If you’ve ever wondered how important sponsorship can be to a sporting event, look no farther than college football’s Blue-Gray All-Star Classic. For the second time in the past three years, this game that pits players from schools in the North against their counterparts in the South has been cancelled due to a lack of corporate sponsorship.

Granted, the Blue-Gray isn’t exactly a can’t-miss attraction, and the Blue-Gray has too much of a Civil War ring to it, but still, you’d think some captain of industry would foot the bill for a game with an impressive 56-year tradition. The problem the host Montgomery (Ala.) Lions Club has confronted in finding a backer appears to come down to two interconnected factors, namely timing and player availability.

The game traditionally is played on Christmas Day, which used to be a quiet holiday as far as sports were concerned. Now there is more competing programming of all kinds, including sports. Second, the game is meant as a showcase for aspiring pro players whose teams aren’t in bowl games. But with so many bowls, there’s hardly any name-brand talent left to fill the Blue-Gray rosters. So failing in its effort to switch the game to Jan. 8, when many more top players would be available, the organizers just called it off. They hope to revive the contest either Christmas week next year or in early January 2006, but for now the future looks pretty bleak.

Going forward, however, Kevin Donahue has an idea that could salvage the Blue-Gray. Writing on Fanblogs.com, he suggests letting the sponsors place their company logos on the helmets, making the game shamelessly NASCAR-like. Granted, this would be awfully commercial, but what isn’t these days?

In contemplating the possibilities, one fellow blogger envisions the IBM Blues vs. the AmEx Grays. Donahue himself ponders getting Nextel as a sponsor, and using Nextel cell phones to conduct sideline interviews, connecting broadcasters in the booth with players on the field.

I’m afraid the possibilities are endless here. The next thing you know, the Blue-Gray game could add red to the mix, lining up Target stores to sponsor the “red zones” – the must-score areas inside either 20-yard line. Yes, paint them red and place the Target logo in the end zones.

Boise State gridiron is no mirage

If you had to rank the strangest sights in American sports, Boise State University’s blue football field would have to be near the top. Every time I see it on TV I do a double take, as I suspect many viewers do, which, of course, is the whole point.

Boise State’s program wanted national attention, which can be hard to come by for a program located in Idaho. The blue “Astro Play” brand field, which looks like a giant swimming pool, is the only one of its kind, according to the school’s sports website.

Oh, by the way, the Boise State Broncos have emerged as a football power and are scheduled to meet Louisville in the Liberty Bowl in perhaps the most alluring game of the postseason. Once afterthoughts on the college football landscape, Boise State and Louisville now enter their Dec. 31 matchup as the top offensive teams in the country. Each averages nearly 50 points a game. No. 8 Boise State is 11-0, No. 9 Louisville10-1.

Astonishing records for football aficionados

As record books go, I haven’t found any better than college football’s. The current edition (“Official 2004 NCAA Football Records”) is an incredible compilation of both major milestones and offbeat, obscure ones. For example, did you know that Billy Stevens of the University of Texas at El Paso owns the record for most yards gained in the first game of a career (483 vs. North Texas Sate in 1965)? Or that Tennessee’s William Howard set the record for most consecutive rushes by the same player with 16 straight carries (during two possessions) in 1986?

But, wait, one of the most startling entries belongs to Texas Tech’s Charlie Calhoun, who, in 1939, set a single game record with 36 punts! What led to so many kicks? A downpour in Shreveport, La., where Tech elected to punt 33 times on first down against Centenary.

Baseball opts for geographic stability

Regardless of what finally happens in the stadium dispute between Major League Baseball and Washington, D.C., the former Expos franchise is relocating, even if just temporarily to the district's spruced-up RFK Stadium for the 2005 season. It is the first baseball franchise shift since the Washington Senators, an expansion club (not the original club), picked up stakes in 1972, when they became the Texas Rangers. During the intervening years, 23 teams were moved in football, basketball, and hockey. Baseball might have been more open to relocations except that its antitrust exemption discourages them.

Pop quiz: Who was the manager of the Washington Senators during the team's last season in the capital? (See the bottom of this blog for the answer.)

UConn makes its move in football

Lost in all the bowl hubbub is the fact that the University of Connecticut is making its first appearance, as a Division I-A team, in a postseason bowl – the Motor City Bowl in Pontiac, Mich., on Dec. 27. What makes this development especially intriguing is that until now, UConn has staked its national reputation on basketball, and sometimes strong basketball schools have struggled on the gridiron. Take, for instance, Duke, Indiana, and Kentucky.

But UConn appears determined to have the best of both worlds and has invested heavily in its football program in recent years. The only catch is that the team plays its home games many miles from campus in Hartford, the state capital, where it is the primary tenant in new, 40,000-seat Rentschler Field. The school is building a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility, with a 12-yard, multipurpose artificial turf field, back on its Storrs campus. But the games, it seems, belong there too, both for the students and alums, who enjoy the opportunity to get back on campus. Playing off-sight doesn’t seem to be the best long-term solution for an up-and-coming Division I program.

Anwser to pop quiz: Ted Williams.

That old saying about fact being better than fiction certainly holds true in Major League Baseball, judging from some of the intriguing plot twists this year. Here are some examples, all involving the new reigning World Series champions.

• When the Red Sox open defense of their title next spring, they will be presented with their World Series rings while the Yankees look on from Fenway Park’s visitors dugout.

• As we all know, the Red Sox came back from the dead to beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series after trailing 0-3 in the series. The little-known irony here is that the Yankees were the 'Comeback Kings' of the regular season, coming from behind a record 64 times to win games.

• The Red Sox just signed pitcher David Wells, who has twice played for the Yankees and would have been happy to be back in pinstripes again. “Boomer,” after all, has always been infatuated with the Yankees and Babe Ruth, the slugger whose sale by Boston to New York is one of the most legendary chapters in the annals of both teams.

Wells, who played for San Diego last year, even once wore a 1934 Ruth cap at Yankee Stadium. Now, he will take on the unusual challenge of not just pitching for New York’s arch rival, but in a stadium, Fenway, where he admittedly has struggled over the years. So much so that he once joked, "When they are ready to get rid of this place, let me push the button.” Now, instead of coming to bury Fenway, he’ll try to bury the Yankees there.

• The Red Sox also have signed shortstop Edgar Renteria, a four-time All Star and two-time Gold Glove winner from the St. Louis Cardinals. Coincidentally Renteria made the final out in Boston’s World Series sweep. And he was wearing No. 3 at the time, the same number made famous by Babe Ruth.

• Ask anybody on the streets of Boston five years ago which Red Sox player seemed most likely to lead the team to a World Series victory, and most surely would have said Nomar Garciaparra. Nomar was the heart and soul of the team, even more than Pedro Martinez.

So what happens? Garciaparra plays the first 8-1/2 years of his career as the Red Sox all-star shortstop. Then on July 31 of this past season he is dealt to the Chicago Cubs, which, with the White Sox, are the only teams more long-suffering than Boston.

The Red Sox, of course, proceed to end an 86-year championship drought. Orlando Cabrera, Nomar’s replacement, plays just 58-regular season games in Boston, but winds up playing a central role in the team’s historic title run.

Boston, however, isn't intent on keeping Cabrera and instead signs fellow Colombian Renteria during the offseason. Cabrera, a free agent, must find a new employer.

Cabrera, incidentally, is a boyhood friend of Renteria, who the Red Sox view as the better hitter and more experienced postseason player. In fact, Renteria drove home the winning run of the 1997 World Series, when he singled with two-out in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 7 to give the Florida Marlins the championship in only their fourth year of existence.

Don't overlook Holtz's anti-litter legacy

No coach, especially not one who’s spent 33 years as a head coach, should be sent into retirement on such a series of low notes as Lou Holtz  has. It was disappointing enough that his University of South Carolina Gamecocks football team lost again to arch rival Clemson in the season’s finale. To make matters worse, Holtz had to help stop a bench-clearing brawl near the end of the game that made newscasts nationwide.

The melee was such an embarrassment that both schools decided to turn down any postseason bowl bids. And then recently, reports circulated that some of South Carolina players might have been involved in the theft of $14,000 of athletic department video equipment. The equipment was reported missing the day after the players were told they’d not be going to a bowl. The items have been returned and internal disciplinary action may follow.

If Holtz’s South Carolina tenure didn’t end the way he would have liked, he can take consolation in his role in beautifying the state. Thanks to a remark he made shortly after arriving from Notre Dame, the state began an anti-littering campaign.

The comment that spurred creation of the Palmetto Pride cleanup program: ”South Carolinians must drive the cleanest cars in the nation, because all the litter’s on the highway,” Holtz said in sharing an early impression of the Palmetto State.

That was a jarring but needed wakeup. Tourism is South Carolina’s No. 1 industry.

Favre's long-playing record

In this modern era of 300-pound pass rushers, it’s amazing that any quarterback has started in 200 consecutive games. That’s what Green Bay’s Brett Favre has done with a streak that began in 1992 and is now up to 202 straight games (as of Dec. 12). It helps that Favre has a quick passing release, scrambling ability, and the toughness of a commando. The next-longest streak, all-time, belongs to Philadelphia's Ron Jaworski, who is a distant second with 116 straight starts between 1977 and 1984. Given how hazardous it is to play quarterback in the NFL Favre’s ironman feat ranks with any in sports, including Cal Ripken’s 2,632 baseball games.

Women's hoop follies

The gulf between the haves and have-nots in women’s college basketball is still pretty striking, especially early in the season. On one recent night the scoreboard in three games underlined the disparity: North Carolina beat Tennessee-Martin, 96-36; Texas Tech defeated Arkansas-Little Rock, 69-29; and Minnesota crushed Detroit Mercy, 86-36. When you more than double an opponent’s score, it’s time to drop that team from the schedule until it can be more competitive.

Football spikes are hardly 'incompletions'

To anyone who’s new to watching football, the spiked pass must be the game’s most unusual-looking play. Just think about it: The quarterback takes the ball from center and immediately throws it into the ground. The intent, of course, is to stop the clock, not to complete a pass, which is why it seems strange to record it as an incompletion.

When a quarterback intentionally throws the ball out of bounds, there might be some room for doubt, so it makes some sense to record throws as incompletions, but not when the ball is spiked. Maybe the league should put these spikes in a statistical category all their own, so the quarterback’s passer rating doesn’t suffer. After all, the spike is not really a failed pass attempt.

If it weren’t for this quirky ruling, Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer would have had even more dazzling stats than he was given credit for in the Bengals’ Dec. 5 come-from-behind victory over Baltimore. Palmer completed 10 of 12 passes in the fourth quarter for 200 yards and three touchdowns in a 27-26 victory. The two incompletions were actually spikes.

Although I haven’t seen it yet, surely some team must have a fake-spike play in its repertoire. If nobody does, some team should explore the trick-play potential. A quarterback could pretend to spike the ball, then loft an easy touchdown pass over a defensive back who's caught off guard and thinks the play has ended. Yes, it's sneaky, but sneakiness is often a virtue in football, otherwise fakes wouldn't be so integral to the game.

Neon Deion's comeback is interrrupted

Do you think Deion Sanders has second-guessed his decision to come out of three-year retirement to return punts and play defensive back for the Baltimore Ravens. If “Primetime wanted to show he can still play, he did that when he intercepted two passes in late October against Buffalo to be named the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Week.

Since then he’s been sidelined with an injury and may wish he were back on the set of CBS’s “NFL Today,” alongside fellow analysts Dan Marino and Boomer Esiason. Marino, by the way, can’t be too disappointed that he decided to exit the Miami Dolphins’ front office after briefly accepting the president/general manager position. His old team has been in shambles and appears headed to its worst finish ever.

While drug scandals in the world of baseball grabbed sports headlines this week, a trio of sports stars quietly retired from a game that millions of Americans love to follow -- when they can find coverage. American soccer legends Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Joy Fawcett ended their national playing careers in a match against Mexico in Carson, Calif., Wednesday night. The US won 5-0.

The world wasn't quite paying attention the way it is now when Hamm became the youngest player to join the National Team at 15 in 1987. In the years that followed, Hamm, Foudy, and Fawcett went from near obscurity to a crowd of 90,000 -- plus millions of TV viewers chanting them on to World Cup victory in 1999. Their individual drive, team dedication, and patience with thousands of high-decible fans changed the history of American soccer forever.

Hamm didn't stir the back of the net during her last game Wednesday. But her record 158 goals -- the highest in the history of world soccer for men and women -- is firmly set. So are her Olympic team golds (1996, 2004) and World Cups (1991,1999). Her single-handed ability to win the hearts of hundreds of thousands of young fans, known as "Screaming Mias," gave confidence to investors to establish the world's first women's professional soccer league. FIFA calls the superstar striker one of 125 greatest living players; People magazine once called her one of the "most beautiful" famous faces.

But when the world focused on her face, she turned it back toward soccer. And when the world of sports highlighted her skill and undying thirst to drive toward the goal, the "reluctant superstar" was always quick to praise her teammates.

A soccer-mom blog this week recalls this quote Hamm once said to a reporter who asked what it was like to be the best player in the world:

"Ask me that question when I can dominate on both offense and defense like Kristine Lilly does. Ask me that question when I can head a ball like Tisha Venturini, defend as well as Joy Fawcett, play an all-around game like Julie Foudy."

With nearly the same number of assists as her staggering total of goals, she knew a single athlete does not a soccer team make.

Hamm left the game Wednesday wearing the name Garciaparra on her back, the name of her equally famous Chicago Cub shortstop husband, Nomar. Even though her undeniable legacy will keep "Mia" as a household name for years to come, the sight of the No. 9 jersey swooping toward the goal, eyes flashing, is a vision that will be sorely missed.

Minutes after she took her exit, Hamm was joined by No. 11, Julie Foudy. While Hamm was the marketing success, Foudy was the genius communicator. She was the mouth of the team. Leadership on the soccer field must be clear and Foudy's teammates had no trouble hearing her or laughing at her quick wit.

Foudy's dexterity on the field patterns her far-reaching passions and interests. At 29, she became the youngest president of the Women's Sports Foundation, an organization dedicated to furthering women's sports. Later, she proved herself an able ambassador on Capitol Hill while serving on a committee to make recommendations on Title IX to President Bush.

Her fight against child labor abuses had her inspecting soccer balls and the quality of factory conditions in Pakistan, earning her the recognition of becoming the first woman and the first American to win FIFA's Fair Play Award in 1997. And she worked tirelessly with Uniroyal Top Soccer program to create opportunities for US children with disabilities to play soccer.

But if Hamm and Foudy were the public faces, Joy Fawcett willingly kept the focus closer to home. As ueber soccer mom, Fawcett's career blazed the trail of mother-athletes. She seamlessly circled on and off the national team to give birth three times. And for five years Fawcett coached the women's UCLA women's soccer onto the national radar. (If you thought your day was busy, read about a typical day from 1997 in this mother-coach-national player's life.)

Fawcett doesn't have a foundation website like Hamm , or a soccer camp like Foudy. Fawcett's website is more like an unfinished scrapbook by a harried mother, sprinkled with anecdotes from her wedding day, pictures of children's parties, and a few sentences of angst about uprooting her family to pursue her dreams .

But ask her teammates and they will tell you about the power of her defensive game. Guarding the goal like a mother bear, Fawcett wielded an uncanny ability to chase down balls that soared over her head and cut the ball back with the outside of her foot -- all at full speed. Former national coach Tony DiCicco once called her the "best defender in the world."

And so it was Wednesday, on a December night in California, that three of women's soccer strongest lights spent one last hour patiently signing autographs of eager fans, perhaps wondering to themselves about what was coming next. We can't help but wonder, too.

If I had a ballot for this year’s Heisman Trophy vote, I’d cast it for Utah quarterback Alex Smith.
Why? For several reasons; some good, some not so good. Let’s start with the questionable reasons first.

One, it’d be nice to see someone from a nontraditional power walk away with the sport’s most prized individual award during ESPN's Dec. 11 nationally televised presentation. Southern Cal and Oklahoma have had enough winners, 5 and 4, respectively, so I’d take a pass on voting for any of the other finalists: two from USC (quarterback Matt Leinart and running back Reggie Bush) and two from OU (quarterback Jason White, who won last year, and running back Adrian Peterson).

Secondly, Bush and Peterson are underclassmen and they can afford to wait before garnering a Heisman, something no freshman or sophomore has ever done.

Now for the good reason: Smith has led the Utes to their first unbeaten season in 74 years and done so with some impressive statistics. Maybe most notably, he has thrown just as many touchdown passes as Leinart (28) while attempting about 100 fewer passes.

Embattled Pacers hang in there

To their credit, the Indiana Pacers are still playing hard, despite the now-famous “Malice at the Palace” episode. It would have been easy to play as if all was lost after NBA Commissioner David Stern meted out lengthy suspensions to the Pacers’ three top scorers: Jermaine O’Neal, Stephen Jackson, and Ron Artest, the man at the center of the brawl that took place with fans in Detroit (the Palace at Auburn Hills). After all, these three accounted for 65 percent of Indiana’s scoring on any given night.

The attitude taken by management and the players is there’s enough talent to remain competitive, and that by giving more minutes to other players, the Pacers will be a deeper, more experienced team when the stars return. Their absence, therefore, has been turned into a positive. The team immediately pulled together after "Affair Fisticuffs" to win four of its next five games.

Since then, opponents have learned not to underestimate this undermanned but determined bunch, and Indiana has gone on to lose its next five games before Dec. 8, when a Michigan prosecutor brought charges against five Pacers and seven Detroit fans.

“Definitely, the image of the team will take a hit after what happened in Detroit,” Anthony Johnson, one of the Pacers charged with a misdemeanor, is quoted as saying on the team’s website. “We kind of lost our heads a little bit collectively as a unit. It’s unfortunate because it’s been played over and over and over again and we’re shown in a bad light. It overtakes all the good things we do for the organization and the community, as well.”

NBA should put jazz (the musical variety) to work

Besides the suspensions the NBA issued for the last month's 'basketbrawl,' the league must figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen again. Actually, the best strategy may be simple: Change the atmosphere in NBA arenas, where teams are in the habit of blasting fans with loud music, commercial messages, and crowd prompts to cheer and make noise. Why not turn down the volume and utilize the sound system and message boards for something the league might call Operation Civility.

Young fans could be shown on the message boards appealing to the adults in the crowd to act responsibly, for example. And instead of all the “we will, we will rock you” musical incantations so often heard in NBA arenas, teams should tap into basketball’s natural connections to jazz. Make jazz the dominant “sound” at games by bringing in jazz groups to provide live music during breaks in the action. The music could set a nice cool tone of harmonic sophistication to complement the play on the court.

Some of the league's players might even be invited to take a turn at showcasing their own musical talents in postgame gigs. Walter McCarty of the Boston Celtics could certainly sit in on a jam session. And if the league is looking for a spokesman for a new jazz campaign, Wayman Tisdale , a former NBA player who is now a professional jazz musician, deserves a call. Wayman plays a mean bass and has recorded several CDs.

Cal shut out of Pasadena

Count me a traditionalist, but I would rather have the University of California's Golden Bears playing in this season’s Rose Bowl than Texas. I’ve got nothing against the Longhorns, but a West Coast team should be given an opportunity to defend the region’s football honor. For many years, the Rose Bowl matched the champions of the Big Ten and Pacific 10 conferences, and the opportunity existed to renew this format, since Michigan is the other Pasadena-bound team.

Cal, understandably, longed for an invitation, since it last played in the Rose Bowl in 1959. Instead, after the voters in the Bowl Championship Series gave Texas the nod, Cal was left to accept a Holiday Bowl date with Texas Tech in San Diego.

If there is a Yoda figure in the National Basketball Association, it’s Lenny Wilkens, the gentlemanly roundball sage (now of the New York Knicks) who’s logged more than 40 years in the league as both a player and coach. Wilkens was even a player-coach for four years while transitioning from full-time player to fulltime bench strategist.

Now Wilkens is in his first full season as coach of the Knicks, and one must assume it might be his last stop, since it finally brings him home. He grew up in Brooklyn and attended legendary Boys High before going off to Providence College in Rhode Island, where he earned an economics degree. He retains a hint of a Brooklyn accent even though his off-season home is Seattle, where he led the SuperSonics to their first and only championship in 1979 during his second stint coaching the team.

His current task appears fairly monumental, namely bringing an NBA title to Madison Square Garden, where frustration and disappointment have become traditions. Do you realize how long it’s been since the Knicks last won a championship? Thirty-one years, which is way too long for Big Apple hoops zealots who’ve grown tired of living on the memories of Bradley, Reed, Lucas, DeBusschere, and Frazier.

Despite having Patrick Ewing, an all-star center, on the roster for 15 seasons beginning in 1985, the Knicks have only made the finals twice in all the years since their 1973 title run. And to their consternation, the Knicks have taken a backseat to the formerly woeful New Jersey Nets the last few seasons. There’s talk, by the way, of moving the Nets from the Meadowlands, across the Hudson from Manhattan, to Brooklyn.

The current Knicks are without a bona fide center. Instead, they have converted power forwards Nazr Mohammed and Vin Baker, a former all-star whose comeback from alcoholism is still a work in progress.

Wilkens says he’s not overly concerned about this seeming weakness, nor with the Newcomers Club feel of the team’s roster. When the season began, 11 players made their first-ever appearance in a Knicks uniform. The lone returning starter was forward Tim Thomas.

Some observers have suspected that Isiah Thomas, who’s in his first full season as the Knicks president and is 24 years Wilkens’s junior, might be biding his time to assume the team’s coaching reins. He's emphatically denied having such designs. Besides being flatly uninterested in the job, he says that “in New York, it takes too much creative energy and passion to do one job.”

Plus, the Knicks appear to be gelling under Wilkens. Recently, they moved into first place in the mushy Atlantic Division, where their 7-6 mark made them the division’s only winning team.

Making do with what’s available and maximizing its potential are hallmarks of Wilkens’s long career. And while he can’t match other coaches like Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson in winning percentage or championships won, Wilkens is the winningest coach in NBA history with 1,299 W’s as of Dec. 1. He surpassed Auerbach’s 938 win total a long time ago.

The Wilkens ledger includes a career .537 winning percentage, compiled while coaching Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Atlanta, Toronto, and New York. The title of his 2001 autobiography, written with Terry Pluto, reflects the man’s understated nature: “Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA.”

While respectful of the bigger names in his profession, however, Wilkens admits in the book he doesn’t like it when people suggest that his win total is “nothing more than a matter of longevity, that I was able to stand on the sidelines for a long time without offending anyone.”

His wife, Marilyn, once told a reporter that her husband doesn’t get the credit he deserves because he’s not a self-promoter, a tyrant, or a windbag who attracts media attention.

Wilkens thinks there’s some truth to that. He also believes many people just don’t understand the nature of NBA coaching. “The measure of any coach,” he writes in his book, “is not the final victory total; it’s how his players performed compared to their talent.”

While highly respectful of what he describes as Auerbach’s “amazing” achievement of coaching championship teams in each of his last eight seasons (and in nine of 16 overall), Wilkens observes that in the 10 years before Bill Russell’s arrival, including 6 under Auerbach, the Celtics won no titles. Also, he notes that the player who logged the most games for Auerbach was Bob Cousy, an all-time NBA great, while the player who played the most games for him was Craig Ehlo, a hard-working role player.

Nevertheless, basketball people in the know recognize Wilkens as an institution. He is the only person besides John Wooden to be enshrined at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and coach. During the NBA’s 50th anniversary celebration in 1996, the league named him one of its 50 greatest players and 10 greatest coaches.

And here’s one more fact worth noting: Wilkens’s 31 years as a coach place him in the company of a very elite group of coaches. In the four major professional sports, only five men have more years as head coaches or managers: baseball’s Connie Mack (53 years) and John McGraw (33) and football’s George Halas (40), Curly Lambeau (33), and Don Shula (33).