During the late 1950s, just as I was awakening to pro football with the rest of America, a boyhood friend kept talking about a special quarterback by the name of Unite-Us. At least that's how it sounded.

While that struck me as a peculiar, gimmicky name, I soon came to discover (from a trading card) that it was actually spelled Unitas, and belonged to a textbook passer and field general of the Baltimore Colts, affectionately known to fans as Johnny U.

The reason I bring this up is because it's impossible to think of the Colts in the Super Bowl without thinking of Johnny Unitas, the quarterback of Lithuanian descent who Sports Illustrated called "The Best There Ever Was" upon his death in 2002.

Presciently, it seems, sportswriter Tom Callahan decided to introduce a new biography of this American original earlier this season, long before the Colts advanced to Sunday's NFL championship game against the Chicago Bears. At the same time "Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas" was hitting the bookstores, another former player and contemporary of Unitas, Pat Summerall, came out with his autobiography, "Summerall On and Off the Air."

I've had the pleasure of reading them both, and although I liked "Summerall" better because it's a first-person account not dependent on second-source recollections, each wonderfully reflects the arc of pro football's post-World War II evolution. Unitas and Summerall not only are members of what might be called the game's "Greatest Generation," they also have intriguing connections to past championship games, including Super Bowls.

Both, as it turns out, played in the 1958 NFL championship game, the nationally televised overtime contest that is almost universally called the "Greatest Game Ever Played." The accolade stems from the game's sheer drama as the first sudden death overtime in league history, and also because it set in motion pro football's phenomenal surge in TV popularity. Summerall would later be the beneficiary of that as he transitioned from player to broadcaster in the early 1960s. Eventually he became a fixture on CBS's game telecasts, and wound up working on 15 Super Bowl telecasts alongside Ray Scott, Tom Brookshier, and John Madden at various times. He started as a sideline reporter at Super Bowl I in 1967 and ended with Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999 as a veteran play-by-play announcer.

Summerall entered the NFL in 1952 as an end and placekicker with the Detroit Lions. He moved from there to the woeful Chicago Cardinals, who played and practiced not far from the stench of the Chicago stockyards, and then to the powerful New York Giants. With the Giants, he scored the first points of that 1958 championship game in Yankee Stadium on a 36-yard field goal. The Colts, however, won the game, 23-17, when Unitas led Baltimore on an 80-yard scoring drive in OT, capped by fullback Alan Ameche's, 1-yard head-down touchdown run, an image immortalized in the NFL's photographic history.

Twelve players from that game went on to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, along with three coaches: Baltimore head coach Webb Ewbank and New York assistants Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

Unitas, of course, was among the enshrinees. In reflecting on one aspect of his greatness, Ewbank said, "A lot of guys can throw deep. Unitas can pass deep." That he ever reached the pinnacle of his profession is amazing, considering he once was a 137-lb. high school quarterback who attracted virtually no interest from college recruiters. He wound up at Louisville, where the team had only one winning season during his tenure. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected him in the ninth round of the 1955 NFL draft and mailed him a one-year contract for $5,500. When the Steelers decided they didn't need a fourth-string quarterback, they cut him in what Callahan describes as the team's signature blunder.

Undaunted, Unitas turned to driving a truck, and later joined a pile-driving crew and a low-level minor-league club, the Bloomfield (Pa.) Rams, who paid him $6 a game, and eventually raised that to $15. All this is unthinkable today even for the lowest special-teams player in the NFL.

At the time, the Baltimore Colts were a pretty lackluster bunch that held the league's only weekly in-season tryouts. They decided to take a look at Unitas, who caught on as a backup to George Shaw. But when Shaw went down with an injury in 1956, the bowlegged kid with the flat-top got the call. The first of his more than 5,000 career passes came, almost poetically given Sunday's Super Bowl matchup, against the Bears. It was a short but errant throw that was intercepted by J.C. Caroline and returned 59 yards for a touchdown.

Thereafter, things got better – much better. He went on to set 22 passing records, once completing a touchdown pass in 47 straight games, and becoming the first quarterback ever to compile more than 40,000 passing yards.

More than just a skilled player, he had a working-class aura that perfectly suited blue-collar Baltimore. Then-mayor Tommy D'Alesandro, the father of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, once said, "Johnny Unitas is Horatio Alger. He's Frank Merriwell. He's Francis Scott Key. And he's ours."

Unitas would guide the Colts to another title in 1959. Then the balance of power shifted to the Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers, whose quarterback, Bart Starr, was as much a gridiron Horatio Alger as Unitas. As a college senior, Starr played on a winless University of Alabama team that was shut out four times. Interestingly, the two quarterbacks became such friends as pros that they took to exchanging gifts at Christmas, Unitas sending Starr crab cakes, and Starr reciprocating with a box of barbecue.

Toward the end of his 19-year career (coincidentally he wore No. 19), Unitas was on two Super Bowl teams, but the circumstances were not ideal. On the first occasion, Super Bowl III, Baltimore Coach Don Shula decided to go with quarterback Earl Morrall, the backup, with Unitas hampered by an elbow injury that greatly limited his playing time. The New York Jets and cocksure Joe Namath sprang a major upset, winning 16-7. Desperate for some offensive spark, Shula eventually put in Unitas, and even though he had no zip on his passes, he drove the Colts 80 yards to their only touchdown, late in the fourth quarter.

Two years later, Baltimore looked to make amends under new coach Don McCafferty, and won Super Bowl V by beating the Dallas Cowboys. On this occasion, Unitas was the starter, but after being banged up late in the first half, Morrall came in and was sufficiently effective to lead the team to a 16-13  victory.

Sadly, Unitas closed out his career in the alien environs of San Diego, where the Chargers signed him to a two-year deal for $250,000 but told him to abstain from trying to groom the team's promising young signal-caller, Dan Fouts. The switch in coasts also couldn't have been more culturally jarring, because the Chargers were swimming in tie-dyed T-shirts, Afros, and drugs. The team, Callahan says, put out bowls of anabolic steroids in the locker room, plus some players were big into recreational drugs.

Unitas was a misfit in this setting. It was the wrong place for a Last Hurrah, but at least In the final start of his career, in 1973, he finally got to play in Pittsburgh, his hometown. San Diego lost, 38-21, and Fouts was brought in to begin a new era in franchise history.

Today, a statue of Johnny U sits outside of Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium, the home of the Ravens, the team that Unitas and his teammates consider the proper heirs (not the Indianapolis Colts) to their winning legacy. Disappointment over the team's departure runs so deep that Unitas once asked that his records be removed from the team's Indianapolis media guide. Current quarterback Peyton Manning feels the schism fractures a great tradition.

Manning has always been deeply respectful of Unitas. After Johnny U's death, Manning sought permission from the league to wear black-high tops as the weak-ankled Unitas did. But the rigid NFL brass turned him down. "I wished I had never asked," he said later. "I think every quarterback in the league should have worn high-tops that Sunday."

Minus that tribute, fans of Unitas take satisfaction in the horseshoe insignia on the Colts' helmets. This, they say, looks like a capital "U," making it a living memorial to Johnny U.

Getting back to Pat Summerall, I confess that I nearly dismissed his book at first. That's because when I randomly plunged in midway through, Summerall was going on about the carousing and heavy drinking he engaged in with broadcast partner Tom Brookshier.

That was a turnoff, but in backtracking to the Prologue, I learned the book starts off with a roomful of friends unexpectedly confronting Summerall in a New Jersey hotel room about his drinking problem. At first he bitterly resented their counsel, but then he says, "My defiant mask fell away, leaving me shamed, self-disgusted and weeping the first tears of regret I'd ever recalled shedding.

He proceeded to enter the Betty Ford Clinic and by the end of the book we learn of his inspiring recovery and moral regeneration. Humbly, he concludes that his life is a "living testament to the undeniable fact that God's grace is utterly and completely boundless."

In between recounting the low- and high-water marks of this transformation, Summerall shares a wealth of fascinating biographical material drawn from decades in sports and sportscasting. For example, readers learn that he:

- once led the nation's college placekickers, while at the University of Arkansas, with just four field goals in 1951.

- made 10 times more than his NFL salary of $5,000 during the offseason, farming watermelons and vegetables in his native Florida.

- decided after an early-career football injury that he shouldn't count on an NFL paycheck for the rest of his life, so he decided to pursue a graduate degree – in Russian history no less.

- became good friends with Mickey Mantle because they were lockermates in Yankee Stadium during the overlap of the baseball and football seasons. ""[H]e felt I was one of few people he could trust," says Summerall, who helped Mantle with his own alcohol challenges.

- got his break in broadcasting by tagging along with Giants quarterback Charlie Connerly during an audition with CBS Radio.

- was involved in an "early form of instant" replay during a New York broadcast that utilized Polaroid snapshots.

- says fans stayed away in droves at Super Bowl I, when many objected to the high-priced $12 tickets.

- was joined by John Madden ("a highly qualified temp") in the booth when Brookshier needed to be away for his daughter's debutante ball.

- wishes he had opted for stock payments, as Madden did, from the sale of a computer football game they lent their broadcast voices to. Summerall signed a four-year contract for $75,000 a year, while Madden selected stock in EA's "Madden NFL Football," which has become the most popular game in history with more than $2 billion in sales. Summerall, who came out of retirement to work this year's Cotton Bowl, says, ""I'd like to have a do-over on my EA Sports stock call."

Have you ever felt you couldn't lose as a fan?  Then perhaps you can relate to how I felt watching the NFL's conference championship games. No matter what happened, all my bases were covered.

As a boy, I had been a zealous fan of the Chicago Bears. I grew up in Indiana, but have spent my adult life in New England. That leaves New Orleans, and let's face it, the Saints were "America's Team" this season, so nobody could have been too disappointed to see them go all the way.

Now, however, it's the Bears versus the Colts in Super Bowl XLI (that's 41 for the Roman numeral challenged), and once the game begins Feb. 4 in Miami I'm sure I'll find myself beginning to side, even if slightly, with one of these teams.

At this point, I suspect it will be Indianapolis. After all, the Colts represent my home state, which didn't have an NFL team when I lived there. The only two times I ever paid any attention to sports in Indiana's largest city was in March, when the boys' high school basketball finals were played at Butler University's fieldhouse, and in May, during the Indianapolis 500.

Our family felt more connected to St. Louis and Chicago, where we periodically spent short summer vacations, than to Indianapolis – and for one reason: We could see major-league baseball played in St. Louis and Chicago. And since St. Louis was the closer of the two for anyone living in Evansville, near where Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky meet, the Cardinals, with colorful sportscaster Harry Caray, had our allegiance.

I frankly never remember being in Indianapolis until I was a freshman at Indiana University, when students taking Pasadena-bound charter flights for IU's one and only trip to the Rose Bowl, in 1968, had to fly out of the capital city.

In football season, with children back in school, the thought of actually attending an NFL game never crossed our minds. Watching televised games, however, was a whole different matter, and in the 1960s the Bears came into our family room practically every Sunday. I soon became hooked on telecasts from Wrigley Field in which the legendary ex-Bear Red Grange, the "Galloping Ghost," called the action.

Everything about the team appealed to me, the dark uniforms (I thought they were black, not dark blue, on a black-and-white TV), the venerable coach (George Halas), and a cast of players with names like Ditka, Fortunato, and Galimore, and later Butkus and Sayers. On a couple of occasions, our family even managed to visit the Bears' summer training camp in Rensselear, Ind., en route to Chicago.

When a Bears' game was on, I wouldn't break away even to play sandlot football, my favorite boyhood pastime. My friends sometimes couldn't understand such devotion, but it paid off one day when I received a signed letter from Papa Bear himself, George Halas. It came in response to a fan letter I'd sent to the club's front office. Never in my wildest dreams, though, did I expect to receive a missive from the team's Founding Father, and on company stationery.

As deeply entrenched as my loyalty to the Bears was, however, it faded in college, when I didn't have ready access to a television and my emotional attachment swung to Indiana University's suddenly competitive football team.

When the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984, I was mildly pleased to find the NFL taking up residence in the city. But I also was disappointed by the circumstances, which saw the team bolt Baltimore in the middle of the night for a sweetheart deal from Indy. It was an unsettling way to join the NFL fraternity, and even to this day, I tend to associate the team's blue-and-white jerseys and horseshoe helmets with Baltimore as much as with Indianapolis.

The success of the Colts, who are scheduled to move into a new retractable domed stadium in a few years, reportedly has siphoned fans away from the state's Big Ten representatives, Purdue and IU. You can't fault them for that. It's only natural for residents to get behind a winner, especially when that team stands on the brink of Indianapolis's first championship in a major pro sports league. We can argue here whether the old American Basketball Association, in which the Indiana Pacers won titles in 1970, 1972, and 1973, fits that description.

Regardless, the Colts are making all Hoosiers (including move-aways like myself) feel a twinge of pride these days.

But as mentioned before, there's something that connects me to both this year's Super Bowl teams, so the only disappointment, from my standpoint, would be if the game is one-sided.

On the whole, I see a lot to love about SB XLI, starting with the the name of the Bears' curiously named head coach, Lovie Smith, whose parents reportedly expected a baby girl.

Other things I already love about this Super Bowl: 

• Smith will match wits with Tony Dungy, his friend and mentor on the opposite sideline. These guys are about the most even-tempered, calmest men I've ever seen guiding NFL teams and will bring an atmosphere of mutual respect to football's biggest stage.

• By becoming the first African-American head coaches to take teams to the Super Bowl, they also ensure that another bit of history has already been dispensed with: The winning team is guaranteed to have a black head coach for the first time.

• The starting quarterbacks, Indy's Peyton Manning and Chicago's Rex Grossman, arrive, having shed reputations that have hounded them: Manning that he couldn't outduel New England's Tom Brady in the playoffs, and Grossman that he was not a playoff-caliber NFL signal caller.

• The game pits the modern-day Johnny Unitas in Manning against its modern-day Dick Butkus in Brian Urlacher.

• And finally it brings together two teams that haven't previously met this season, so they'll kick off with a "clean slate."

Imagine, if you will, that the Super Bowl were scheduled not two weeks after the conference championship games, but seven weeks later. That would mean they'd take place on March 4 this year. Sounds like a pretty ridiculous idea, don't you agree? Well, that's essentially what occurred during the last college football postseason, when Ohio State played in the Bowl Championship Series title game 51 days after it defeated Michigan to end its regular season.

As far as I know, the Buckeyes didn't use this extra-long layoff as an excuse for their poor showing in the Jan. 8 BCS game against Florida. The Gators, after all, came out razor sharp after not seeing game action for 36 days. That's not as bad as 51 days, but it's still a long time.

The reason I bring all this up is because the powers that be are still contemplating ways to improve the current bowl system. The challenge, historically, has been that college football administrators want it both ways. In other words, they want to maintain a full slate of bowl games, which are a great tradition that rewards more than 60 teams with end-of-season exposure, fun, and huge payoffs, but they also want a championship of some kind.

The criticism that many level at the current structure is that there is no playoff, only a two-team championship game between a pair of selected opponents, and a handful of other BCS-designated bowl games. This infuriates those who consider it a cockeyed way to crown a national champion. And what further frustrates the naysayers is that college football has playoffs at every other level – I-AA, II, and III – just not at Division I-A.

Now there's talk of creating something called a Plus One format for the big boys. In a version of this scenario, the best two teams from among five major bowl winners would be chosen to square off a week later. There is no interest in going to an eight-game, 16-team playoff, BCS coordinator Mike Slive told The New York Times. The question, he adds, is whether a #1-versus-#2 game is enough.

The problem, as I see it, is that college football's major-domos need to be more creative in coming up with a solution, one that preserves the bowls, creates a playoff of some kind, and – this is important – avoids long layoffs for the playoff teams. In any other sport, the playoffs start right on the heels of the regular season, which means momentum isn't lost, and it should be no different in Division I-A football.

But how to accomplish all three objectives, ah, that is the question. Frankly, I think it can be done if all the parties involved are willing to be flexible.

Here's how I would do it.

First, I would start by selecting eight teams to play in a three-round playoff format. There will always be arguments in setting the playoff lineup, as there are are even in college basketball, which has a starting field of 65 teams. But eight is a large enough number to include the most serious contenders for a national championship. It wouldn't, however, have included Boise State this season, which wound up as the nation's only undefeated major-college team despite being only No. 9 in the polls before the bowls started. The point is, it's hard to cover every eventuality in trying to devise a perfect system.

Anyhow, the eight playoff teams would be allowed about two weeks off after the regular season to  rest and recuperate. They'd return to action in early or mid-December in four first-round playoff games that would be farmed out to a quartet of second-tier bowls. One year, the Poinsettia, Las Vegas, Emerald, and Music City bowls might host these games. The next year it could be the Independence, Sun, Hawaii, and Insight bowls.

This format would provide these bowls with big-name, Grade A teams in heavy-stakes showdowns, virtually ensuring bigger crowds and more TV viewers than they usually receive. As a result, organizers of these bowls should be agreeable to adjusting their playing dates in order to be awarded a playoff game.

The winners of the first-round bowl game would advance to the Final Four (sound familiar?). They would face off in two designated New Year's Day bowls from among the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta. These would serve as the national semifinals, a designation that each would enjoy every-other year. The winners would go on to the championship game the following week, to be played either at one of the same Big Four bowl sites or at a different site altogether (maybe even in a northern city with a domed stadium).

Admittedly there is at least one significant drawback in this master plan that I'll mention in a minute if you haven't already caught it. Working out all the glitches is virtually impossible, but overall I think this format makes for an exciting finish to the season without a month-or-more wait between games.

The major drawback, as I see it, is that two of the Big Four bowl games will be left out of the playoffs in any given year. This is hard to avoid so long as each wants to maintain its tradition as a New Year's bowl, playing either on Jan. 1 or very near to it.

Every other year, two of these bowls would have to settle for taking teams that aren't in the Elite Eight. Sure, that's not ideal, but you can still arrange quite an attractive game taking teams that just miss making the playoff cut. This season, for example, you could have selected from among Boise State, Auburn, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Notre Dame.

As for all the other bowls, well, they can continue merrily along as usual, bidding for first-round slots if they care to.

Some might logically argue that fans of teams that make it to the championship game would be hard-pressed to travel to all three postseason contests. The same, of course, can be said of basketball fans during March Madness. Whatever the complications, though, I suspect all the games would be sellouts or near-sellouts.

As for the hardships on the players in playing as many as three extra games? Well, let's not kid ourselves: the athletes who choose to go to these football factories relish playing for a national championship and are willing to do what it takes to get there. My guess is that they'd much prefer to play three additional games over a month than wait 51 days to play one final game.

• In the future, Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel might want to include the marching band in the pregame strategy sessions. Doing so might prevent a repeat of the what happened at the Bowl Championship Series title game, when the Buckeye band played the signature song from the 1997 movie "Titanic" as part of its halftime performance. The selection, of course, was the perfect accompaniment to Ohio State's sinking onfield fortunes (OSU trailed 34-14 at the half, and ultimately lost, 41-14).

• College football really needs to come up with a better name than BCS National Championship Game for its ultimate, season-ending showdown. It's repetitious to have BCS (which stands for Bowl Championship Series) and "Championship"  both in the name, and  the acronym  by itself (as in "BCS Game") is vague and dull. It's really the college Super Bowl, of course, only you can't call it that – or at least the NFL wouldn't allow it. So here's one suggestion: The Big Game.

• No Urban Meyer-coached team had ever had the opening kickoff run back for a touchdown until Ohio State's Ted Ginn Jr. did it against Florida in the BCS title game. That the unfazed, underdog Gators came back almost immediately to tie the game showed a lot of character and set the tone for the rest of the evening.

• In retrospect, it's a good thing that the Bowl Championship Series selectors didn't pair Ohio State and Michigan in a rematch of their regular-season game.

• The most heart-warming story on Fox's telecast of the BCS Game didn't involve the players, but a group of fans from Ohio State and Florida who teamed up to build a Habitat for Humanity house. The work was completed in Glendale, Ariz., the site of the game, during the lead-in week. Then at halftime, the organizers presented single father Fred Banks and his 3-year-old daughter, Natalya, with a ceremonial key to their new home. This was a terrific way to bring together rival fans for an inspiring, beneficial cause. Let's hope that this sort of activity is replicated by other bowls.

• It was nice to see a number of the nation's best marching bands on TV during bowl season. Still, television never seems to do justice to these bands, preferring instead to air a lot of analytical chatter. Just once I'd like to see an entire halftime devoted to these band performances. Not only is it great entertainment, but the student musicians deserve the coverage.

• These days, college football fans seem to know right away which coaches are being wooed by which schools, even when both parties try to keep things quiet. It's not that the fans are prescient. It's just that they've learned that by going online they can track the flights of private university airplanes using the FlightAware.com website, The New York Times has learned.

• I'm not sure which is more surprising, that the Dallas Cowboys haven't won a playoff game in the last 10 seasons or that Notre Dame has lost an NCAA record nine straight bowl games. I'd vote for the latter. The Fighting Irish appear to be saddled by their glorious football tradition, which may prevent them from playing down to their proper postseason level. One of these years, they should accept a date at a second-tier game until they can get back on track. Ironically, as Notre Dame has struggled, the other gold-helmeted Catholic football school, Boston College, has thrived. The Eagles may not get asked to the most coveted bowls (the Meineke Car Care Bowl this season, for example), but they win. Their postseason winning streak, in fact, is a best-in-nation seven straight.

• If you're looking for an NFL playoff game with a little something extra, then you might want to tune in to Saturday's clash between the Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens. Some Baltimore fans have never forgiven the Colts organization for skipping town, literally overnight, in 1984, when the team relocated to the Midwest. It will be surprising if the current players don't pick up a little on the emotional residue from that peculiar development. Baltimore hosts the game, which promises to be classic showdown between the Colts' quarterback Peyton Manning and the Ravens' league-best defense.

• One of the trendiest football cliches of the moment, heard on TV a lot, is this business about teams getting the ball into the hand of their playmakers. Hasn't this always been a central offensive tenant?

• Seldom does a coach better suit the image of the city in which he coaches than Bill Cowher, which is why he will be especially missed in Pittsburgh. Yes, he also led the Steelers to a Super Bowl championship last year, but long before that Cowher and his mustachioed, rock-jawed countenance and fiery determination had become synonymous with the gritty, family-owned franchise in the city of his birth. After 15 seasons at the helm, Cowher felt it was time to push back, move to North Carolina, where he played collegiately and met his wife, who's from the state, and be more of a family man. That includes attending Princeton University basketball games so he can watch two of his daughters play.

• The San Diego Chargers have gone overboard in trying to ensure a friendly crowd at Qualcomm Stadium for Sunday's divisional playoff game against the New England Patriots. According to the The Boston Globe, the Chargers are restricting ticket sales to Southern California residents (with credit card billing addresses in the area), a strategy the NFL doesn't prevent. But couldn't some Pats fan sue, claiming geographic bias? By the way, San Diego's Marty Schottenheimer enters the game with more NFL wins (200) without a championship than any other coach. During stints with the Browns, Chiefs, Redskins, and Chargers, he's never taken a team to the Super Bowl.

• The bench-clearing, intracity football brawl between the University of Miami and Florida International University, it seems, was fueled by tensions between the players good enough to be recruited by Miami and those who didn't make the grade. Angry words reportedly were exchanged even before the opening kickoff, and the hard feelings were hardly assuaged after FIU was routed, 35-0.

Initially, one-game suspensions were announced for 31 players, including 18 for FIU. That was awfully lenient, however, so meatier punishments, ranging from indefinite suspensions and outright dismissals to community service and completion of anger-management training, soon followed, mostly for Florida International.

With all the video evidence available, there really was no way of avoiding more serious sentences for the worst offenders in the melee. Still, Miami is mostly sticking to one-game detentions, with a vow to have zero tolerance in the future – that is, fight and you're gone. For now, though, university president Donna Shalala has said the 'Canes "will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation." It should be noted, however, that Miami's reputation even before the brawl has not always been stellar. After last season's Peach Bowl, for instance, the Hurricanes fought with LSU players.

In Miami's case, the schedule couldn't be kinder. The Hurricanes (4-2) should be able to beat winless Duke even without 13 suspended players. Florida International, meanwhile, might as well mail in another "L" when they next play, a game against Alabama on Oct 28. FIU is 0-7 and now has indefinitely suspended or dismissed all 18 participants in the brawl.

The decision that both schools now must face is whether to play each other again next year. If they don't, it might signal that the two warring parties can't be trusted to bury the hatchet. The University of Miami trustees apparently have already concluded that the series certainly won't continue past 2007.

The one voice that seems glaringly absent in all this is the National Collegiate Athletic Association's. Where is the leadership of this reputedly reform-minded organization at this time? If it can legislate detailed regulations about the dos and don'ts of recruiting, shouldn't it at least rail against gridiron street fighting?

• I'm not a fan of those televised NFL shows set up inside the stadium to evoke a "we are there" feeling. The ex-player analysts practically yell to be heard over the crowd as they share their sound bites. It seems all style and very little substance.

• Of all ESPN's numerous college football telecasting teams, my favorite is the Friday night crew of play-by-play man Dave Pasch and analysts Rod Gilmore and Trevor Matich. They play well off one another, bring fresh insights to bear, and make less-glamorous games interesting. Both analysts played collegiately, Gilmore as a defensive back at Stanford and Matich as an offensive lineman at Brigham Young, and both enjoy more than a passing interest in literature. Gilmore, now an attorney with a business law firm, was an English major as an undergraduate. Matich loves to read and occasionally write, and says on his website that "Lord of the Rings" is his all-time favorite book.

• Scott Spiezio's mini red goatee is one of the strangest baseball hairstyles ever, but at least there's a connection with his team, the St. Louis Cardinals (or Redbirds). Fans find it easy to copy the red-dyed strip of hair growing under his lower lip with their own stick-on "soul patches."

• Discovered recently: Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, the former Steeler wide receiver, once had a part in the movie, "The Last Boy Scout."  It's not a role the Republican candidate has bragged about on the campaign trail.

• That old English "D" on the uniforms of the Detroit Tigers is absolutely classic, every bit as good, if not better, than the Yankees' gothic "NY."  In doing a little research on the subject, I found the "D" dates back to 1904 as Detroit's primary logo. To trace its evolution and that of other sports team insignias, I highly recommend a visit to Chris Creamer's sportslogo.net website.

• If you were going to outline the perfect resume for Ohio State's head football coach, then the man who currently holds the job, Jim Tressel, already owns it. He is an Ohioan through and through whose career has taken him outside his home state just once, and then only for two years as an assistant at Syracuse. Otherwise, Tresell played high school and college ball in Berea, Ohio, near Cleveland, where he quarterbacked Baldwin Wallace College for his father, a local coaching legend. After that he built his credentials as an assistant at the University of Akron, Miami of Ohio, Syracuse, and Ohio State. From there he became the head coach at Youngstown State in Youngstown, Ohio, where his teams won three national Division I-AA championships. To top things off, as a boy Tressel shagged footballs for Lou "The Toe" Groza, the Hall of Fame placekicker for the Cleveland Browns.

• It's hard to believe that the Detroit Tigers were a sub .500 team only a year ago, winning just 71 of 162 games.

• It's been 16 years since Penn State was accepted into the Big Ten Conference, and I still can't get used to the idea. To me, the Big Ten (which kept its name while adding an 11th team) is a Midwest league, and a school that sits in the middle of Pennsylvania isn't a logical geographical fit. The conference, however, is happy to have Penn State, especially during the football season, when the Nittany Lions can be counted on to fill 107,282-seat Beaver Stadium. A colleague of mine who is a Penn State alum and an avid follower of its athletic program informs me, from what he's read, that so many people migrate to the campus for home games that State College, Pa., becomes the third-largest city in the state during those games, behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

• Instant replay has come to gymnastics, a sport where judging decisions are often questioned. Replay challenges were introduced this week at the world championships in Denmark. The penalty for requesting an unnecessary replay (one which doesn't lead to a different score) is not a loss of a timeout, as occurs football, but a monetary fine: $300 for the first unsuccessful challenge and $500 for the next.

• A friend whose son works part-time for the Boston Red Sox told me this story. To thank members of the off-field staff after the season, team president and CEO Larry Lucchino had the batting cage rolled into position at Fenway Park so each employee could take some swings against a pitching machine. Imagine what a thrill it must have been for my friend's son to blast a ball to deepest centerfield that probably would have cleared the Green Monster in left if he'd only pulled it. The hit raised more than a few eyebrows, coming as it did against relatively slow 70 m.p.h. deliveries that don't lend themselves to long balls. The young man had played college ball at a small school in New Hampshire, but no one would guess from looking at him that he might have David Ortiz-like power.

• A nice sports companion to have around at this time of year is Avalon's "Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball."  It's the best thing I've found so far for making sense of the rules in clear, concise language and easy-to-follow drawings. Here are a couple of things I've learned from the book: In running to first base, a batter must run outside the foul line once he reaches the halfway point; and, if the head of the bat crosses the foul line, it is considered a swing.

• OK, Red Sox fans, if you think it was bad that the team let Babe Ruth and Roger Clemens get away, you won't like hearing that they once passed up an opportunity to claim Albert Pujols, the St. Louis Cardinals slugger. Gordon Edes of The Boston Globe revealed recently that the Red Sox came "within minutes" of drafting him in 1999, but instead selected Massachusetts native Rick Asadoorian, a name that quickly disappeared into the ether.