The NFL has Pacman Jones, Major League Baseball Ugueth Urbina, the NBA Ron Artest and the NHL Al "The Big Tako" Sobotka. But whereas Sobotka's fellow scofflaws have received more acclaim for their infamous work, there may be no one associated with professional sports who can top his decade-plus acts of decadence. Unconcerned with league rules and decent behavior, Sobotka continually dared to taunt opposing teams, fans and mollusks by hoisting his ill-gotten gain in an arrogant display of violence, all to the sickening, bloodthirsty cheers of the home crowd. That an untold number of lives have been lost and their memory mocked in the name of entertainment has not seemed to bother him in the least. Finally, after far too long, the league has said enough is enough and has banned Sobotka's sickening behavior. Beginning immediately, any Zamboni driver found to be twirling octopi above their heads faces a $10,000 fine by the NHL. Sobotka, the building manager for the Joe Lewis Arena in Detroit has become a folk hero of sorts. Over the years he's removed literally hundreds of the eight-legged cephalopods from the ice after they have been tossed over the glass by zealous fans. His tradition of spinning the sometime sticky, yet still tasty, future breaded appetizers over his head as he exits the ice has served as a rallying point for fans and has produced innumerable talking points for broadcasters. Now all of that is gone in the name of protecting the ice from ick. That's right. The league that has spilled more teeth and blood on the playing surface than any other is worried about octo-juices contaminating the ice as Sobotka spins the pods in joyous celebration. Colin Campbell, the NHL's director of hockey operations, sent out the notice that such future shenanigans will not be tolerated and that this delightful job will now be handled by the linesmen. That is, the removing of octopi following goals and not the celebratory rotating thereof. The NHL, in its latest effort to copy the NFL's policies of draining every bit of emotion from the game, proceeded the Sobotka rule by instituting a two-minute delay of game penalty on the home team if the game is held up because of an item thrown onto the ice. Interestingly enough, the punishment is levied only during a stoppage of play. An item tossed on the ice during play results in just a face off at the spot where play was suspended. The rule dates back to 1996 when idiotic Panthers' fans littered the ice with hundreds of plastic rats a few days after Scott Mellanby scored two goals in a game after killing a rat in the locker room with his stick. This led to an attempt to end the practice in Detroit, which was, of course, completely ignored by Red Wings fans, who weren't going to let the league ruin a beloved tradition that began in 1952. All of which has made the folks at the Superior Fish Company in Royal Oak giddy with delight as nothing has been better for business than hockey night at the Joe. What is usually a three-sales per day item grows to about 25 during the playoffs and as much as 100 during Stanley Cup Finals. Now if only Sobotka were so lucky. After 17 years of creative labor, The Big Tako must now be content with his player-favorite barbecues and finding joy in riding the world's biggest shave ice machine. It didn't have to be this way. Had only fans earlier followed the rules of octoquette earlier, the rule may never have been instituted. It's actually quite simple. The following are guidelines for the proper decorum if one chooses to propel a cephalopod. Courtesy of The O-FISH-AL OCTOPI Supply. 1) Boil the octopus: Boiling the octopus for a half hour will remove any natural moisture (slime) and will not leave any excessive residue that may inhibit the game. 2) When to throw: The appropriate time to hurl your octopi is only immediately after a Red Wing goal. No other time is sanctioned by or recommended by our board of governors. If one does feel the need to throw it during our national anthem, we must demand that it be done only after its completion. 3) Placement: After meeting the criteria as mentioned in guidelines one and two, you must throw your octopus only in a direction away from any players, officials and personnel. You must be confident that you can easily and safely make it to your desired target area. If you have any doubt in your ability, please refrain from propelling your octopi. I, the undersigned, hereby acknowledge that I have read and will adhere to all the guidelines as written. Failure to do so will be dealt with to the full measure that this board can call upon.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and outlandish expectation, Or to take arms and score against a sea of troubles and man-to-man defense, To which no traveler returns confident in his vote, puzzles the will, And by opposing end them to chose a winner amongst the sea of competition, Be all my sins remembered for choosing incorrectly. History recalls not whether William Shakespeare covered the NBA as a young scribe for the Stratford Times, but even such a brilliant man of letters would stop to pause in selecting the MVP in a year where every vote is a good one and none is correct. Whereas voters across the country were given a reprieve during the Jordan years, and whereas Kevin Garnett's 2003-2004 campaign was so one-sided that he bested runner up Tim Duncan by 120 first place votes, this year could be the tightest race ever. Handicapping the results would be easier if this were a Heisman Trophy race. Regional voting would eliminate Chris Paul. LeBron James and Kobe Bryant would offer a tight battle for second as Kevin Garnett gobbles up the massive East Coast vote and cruises to victory. It may just play out this way. • Kobe Bryant 28.3 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.8 steals, .459 FG percent .840 FT percent. The Lakers' season was in doubt following a 42-40 season and the release of a summer cell phone video of Bryant bashing teammate Kwame Brown. The often-labeled "best player in the game" was called a great individual scorer and defender who didn't play well with others. He even once shut it down in the post-season because of his frustration with his teammates. Now, several months later, the Lakers find themselves a favorite to win their first NBA title in the post-Shaq era. • Chris Paul 21.1 points, 4 rebounds, 11.6 assists, 2.7 steals .488 FG percent, .852 FT percent, With their home city in shambles, the New Orleans Hornets moved part time to Oklahoma City and finished four games under .500 a year ago, good for fourth place in the tough Southwest division. Fast forward a year and the team is the flip side of the Miami Heat. The Hornets finished one game behind the Lakers for the best record in the Western Conference because of a player who is, at 22, the best at his position and the most exciting young player to enter the league since, well, his four competitors for MVP. • Kevin Garnett 18.8 points, 9.2 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 1.4 steals, 1.2 blocks, .539 FG percent, .801 FT percent. No sooner had Boston brought in Garnett and Ray Allen to team with Paul Pierce then the Celtics were seemingly granted the NBA title. The Celtics didn't disappoint, going from worst to first in the Eastern Conference while winning an incredible 42 more games than the year before. Their mid-season victory lap through Texas last month proved to any remaining critics that the Celtics are more than just a good team getting fat on easy Eastern Conference prey. • LeBron James 30.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 1.8 steals 1.1 blocks, .484 FG percent, .712 FT percent. Laker fans may not like to hear it, but James is the best player in the NBA. Too quick to keep from driving to the basket and too strong should he decide to post up some unlucky foe, James is the biggest match-up nightmare in the NBA. With all due respect to Dwight Howard's All-Star Game high-wire extravaganza, James is the true superhero of the NBA. And God show pity on the innocent team whose unwise and boisterous fan dares to challenge the king's superiority. And the winner is: Garnett? Of course not. You know how these things work. The winner is always mentioned last. Garnett did help rescue the Celtics from the abyss and he was the most important part of the NBA's second best defense, but the man had a lot of help. He was outscored by Pierce, and Allen freed up the inside for Garnett with his near 40 percent three-point shooting. Lebron? Wrong again. Without LeBron, Cleveland would have secured a lottery pick. The Cavaliers have role players, but no one to take any of the scoring load off James. Things got worse in February when they picked up over-the-hill gang members Ben Wallace and Joe Smith along with Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West. The team sputtered to a 20-17 post-trade record and five fewer wins than the year before. James is the biggest "V" in the business, but you can't win with a team going backward. Kobe? Oh so close. Playing with a mangled finger on his shooting hand, Kobe did the unthinkable - he played his usually dominant role while discovering he actually had teammates. Kobe's willingness to get everyone involved showed as L.A. vaulted to the top of the Western Conference. The only real knock against Kobe is that the Lakers' winning percentage rose from .636 - good enough for a seventh place finish in the West - to .750 after acquiring Pau Gasol. Also, in the games that Gasol missed after joining the Lakers, the team went just 5-4. Chris Paul. Saving the best for last. Paul was hardly alone, with David West and Peja Stojakovic, but no one was more responsible for the 17-game turnaround than the game's most dominant point guard. Under his leadership, the Hornets improved their offense from 95.5 points to 100.9, and their defense by 1.5 points per. Most impressive was that Paul's numbers weren't pumped up against poor competition. Paul averaged 22.6 points and 11 assists against Western Conference playoff teams and was even better against his biggest adversary for the award. Versus Bryant, Paul scored 23.2 per game while dishing out an average of 15 assists.

While neither NBA commissioner David Stern nor his NCAA counterpart Myles Brandt will speak of it publicly by name, the idea of adding a second year to the NBA's holding period is something both want and need. Speaking only of a "wide-ranging initiative" for youth basketball at the NCAA finals a week ago, the heads of the world's two biggest basketball corporations danced around the subject that would save the NBA from its own wasteful economic practices and the NCAA from forsaking any remaining academic credibility. Neither revelation is likely to occur anytime soon, since the NBA must get the OK from the players union, which has a deal through 2011, and because the NCAA has traditionally cowered to the pressure of the big-time institutions that generate most of the organization's income. Since the NBA changed its eligibility rule, college basketball has become nothing more than a weigh station for high school hot shots with no interest in the academic pursuits the NCAA supposedly mandates from its so-called student athletes. It is the height of hypocrisy to suggest that an athlete can make progress toward a degree when the entire intended commitment lasts no longer than six months, and in which only the least possible academic effort is made for half that time. Yet that's exactly what the NCAA has allowed to happen. No sooner had the season finished when the great annual exodus of players resumed its flood away from college campuses with declarations of entering the NBA draft. The departure of O.J. Mayo - who was an obvious one-and-done NCAA rent-a-player while still a senior at Huntington High School - will surely not help USC's graduation numbers that boasted a 29 percent success rate, according to the most recent NCAA study that tracked graduation rates over a four-year period ending in 2000. Neither shall Texas A&M's DeAndre Jordan (40 percent), LSU's Anthony Randolph (38 percent) or Arizona's Jerryd Bayless, whose institute of higher learning has managed to graduate only 25 percent of its male basketball players even after its head coach, Lute Olsen, years ago publicly denounced such players as not worth the resources spent on recruiting. The numbers for African-American athletes at the tops schools are even more disturbing. Richard E. Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, reported in Street & Smiths SportsBusiness Journal that "61 percent of the men's tournament teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white basketball student-athletes, while only 30 percent graduated 70 percent or more of their African-American basketball student athletes." Not that any of this had to happen. While many coaches and athletic directors cowardly claim that participating in such academically irresponsible practices are necessary evils of athletic success, or that these decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and that they recruit these players with the idea that they will stick around for a couple of years, the truth is that bowing to ever-demanding boosters and prima dona 18-year-olds lowers the academic credibility of the institution while having little effect on the schools' ability to win. Final Four contender North Carolina managed to get 86 percent of its players into caps and gowns. Indiana graduated 78 percent. Mid-major standout and No. 8 Xavier hit 90 percent, Davidson 91, while 2006 and 2007 champion Florida scored a perfect 100. Recent academic initiatives - which include the Academic Progress Rate program that punishes schools by taking away scholarships - have raised athletic graduation rates as a whole to a number greater than those of the regular student body. But with mens basketball at an NCAA low 61 percent and some schools such as Florida A&M graduating a pathetic 17 percent of its players, significant work remains. Unlike the NBA, the NCAA is free to act unilaterally without the approval of other organizations. By requiring a minimum of a two-year commitment, it would be able to better fake academic concern while keeping star players on board for bigger TV ratings and alumni support. Some concessions by the universities would have to be made. Where currently scholarships are renewed on a yearly basis, schools also would have to commit at least two years to the athlete. Opponents of such a deal may argue that requiring greater commitments from the athletes would allow the bigger programs to stockpile players while lessening the chances of the mid-majors. But the number of freshman-to-the-NBA types is small and the four-year deep programs at smaller schools would still allow for tournament success. Plus the NBA would save millions.

Not since Larry Craig relieved himself in a Minneapolis airport bathroom while humming the opening score to La Cage Aux Folles has the cloak and dagger world of titillating, back door investigations taken such an unusual turn. Last week, Jose Canseco found himself face to face with baseball's Keystone Kops of steroidal investigators in the private reading room of a Manhattan Barnes & Noble.

Canseco was at the bookseller peddling his latest version of Chicken Soup for the Vindictive Soul when he was approached by investigators who have been tasked by Bud Selig to flush out any wrong-doers, so long as they don't reside in team or league offices.

Canseco was escorted to a second floor restroom where two security guards blocked the entrance from anyone wanting to spend a few quiet moments with French impressionist paintings. Once inside the tiled dome of silence, the investigators picked  Canseco for information about steroid use while setting up possible future rendezvous to help baseball determine whether or not St. Gregory was correct in his belief that a secure camode was indeed the best place for uninterrupted reading or that the St. Gregory Hotel and Suites in Washington D.C. really does have luxurious bathrooms as reported by tripadvisor.com A spokesperson for his publisher Simon & Schuster confirmed that Canseco would be hitting future rooms of repose in Boston, Chicago, L.A. San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco.

Citing a universal rule of men's room conversation that limits discussion among even the closest of allies to little more than a nod and a possible "Sup" with absolutely no vertical eye movement, Canseco's attorney Robert Saunooke said he was in shock at the meeting. An appropriate response but one that suddenly degraded and becomes a bit unnerving when, according to Florida Today, Saunooke disturbingly added, "I've got goose bumps." Possibly so did the 150 people waiting in line to purchase Canseco's list of Big Names, Big Liars, and his Battle to Save Baseball, but unlike Canseco's legal counsel they weren't being confined to a room where the biggest recreational activity is playing water hockey with a urinal cake.

What exactly is baseball's interest in Jose after all these years remains to be seen. They gave him a wide berth after the publication of his first book even after it proved to be unsettlingly accurate. He's testified before Congress and talked with George Mitchell during his investigation into the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs, but until now he has had no official dealings directly with Major League Baseball. Maybe Selig is finally paying attention. Maybe he just wants to play Alex Rodriguez for a day and make a run at Canseco's former wife or at least be an observer at the next Jessica Canseco/Debbie Clemens boob comparison party where no talk of steroids ever occurred. No word yet on whether Magglio Ordonez also tried to go through the former Hooters waitress' drive through but the smart money on league interest involves squashing any future editions of Jose Canseco's Baseball Camp.

In 1989, the mulleted, stuttering slugger tried to keep his athletically challenged students awake with such expert advise as "hit the ball harder" and "aim for the middle of the ball."

And while Canseco may never be mentioned with Ted Williams or Charlie Lau when discussions arise about the masters of hitting theory, he did recognize the importance of nutrician and  developing a proper athletic physique. In a performance more wooden that anything William Shatner could have conjured up Bill Foran, a former strength and conditioning coach at the University of Miami, warned the kids about the dangers of steroids as Canseco nods in agreement while conjuring up images of the Moscow Music Peace Festival which brought together the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue to promote a drug-free Soviet Union.

Even if Canseco's next trek into the world of literary prowess finds no bidders for "One More Dead Horse to Kick: A Final Grab for Cash," he'll always have Manhattan.

Nearly 10 minutes of big hits from both sports. Enjoy!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnwYhSz2P5E&feature=related