Catching up with the best of the worst from the past week in sports:

(10) Tommy Amaker: What's the difference between the basketball programs at Kentucky and Harvard? Well, Kentucky's recent recruiting behavior isn't being explored by its conference. Reports last week accuse Amaker, the Coach K protege formerly of Cheatin' Hall, of possibly bending NCAA rules to the point that AD Bob Scalise called him into his office to remind the coach to be "beyond reproach." Further, The New York Times says Harvard has lowered its admission standards for basketball players, perhaps motivated by the fact that they haven't been to an NCAA tournament since 1946. "We don't know how all this is going to come out," Yale coach James Jones said, "but we could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in."

(9) The Houston Rockets' last 18 opponents: It's not like the Rockets are a bad team; it's like a $75 cab fare from where the Rockets hang out to the slums occupied by the Heat, Knicks and T'wolves. But it's completely absurd for the Rockets to be able to string together 18 wins when Tracy McGrady has shot under 40 percent seven times and Yao Ming has missed the last six games with a season-ending injury. Throw out T-Mac and Luis Scola, and I can't find anyone on the roster I'd bother guarding. So how have they won nine straight by double digits?

(8) Peter Van Der Riet: How bad is your life when John Daly sends you to the showers during a shower? The caddie was sacked during a rain delay Thursday at the PODS Championship in Palm Harbor, Fla., because Daly wanted Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Jon Gruden carrying his bag instead. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Daly made the decision while waiting out the rain at a place called the Hooters Owl's Nest.

(7) The Brett Favre admiration society: Make absolutely no mistake about it, Brett Favre was a great quarterback and some of his career numbers were every bit as gaudy as you would expect from a man durable enough to play almost every snap of a 16-year career in Green Bay. But let's not lose sight of the fact that the guy had flaws on the field, such as being a shameless risk-taker with more picks than TDs in his final nine playoff games since 1998. His ratio of 442 TDs to 288 interceptions (and 64 lost fumbles) during a pass-happy era doesn't measure up to several Hall of Famers. Joe Montana, for instance, may have had only two-thirds the yardage (in less than two-thirds the number of attempts) but threw two TDs for every one pick. Remember Favre as being very good, but he's only going to finish third (at best) to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning on the list of current QBs. Putting him in the all-time top five among QBs, as so many fawning fans did this week, is off the wall.

(6) All American Football League: The wanna-be professional football league has gone one better than No. 16 seeds in the NCAA basketball tournament - rather than one-and-done, the AAFL is none-and-done. League officials have had to scrap plans to launch the six-team circuit's inaugural season next month due to itty-bitty details like the lack of a TV contract and a shortage of seed money. Even the XFL lasted long enough to actually have an opening day. I just pray that folks in Gainesville, Fla., and Little Rock, Ark., can fill the void now that the AAFL has gone AWOL.

(5) Pac-10 referees: Marcel Marceau would be dropping F-bombs if he had to coach in a basketball game being worked by zebras from the Pacific-10 Conference, particularly against a school we won't name (hint: its initials are UCLA). Last week's two atrocities in games involving the Bruins did nothing to dispel the notion that the officiating out west doesn't measure up.

(4) Tripp Isenhour: The man ranks 167th on the PGA Tour in birdies this season and No. 1 in hawks, having winged one of God's creatures while taping a TV show because the bird was making too much noise. Isenhour was charged with cruelty to animals and killing a migratory bird for his murder most fowl.

(3) Andrew Quarless: When you're the guy who broke Joe Pa's leg with an overly enthusiastic sideline hit back in '06, you need to do everything better, faster and smarter than your teammates to keep your seat at the Penn State training table. Well, Quarless got himself charged with driving under the influence last weekend, earning an indefinite suspension from the football team. Let's not even get into the issue of asking what a sophomore was doing tooling around in a BMW with temporary plates and simply note it's the second suspension of the promising tight end's brief career and the sixth this offseason for various Nittany Lions.

(2) The good ol' boys: NASCAR informs me that I will be allowed to keep all the hits on my Bottom 10 blog of a week ago, but I've been docked 10 adjectives, five verbs and 20 percent of my free-lance writing money next week for failing the post-publication inspection on my Darren McFadden item. Seriously, how stupid is it for racing's governing body to more or less say that the winner had an unfair advantage but gets to keep most of the spoils of his effort anyway?

(1) Pat Riley: The Miami Heat coach is going to be away from the bench for several games beginning this week because he says he needs to hit the road to scout prospects in person during college conference tournaments and the Big Dance. Sorry, Pat, but we all see this for what it really is: A thinly disguised excuse to get away from having to watch your wretched excuse of a basketflaw team. Claiming to have a responsibility to draft wisely is dubious at best coming from the mouth of the man who wrecked the Heat to begin with.