To prevent unfair competition, uncontrolled spending by rich guys and perhaps, the risk of teams going bankrupt, the powers between labor and management in professional sports created caps for spending. In the NHL ($59.4m), NFL ($128m) and the NBA ($58.4m) you have a device called the “salary cap.” In Major League Baseball it’s a “luxury tax” limit ($170m) where teams can exceed the number but have to pay a tax into a pool that is redistributed among the poorer teams.

The NFL allows for 53 players, the NBA 12-15, the NHL 18-20 and MLB allows for 25. Imagine the payrolls if everyone made $20,000,000. So it starts with these fundamentals when considering the ploys of players like Darrelle Revis, the holdout cornerback of the New York Jets, or Ilya Kovalchuk, the federal arbitrator decreed free agent, who was prevented from signing a 17-year, $102 million contract with the New Jersey Devils.

It also helps explain how the Miami Heat could basically get rid of its roster and then sign LeBron James, DeWyane Wade and Chris Bosh in the same week. How Alex Rodriguez can make $25 million a year and rookie quarterback Sam Bradford can make more than Tom Brady, Drew Brees or Peyton Manning, before ever throwing an NFL pass. And it helps to better understand the controversy created by Washington Redskins defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth, when he stayed out of preseason drills and was late to training camp after being signed just last year to a $100 million, 7-year deal with $32 million of it guaranteed in the first 13 months and $9 million more guaranteed over the life of the contract.

It may help you better understand, but as Meryl Streep might say, “It’s Complicated.” You see all of these deals are direct products of standards created within each league’s collective bargaining agreement. The NFL and NBA are on the eve of renegotiating their CBAs, and it boils down to labor wanting more and management wanting to pay less.

They both have their cases. ‘The economy is down,’ say the owners. ‘We are being mistreated and taken advantage of,’ say the players. Hard for the fans to understand when they watch the Yankees on TV and the seats on the screen go for $2500 each.

So the Devils followed the rules, and offered to pay Kovulchuk $102 million for his services. Trouble is, the $102 mil was spread out over 17 years. The deal would have paid $95 mil over ten years ($9.5 annually), but only $550,000 over the last five (which adds up to $97,750,000, so the remaining $4,250,000 must be a signing bonus). The way the Devils worked it, was so $6,000,000 was the salary cap figure for 17 years. Arbitrator Richard Bloch said no. Now, Kovulchuk is free to listen again to the Los Angeles Kings, or Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. The New Jersey Devils say they will provide another offer. This time more to Mr. Bloch’s liking.

So why can’t logic like Richard Bloch’s prevail in all these disputes? What’s the deal with Revis? He’s got a contract he signed in good faith as a rookie in 2007 ($30 million, over six years with $11 million guaranteed) and he’s taken all the guaranteed money out. Now he’s reduced to playing the next two years for about $1 million a year before his “restricted” year which usually means a new contract. He’s become the best cornerback in the NFL and there’s a guy in Oakland (Nnamdi Asomugha) who’s making $15.155 this year and at least, $16.875 next year (if Oakland elects to keep him). Revis wants to be the highest paid corner and wants a dollar more than Asomugha and one of his mentors is Sean Gilbert who sat out a year from the Redskins in a contract dispute.

The Jets on the other hand are known as tough negotiators. They contend that Asomugha’s contract is an aberration, an Al Davis thumb-your-nose albatross that may factor in Asomugha’s local upbringing and extensive community work. Any way you look at it, shut down corners are a rare commodity. So Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum’s tough stance, like he took last year with Leon Washington, who was an out-of-nowhere star, becomes something of a pride issue. “If I give in to one, I’ll be giving in to all.” But Tannenbaum needs a lesson in common sense. Does he want to win? Does he want Revis to go elsewhere? Does he want to wait for another shutdown guy who you can anchor a defense upon to come along?

There are rumblings of how the Jets have offered $12 to $13 million and posed a deal worth $100 million. But the thing about NFL contracts is the guaranteed money. There’s nothing more one-sided to NFL management than the long-term contract. Play poorly or get hurt and the contract seems to go away. Play well and ask for more, then you’ve got a problem.

Richard Bloch would probably average the top corners other than Asomugha and come up with a number. Revis should work on the guaranteed dough and give up the ego-oriented “I need to be number one” stance. Tannebaum should look at the averages. He has a 25-year old corner, likely to be solid for seven more years. Champ Bailey ($9 million) is 32 and still holding his own. Charles Woodson ($7.5 million) was Defensive player of the Year last season and is 34. At some point, this is a silly dispute and someone should ask, “Can’t we just all get along?”

1. LeBron James can’t get a ball into his hands soon enough. Never has a guy gone from plus to minus quicker.

2. Tiger Woods’ desease could also strike LeBron. Fooling with that part between the ears is all it takes to move your game off-center.

3. SI’s Peter King is a treasure. He’s been off for most of the summer, due to vacation and World Cup coverage. He’s back now that NFL camps are open, overcoming the unexpected loss of his brother Bob, and again willing to provide beer and coffee reviews from his travels. Hold the Boston-bias, Pete and have a great year.

4. Something tells me Lance Armstrong is finally going to be exposed for the unpleasant person he is behind the hero worship. His is multi-million dollar business based on seven wins and overcoming cancer. Something tells me those yellow bands should really be green.

5. Pete Carroll remains in first place in the phony league with the most support behind him. Everything Seattle is coming up roses from those who are following Pete. The best draft…playoff prospects…the best book “at bookstores now”…nicest guy…not his mess back in LA…even WR Mike Williams is going to the Pro Bowl.

6. Brett Favre will play for the Vikings this year.

7. Why do the Cowboys come out each July as the Super Bowl favorite? The Cowboys are the poster boys of hype. Everything is great in Big D. Except maybe the defense, RBs, WRs and Romo.

8. After all the “insider” speculation on why Bill Cowher hasn’t taken a head coaching job in each of the past two seasons, shocking word that his wife Kaye, passed away from skin cancer. Instead of taking time to watch his daughters play basketball, do you think her illness might have been a factor?

9. You gotta know that something’s wrong with the NFL pay scale, when Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees are in their final contract years and will make less than Sam Bradford.

10. SI’s Gary Smith does it again with a great story about Floyd Little’s quest for the NFL Hall of Fame. Little goes into Canton with first balloters, Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice and alongside Dick LeBeau in August. Smith’s story chronicles Little’s snub and the perserverance of a fan, Tom Mackie, who continued to lobby for the Bronco great’s induction.

11. Pete Sampras has been hired to help lift Roger Federer’s game. Here’s hoping Pete can hit and spin lefthanded.

12. Ilya Kovulchuk’s NHL contract with the Devils is a twist on reporter’s spin from every angle but what counts. Is it Gary Bettman taking a stand? Lou Lamariello cheating? A legal challenge to the player’s association? The undoing of about 10 longterm contracts that already exist? No, it means Kovulchuk will play for the Devils and the stupid loopholes will be closed.

It is the single most favorable decison ever granted to an NCAA team, giving an obvious unfair competitive advantage with blessing, as a reward for going through an awful chapter involving a lying hooker and an aggressive, politically-motivated DA. And, oh yeah, reporters like Sports Illustrated’s, ex-New York Times writer, Selena Roberts, who jumped on the throats of the Duke “privileged” and stood up for women everywhere as a loud mouth who was wrong and never apologized.

Duke sent 17 seniors out to eke an overtime win and its first national championship against Notre Dame. A just reward by “lacrosse society” and the NCAA, who granted the extra year of eligibility concession with little debate. The perception was that the bogus charges ruined the pretty good lives of Reade Seligman, Colin Finnerty and David Evans and punished the rest of the team when Duke president Richard Brodsky cancelled the remainder of the 2006 season. So the lacrosse powers-that-be and the NCAA, doled out and granted rewards to make everything right.

As it turned out, Finnerty played well in a tough overtime loss in a tournament game for Loyola of Maryland against Cornell, while Seligman played and graduated at Brown and Evans toiled on Wall Street. All three have allegedly profited from wrongful prosecution lawsuits, while Mike Pressler, the Duke coach at the time, who was discarded, without so much as an inkling of support from such good and powerful friends as Mike Kryzewski, was named head coach of the 2010 U. S. World Team.

Making everything right for a team that still engaged in a “traditional” end-of-spring-break-week party, at the captain’s off-campus house that brought the police. Complete with underaged drinking and “imported” girls. A national championship for “Blue Devils Gone Wild.”

LeBron

Big news when he talks about where he’ll wind up with Larry King on CNN. David Stern is mad because it takes away friom his marquee matchup in the Finals of Boston at Los Angeles. Still, LeBron remains the biggest non-story-forced-down-our-throats since Brett Favre’s retirement status and the U.S. Soccer team.

Cleveland can pay him the most, has shown commitment to surround him with talent and its home. Leaving Cleveland could also mark him as a quitter and change an area that now reveres him into one that detests his grand opinion of himself. The Los Angeles Clippers would allow him to rub elbows with the stars, and play with a loaded, youthful, rudderless team. But there’s Donald Sterling, the Clipper’s owner, the standard for ineptitude, who serves as the sterling standard of bumbling, for Knicks owner, James Dolan.

Chicago gets a lot of play in the speculation, but Jerry Reinsdorf has a horrible track record with Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. He’s cheap and not beyond eventually turning his back on loved ones. Why go there?

New York, it is becoming clear, is too hot to handle. There would be money and endorsements and adoration and there is a need for the NBA to get stronger despite all of David Stern’s claims otherwise. Putting a winner in New York could revitalize the league and put LeBron’s historic stamp on it in the way that Larry and Magic pulled it out of the “cocaine years.” New York is also the best springboard to the rest of the world, something LeBron could easily conquer if “Team LeBron” is something more than a collection of talent that specializes in “low hanging fruit.”

The Knicks can only pay and the Nets can only pray. They can’t serve up a team and guarantee championships. And then there’s the phenomenon of James Dolan, perhaps the most inept owner since Ted Stepian. Why would LeBron want to struggle in front of the most sophisticated and critical fans in the game? So that he can glide through the ropes at Marquee? So that he can walk the streets and be heckled by construction workers?

Truth be told, LeBron is a beast, but could be the game’s biggest loser, about to be paid the biggest salary. He’s got seven years on a 25-year old body. Dan Marino, anyone? Charles Barkley? Karl Malone? Alex Rodriguez? None of the teams he’s being courted by qualify as sure-fire winners. Maybe his free agent summit can change that by creating a Survivor-like alliance. But what remains based on his history is that he hasn’t been capable of winning the big one. And that could be a career curse.

Tiger Woods

There have been 23 tournaments played so far and only Ernie Els has repeated, both times on the Florida swing, at Doral and Bay Hill. 23 tournaments and 22 different winners. Welcome to your new world, Tiger Woods. Yes, Tiger is now a member of the pack. He could rise up like any of the other guys and win a tournament, but his days of domination are over.

He struggles with his swing like the rest of them, not knowing what will show up week-to-week. His new spot is as the most popular golfer on tour, not it’s best, and certainly not both, as it has been for years. The pressures have hit in his head like all the others. He now has doubts. He thinks too much. He frustrates and worries. He alters his swing. He doesn’t have the world on a string anymore. He wonders what people are thinking and what his family is doing. It’s pretty certain he’s lost that edge. Welcome to the pack, Tiger.

Tiger Woods

So the entitled Tiger behaved like a bore when he was on the road. He wasn’t the first. He just got exposed. It took only a chip shot of a drive in his SUV late Thanksgiving night to unfurl the the fabric of the “world’s most famous and wealthy athlete.” He had already made a billion dollars. And, at 35, he’ll have plenty of time to add to that total. But it will never be the same, where he dictated the terms. Now he has to deal with his psyche in different way, perhaps he’s allowed doubt to creep into his game? He’ll now forever be known as the man with 100 women, and most importantly, he doesn’t matter as much.

What to do: Play golf. Win tournaments. Continue with the new “softer, gentler” Tiger. Get the divorce and move on to the reality of an estranged family life that you can’t muscle into control. Make the largest divorce settlement in history. Date and either remain single or replace Elin with a new model.

Rich Rodriguez

He was white hot as a coaching candidate, and a reknowned recruiter, with a “system” that was destined to put the Big Ten on its ear. He just didn’t figure on how hard it is to take over a bankrupt team and how intense the scrutiny would be and how thin the patience would be on his entitled ego. He’s now on the hotseat with a 50/50 approval rating. He’s run out of credibility in less than 24 months, especially after stepping hard on the feelings of alumni in West Virginia, Michigan and bringing shame to college football’s winningest program.

What to do: Stop feeling sorry for yourself and making excuses. Win. Beat Ohio State. Recruit some studs. Hire Allen Iverson to go to press conferences and say “Practice?”

Ben Roethlisberger

He’s gone from a Super Bowl quarterback from Mid-America, to a guy who posts bodyguards, flashes women and uses his 6-foot-5, 240 pound bulk to headlock unsuspecting girls in bathrooms. He’ll now have to change his ways, and every misstep off and on the field, will somehow go back to his jailbait night in Milledgeville, Georgia.

What to do: Get a beautiful, age-appropriate, strong, media-savvy girlfriend. Start working on your warmth to everybody around you. Stay healthy and lead the Steelers to the playoffs. Start listening to others.

Jesse James

In March, he was a reality TV star, married to an Oscar winner and building a family. Now he’s a pathetic tatooed apologist who supplies the answer to the original question: “What does Sandra Bullock see in him?” You have to wonder whether there will still be interest in his body shop exploits?

What to do: Move on. Distance yourself from Bullock and humorously refer to the odd pairing. Become the poster child for guys that blew it. Base your new career on that.

British Petroleum

Seems like yesterday that we were receiving viral emails touting BP as a good place to spend our oil dollars. They didn’t have political leverage. They didn’t control the marketplace unfairly. You couldn’t trace their profits to supporting terrorists. Now, 11 bodies and 200,000 gallons a day later, BP is exposed as a greedy, devil-may-care, profit monger. The Gulf of Mexico will not be the same for 30 years. The gulf seafood industry and other wildlife will die. Offshore drilling will become a pox, despite Sarah Palin’s cheerleading otherwise.

What to do: Cap the well. Pay for a massive cleanup. Promote new ways to clean oil spills. Help restore the gulf’s seafood industry. Expose the flaws in the regulatory system. Make off-shore drilling safe.

These are the same guys that asked Bob Mulcahy to take them to the Big Leagues and then fired him. The same folks who spent to improve the football stadium, then threw Mulcahy under the team bus for spending on it, as soon as the Jersey economy failed. They hired and admired head coach Greg Schiano, then bitched about his salary.

The critics are first to dismiss RU as a logical candidate. The only thing they can bring is the New York media market, a pretty big chip, but with deeper review, there are obvious flaws with this match. Rutgers doesn’t compete at a Big Ten level and even with a $545 million endowment (paltry in Big Ten terms) and an Association of American Universities research acredidation, they wonder who is going to tune in for Rutgers-Indiana along 1-95?

The first critics of this opportunity will be the group of decison makers at Rutgers. The Board of Governors. A more underqualified and lackluster group you couldn’t possibly assemble. These folks make major league umpires strike zone decisions look good. They answer to few directly, if you want to refer to the New Jersey legislature as anything close to an answer.

Ruled by a limp president in Richard McCormick and including academic versus athletic factions as well as Fred Zoffinger, a guy who never attended Rutgers, avoids paying NJ taxes by living in Pennsylvania, and remains the anti-athletic critic, having already led the brigade against uncontrolled spending on the football complex (leading to the axing of his arch-rival Bob Mulcahy) and predicted (wrongly) head football coach Greg Schiano’s replacing of Joe Paterno at Penn State.

Zoffinger, once-upon-a-time, wanted Mulcahy’s job and didn’t get it. His largest claims to fame are resigning as chairman of the New Jersey Exposition Authority (appointed by the governor) because he hired his own son’s lawfirm, his being a member of former governor Jim Florio’s cabinet (Florio was probably the largest contributor to the current NJ multi-billion dollar budget debt), a crony of John A. Lynch, former NJ political power broker, now inmate, and guiding light behind Xanadu, the ugly, incomplete and empty shopping mall, now gathering dust at the Meadowlands complex. He’s an example of the quality of New Jersey political appointments, which, as a state-funded school, is what drives Rutgers.

Then you have the academics that rail against spending dollars on sports to the detriment of learning. A noble argument, but one lost in their ignorance. It’s 2010, and these guys haven’t figured out that sports are the most prominent revenue-generating profit center that a university could possibly have.

Notre Dame always gets the play when it comes to well balanced athletics/academics. Notre Dame receives $15 million from NBC to exclusively televise their 12 football games. Approximately $3 to $5 million of that money has been earmarked yearly to Notre Dame academics, and currently totals nearly $85 million. The Big Ten TV deal pays each of the 11 schools $22 million annually. With the proposed expansion that number will grow.

And so William C. Dowling, a onetime RU English teacher and the founding father of the “Rutgers 1000,” an anti-Rutgers athletics group, wonders how many professor’s salaries, tenures, pensions for life, benefits packages for life and all the other glitter that goes with a profession largely froth with sandbaggers, that head football coach Greg Schiano’s $2.07 million salary (Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly was paid $3 million to take over that program this season) would pay, and how the $102 million expense of the Rutgers Stadium could also benefit his colleagues. Norman Glickman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers, argues that a move to compete with bigger football programs would require spending even more money than the $102 million for the stadium upgrades. He argues that the Big Ten games will not be played in that stadium, but at the Meadowlands. What these guys need to do is take a remedial math class and a open a sports page.

Of course, the Michigan’s, Nebraska’s, Notre Dame’s, Penn State’s and Ohio State’s should be played in a stadium with an 82,500 capacity, parking, special suites and dozens of other profit center features. The current version of Rutgers Stadium at approximately 52,500, would be similar to Indiana (52,692) and bigger than Minnesota (50,805) and Northwestern (49,256). There would unquestionably be games both on and off campus, if someone with business sense were allowed by the dopey Board of Governors to call the shots. I’d bet a Rutgers math degree that the university grosses about $2 million per on-campus home game. At the Meadowlands, the number would be more like $6 million.

Ticket prices will certainly increase and add to revenue. Nearly 30,000 more tickets could be sold at the Meadowlands Stadium. Season tickets and club box demand would increase as New York-transplanted followers of Big Ten teams join the ticket demand. Concessions and parking revenue would also expect a bump. Rutgers’ current athletic budget is widely posted at $58.3 million and it’s profit was $159,641. What a joke the academics and Zoffinger cry.

Estimates put Big East shared revenues at $33 million with nearly $20 million coming from its 16 basketball schools. That’s a grand total of about $2 million to each school. The forecasted Super Big Ten projects the current $22 million split to grow to $30 million with the new schools and impending new contracts. That’s just from the Big Ten Network. Gate receipts are separate, froth with operating partners and percentages, but for Rutgers to host Michigan at the new Meadowlands Stadium, they’d likely double what they take in on campus.

Let’s see, Rutgers board of governors, stay where you are and bitch and find ways expand on that $159,000 a year profit? Or invest in yourself and find ways to improve Rutgers with $30 million plus a year. All without a bond issue and without tax increases at a time when Rutgers stands to lose $46.6 million this year from its state funding.

Has Governor Chris Christie done this math? Has anyone at Rutgers?

In their place are personal seat licenses, a missing roof and name in New Jersey, an updated replica in the Bronx, a perfectly good stadium turned to dust in the name of a perfectly gawdy and overbuilt version in Dallas, and a sentimental broken down park that no one saw fit to preserve in any way, replaced by better in Detroit. The Izod Center will simply not be missed.

Hubrist David Stern told of how he was a private lawyer on the original deal that built the basketball and hockey arena, then to be known as a tribute to NJ governor Brendan Byrne. He went on to say that if he had known then what he knows now about basketball arenas, he wouldn’t have been so thrilled with his work. It seems that Stern couldn’t foresee that a hard-to-get-to outpost in the middle of a swamp, only 12 miles from Times Square, with no commerce around it, was a bad place to locate a team.

What the arena in the Meadowlands came to be was the torchbearer for every operating sports franchise in America. A place to take from the fan and not give back. Anyone who paid handsomely to park in the Giants parking lot and walk that covered cattleshoot of a walkway over Route 120 knows what I’m talking about. Or paid handsomely for the right to sit in the top section of the rafters. Or ate the food. Or got bossed by parking attendants and arena staff. Or got propositioned by the team ticket salespeople to pay top dollar if you wanted service. The place was never a comfortable place to watch a game. It never had character. Home ice or court advantage was non-existent. It was always and only an indoor place that held over 18,000, west of the Hudson, smack dab in the middle of one of the most intense population centers in the world.

It was welcomed by New Jersey fans who didn’t have to negotiate a bridge or tunnel. It was welcomed by the politicians and contractors that lined their pockets. It was welcomed by Jayson Williams who could walk a few steps outside and shoot a bullet into the cattails. It mastered a “shove-it-down-their-throat” marketing style that gave birth to the fleecing of fans that now exists everywhere. Good riddance Izod Center.

The arrogance that’s built from sitting in front of the press game after game for years is also one of Donavan McNabb’s flaws. He compiles his good stats (five championship games in 11 years) and inflates them into a sense of entitlement that overlooks the fact that he could never win the big one. Not to mention choking when the chips were down. Chances are the Eagles will be just as good with Kevin Kolb. Sending McNabb to a division rival may turn out bad, but a #37 pick is really about what he’s worth, despite what he wants to continue to tell us.

Just when Tiger Woods is ready to tee off again, Tiki Barber steps in to fill the fillopian gap. Barber, who quit football early for a cushy TV gig used his “good guy” image to broaden his NBC assignment. We heard how well he treated his mom. How tight he was with Ronde. And of course, how in love he was with his wife and her family, whom all lived together in Manhattan splendor. Now he’s dumping his wife, pregnant with twins, for an NBC intern half her age.

Wonder how much of that $6.1 million Charles Rogers owes the Lions, he has in the bank? This is the gift that Matt Millen keeps giving. Lawyers aren’t talking, but there’s some hope that the money was put in escrow until the dispute was settled.

Good for Tom Izzo to join company with John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski by making six final fours. Wooden did it with the aid of Alcindor and Walton. Coach K has his pick of the McDonald’s team every year. Izzo did it with mostly homegrown talent. Bad for Izzo to tell reporters after losing to Butler that Duke would beat them handily. Good for David Letterman to point out during an interview with Butler coach Brad Stevens, that Izzo took the bus home early.

96 teams in the NCAA tournament? Like this is a big surprise. To paraphrase one of our favorites, Tony Kornheiser, “one of the smartest guys in sports, Don Ohlmeyer, once told me, ‘it’s always about the money.”

So Duke returns to its perch as the most persecuted team in the land. Not really. You’d have to be a dope to not respect Coach K, Duke’s academic reputation, and their formidable record. Sure they get the kids they want. They follow the rules. They still play white kids, and they glow about the experience in Durham win or lose. The trouble with Duke is its media imbalance. Mr. Vitale might as well be captain of the cheerleaders. Mike Patrick had to be taken off games, even though he lives close by. And Coach K has like Jim Boeheim, Rick Pitino and John Calipari, become parttime sidekick to the insiders led by Kornheiser and Wilbon and the extensive ESPN crew.

The NCAAs - Kansas is gone, so we can now turn our attention to UCONN’s women’s team.

NFL Playoff Overtime - See, logic can prevail when gigantic, money-grubbing organizations put their mind to it. Next: The BCS and Instant Replay in baseball.

Tiger’s Back - We can go back to pondering how to stick it on an Augusta green and rolling it in and get away from wondering why guys cheat on hot girls with hot girls.

New York College Basketball - St. John’s apparently will spend $3 million on a coach, Seton Hall will steal another Siena coach and Rutgers remains the same. They all still will be more interesting than the Knicks or Nets.

Joe Mauer Is Staying in Minny - Chances are better than ever for Mauer landing in New York after Minnesota realizes the same lesson as Tom Hicks, who signed A-Rod for Mauer-type of bucks in Texas, before trading A-Rod and selling his team this winter.

Peter King Mondays - The best NFL read anywhere is every Monday when Peter King updates the faithful about what’s going on in the NFL. No one does it better, except maybe Peter Vecsey with the NBA, and once-upon-a-time Peter Gammons with baseball. We especially like King’s shout outs to the master of this format, Paul Zimmerman, who’s recovering from health setbacks in Morris County, New Jersey. Sportscream looks forward to the day of seeing “Dr. Z” walking around Birchwood Lake again with his lovely “redheaded” partner.

Roethlisberger is a masher - Let’s face it. Big Ben might come across as a great ol’ midwestern guy, but I’m wondering how many have seen him over the years with a headlock on a girl at the end of the bar? This type of behaviour just doesn’t pop up. It’s a symptom of someone who thinks he’s a little “special.” The good news of this, is that he’ll most likely skate, pay and behave from now on. Three strikes and you’re out, Ben.

Red Wings-Flames Burnin’ Toward Playoffs - Four points separate the two from the eighth and final Western Conference playoff berth with about ten games remaining. The Wings (87) hold the four-point advantage over Calgary (83) while Colorado (87), Nashville (89) and Los Angeles (89) hover just above. Good news for the West if they can keep Detroit out of the mix for the first time in 18 years. Bad news if the Wings hang on to their spot, because they could be the first eighth seed favored to win it all.

NBA Considering Change To NCBA - The National Basketball Association is seriously considering changing it’s name to the Not Competitive Basketball Association, as 14 of its 30 teams limp home to finish their seasons. The New Jersey Nets with 8 wins, lead the way 48 1/2 games behind league leader Cleveland. In the West, Minnesota is 38 1/2 games behind the Los Angeles Lakers. The good news is with ten regular season games remaining, Miami (19 gb), Charlotte (20 gb) and Toronto (20 gb) are positioned to make the playoffs. The Detroit Pistons were eliminated from contention last night, the 76ers threw coach Eddie Jordan under the bus with their effort and lead a group of teams who have stopped being competitive for weeks. This state of the union will likely lead Commisssioner David Stern to declare that the league has never been better off.

Of course, he’s already admitted to several struggling franchises and nine figure losses, but he continues to maximize revenue streams and ignore and exploit the dolts who still pay thousands for courtside seats. A move toward a quality product can’t be far away.

So, I thought it would be a good time to provide some sports reminders. First, the Olympics start on Friday. They don’t start off with a bang, alpine events will occupy the first weekend. Figure skating, hockey, speedskating, Shaun White’s one event and Lindsey Vonn will be the highlights of the two weeks. It’s weird how Sports Illustrated has talked the Olympic females into bikinis and the dinner hour gossip shows are so on top of whom (Lindsey Vonn) will be the next star for the paparazzi to pay attention to. That in itself is a bad sign. When Access Hollywood starts telling us about our skiers, it has to be worse then the Madden curse. I don’t think that Vonn will medal now. Meanwhile, the mountain two hours north of Vancouver in Whistler is envious of the snowfall at 17th and Park Avenue South.

The biggest snow jobs remain on cable TV. In the past months and just this week, the cable virtuists have reinforced that Tiger Woods is a dolt because he’s the first guy with a thirst for sex; that Mel Gibson is a dope because he called an asshole “an asshole,” and Rex Ryan is $50,000 punished for flipping the bird in public. All of these accounts gave the pundits plenty of ammo to lecture the public on how holy they were, while these resented-specially-treated-talented-people-who-make-millions-and-you-don’t, are such bad examples of behaviour. It was especially great to hear from Tom Watson, who while he commanded the links, was at the top of the SOB list, not for fooling around, throwing clubs or swearing, but for just being mean and unpleasant to those who covered him. Of course, his public persona was of a smilin’ and humble golfer. Any temperment shown of Tom while working was attributed to his being a “fierce competitor.”

Mike Francessa last week, called it the loss of “the fear factor” that has come with Tiger’s dressing down. Now all of the jealous, I-was-never-nor-ever-will-be-that-good, closet resenters, racists and frustrated competitors are having a field day. There seems to be a comment from somebody daily, to equal every time Tiger skipped a tournament, blew off an interview, tossed a camera, dictated how it was going to be and ate up the field. Funny that no one has said too much about how boring golf is without him and, while giving him credit for fattening their wallets, no one wants to venture a pointed finger at anyone else on the tour who has ever stepped out on the wife.

And as the weekend gives birth to the Olympics, some good college basketball, the NBA All Star game and golf at Pebble Beach, pitchers and catchers will be slowly showing up in Florida and Arizona to start the baseball season. They dropped Poppy Hills out of the Pebble Beach rotation this year and replaced it with Monterey Peninsula CC’s shore course. I could never figure out why Cypress Point isn’t included in the Pebble mix. Clint Eastwood is said to be a member at both, maybe they should put Dirty Harry on the case?

Pebble Beach remains the nation’s most beautiful golf course and will give pros a warm-up for the 2010 U.S. Open in June. For plain folk like us, you can reserve a $500+ a night room at The Lodge at Pebble Beach, The Inn at Spanish Bay or Casa Palmero which will entitle you to book a similarly priced tee time at Pebble. They’ll also gladly book your golf at Spyglass Hill or Spanish Bay. It’s good to know that the place is now under control by Americans, not the Japanese, and none other than Arnold Palmer is helping rule the peninsula. And this weekend, a lucky few celebrities, who pay one way or the other, get to hack away, while we watch New York transcend from the hard to believe back to reality. Kind of just like the amateur’s handicaps.

As Rome announced the winners of the “Smack Off,” he distinguished that the annual survey was unique to his brand, downplaying a similar poll conducted by the NBA. He blended the results into dialog unique to his style, by talking smack and providing his blessing and tributes to the winners. The whole process takes Rome from a 45-year old father of two, to a 15-year old sarcastic, adolescent rebel, which may be a key to his demographic popularity.

The winner of the event as the NBA’s biggest trash talker, garnering 62% of the vote, was Kevin Garnett. Kobe finished a distant second with 7%, followed by Rasheed Wallace (5%), Paul Pierce (3%) and Nate Robertson (3%). Rome spliced in the footage of Garnett howling to the new Boston Garden rafters in 2008 after the Celtics championship, “Anything’s Possible” as Michelle Tafoya tagged along. It really wasn’t an example of smack, as neither was “I’m On Top Of The World,” which were really better examples of stilted, rehearsed and manipulative moments that TaFoya had no choice but be part of. Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larson’s arms it was not, just a camera-centric attempt to put down a historic moment in NBA history, that guys like Rome can dig up and replay down the road.

So Rome used the street clothed Garnett of the 2009 semi finals as his best example of smack moments, describing Garnett as “rocking the mean mug, scarface scowl and micro foxtrots.” Classic Rome.

The trouble is that Sports Illustrated’s January 18th issue published what it called the “SI Players NBA Poll,” asking 173 players “Who is the NBA’s Biggest Trash Talker?” The results of the SI poll, which gave no credit whatsoever to Rome and his team, produced the exact same results as Rome reported.

So what’s the deal with the JRIB “Smack Off?” It looks more like a rip off. Classic Rome.