Boy Snyder is ass-deep in the decision to bring in Jeff "Boy" George who is now 1-2 as a starter for the Skins and both losses have been to NFC East teams that the Skins should have beaten. Eddie Murray - there is no DNA evidence to prove that he is the unacknowledged son of Arthur Murray who is another famous hoofer - missed the field goal to tie the game but Murray did not cost the Skins the game. In the fourth quarter with the game in the balance, George had the team at the 3 yard line. They ran six plays from the 3 and the ball never crossed the goal line; George threw a terrible pass on the Skins' next to last play of the game that would have made Murray's kick about 8 yards shorter; George fumbled a snap from center leading to an Eagle TD run by McNabb. If Danny Boy has even an iota of integrity in him - which is about as likely as an outburst of total candor by either Bush or Gore - he will stand up and say that his decision and the actions of Vinnie "Boombatz" Cerrato to bring in "Boy" George was not a great idea.

Against the Eagles defense that had ranked 23rd in the NFL against the rush going into yesterday, the Redskins managed all of 44 yards. Even with Stephen Davis out, that is embarrassing. Against an Eagle offense that has not been able to run the ball well since Duce Staley went down, the defense allowed 171 yards rushing (6.6 yards per carry). The Redskin defense seemed predicated on the concept that when they collapsed the pocket, they would find the QB in the middle of the wreckage there; McNabb was usually elsewhere and the Skins' braintrust never seemed to do much of anything different. This game was lost by the QB and the defensive play calling and the OL. And big, tough, take-no-prisoners Danny Boy won't do a thing about it for two reasons:

1. He probably does not even realize it.

2. He has nothing at his disposal that he can do. The other thing he does not realize is that some of us already realize that he is all talk and no follow-up and he does not realize that some of the players/coaches/agents are probably beginning to catch on to that too.

The Titans lost to the Jags and Al Del Greco missed a chip shot field goal late in the 4th quarter that was the margin of victory in the game. That is twice in the last three weeks that Del Greco has been at the center of plays that cost the Titans a victory.

How bad are the Bungles you ask? The Steelers, who have more trouble scoring than the Elephant Man did, beat the Bungles 48-28. Kordell Stewart threw for 3 TDs in the game; up to this point in the season, he had thrown a total of 4. The Bungles did manage an average of 5 yards per rush but also managed to fumble eight times - losing three of them.

Look at the stats for the Ravens/Browns game to see an old fashioned stomping. The Browns were as ineffective as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. The Browns had 5 first downs; ran only 42 plays; gained only 112 yards of total offense; held the ball less than 22 minutes and turned the ball over 3 times. The Ravens won 44-7; it was probably not that close.

The Chargers finally won beating the Chiefs. Remember after the first game of the year, Gunther Cunningham supposedly contemplated resigning after the team did not play the way he thought they should have but his wife supposedly talked him out of resigning. Well, unless he was comatose on the sidelines and missed this sorry-assed game, he should contemplate giving himself a lethal injection now. The Chiefs put the ball in play 62 times and gained a total of 161 yards; the Chargers put the ball in play 52 times and gained a total of 191 yards. The Chiefs were penalized 11 times for 90 yards - more than half their offensive output; the Chargers gave the ball away 5 times and still won the game. The Chiefs punted 10 times and the Chargers punted 8 times. Any fan left in the stands at the end of this game should be given a free lifetime pass to the Football Hall of Fame!

The Saints started Aaron "Our Miss" Brooks at QB and spread 44 rushing attempts among 4 different players. They took the ball away from the Rams 4 times and sacked Trent Green 6 times and won 31-24. There were 31 penalties in the game. The Saints had 17 penalties and that cost them 116 yards; the Rams were flagged 14 times for a total of 132 yards. The Saints now lead the NFC West and Jim Haslett is my early leader in the race for Coach of the Year.

Had it not been for the Saints/Rams game, the penalty totals in the Falcons/Raiders game would have been noteworthy. There were 22 penalties in the Raiders 41-14 win. Nothing else was surprising here. Jon Gruden is running second in my mind for Coach of the Year at this point.

Last night the Giants just handled the Arizona Cardinals. When they needed to run the ball, they ran it; when they needed a pass play to loosen things up, they completed it; when they needed to pressure Dave Brown at QB, they did it. Arizona travels to Cincinnati next week and the sad part about that game is that the people who live in the Phoenix area will be forced to see that game on TV instead of any other possible telecast. If the EPA had any jurisdiction over the NFL, they would declare that game a toxic waste dump and try to clean it up with Superfund money.

The final note today comes from the boxing world. David Reid made his "comeback" from a loss to world champion Felix Trinidad. Going into the fight, Reid was 15-1 and he survived a final round knockdown to win a decision against a fighter who had lost his first 18 fights in a row. Measure that against whatever hype was put out prior to the Trinidad fight; convince me that championship contest was worth the fee of the pay-per-view. I tell you, boxing has become worse than rasslin'.

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