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

(10) Ty Lawson: The North Carolina basketball star has declared for the draft but hasn't ruled out a return to college next fall. Even if he elects to stay with the Tar Heels, Lawson is already making sports' all-too-frequent transition from boxscores to the police blotter. The sophomore point guard was charged Friday with driving after consuming alcohol after being pulled over during the early-morning hours. He was also charged with violating the Chapel Hill noise ordinance and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

(9) MLB managers: Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen returns to The Bottom 10 after nearly a month away, efficiently dissing his boss and throwing his hitting coach under the bus in the same outburst. It was more than enough to fend off Seattle Mariners manager John McLaren's rather uninspiring in a 45-second tirade that had to be bleeped 13 times. McLaren fell short of Bottom 10 honors by failing to name the players responsible for Seattle's miserable season. On the other hand, give GM Bill Bavasi point for creativity. He removed the postgame buffet from the Mariners clubhouse and hid all the towels in the locker room, forcing players to wait around and talk to the media after another miserable performance.

(8) Continental Indoor Football League: The loop lost its best team on the eve of the playoffs when the Rochester Raiders (12-0) dropped out in response to the latest minor-league sports farce. The aptly named Flint Phantoms were nowhere to be seen on Sunday, resulting in a forfeit to Rochester in the regular-season finale. When the Raiders inquired to the CIFL about seizing the Phantoms' $10,000 performance bond in order to pay their arena rent and make good to season ticket holders and sponsors (a $25,000 hit all together), they were told that Flint didn't post one. In fact, it turned out Rochester was the only member of the 14-team league that had put up the money. Media reports said the Raiders asked for their money to be returned and were rebuffed by the CIFL, so the ownership withdrew from the league barely six hours after Flint's no-show.

(7) Mike Milbury: Tiger Woods was joking (but just barely) when he said , "I don't think anybody really watches hockey anymore." Milbury, an NBC commentator, wasn't amused and referred to the world's No. 1 golfer as "Tiger Wuss." Milbury was mocking Woods for taking two months to return from arthroscopic knee surgery, and he finished the thought off with this fine contribution : "Keep your yap shut, Tiger, or I'll send a couple wingers down there - to tidy you up a little bit, meathead." Consider that proof that Woods is mentally tougher than any Don Cherry wannabe out there. P.S.: you gotta love a sport in which guys can make $300K a year with a stats line that reads "2 goals, 6 assists and 225 penalty minutes."

(6) Major Indoor Soccer League: The loop announced that commissioner Steve Ryan had resigned and they were going out of business unless someone can develop a feasible financial plan this summer to justify resuming play. I consider myself to be a pretty enthusiastic fan who keeps up on a lot of what's going on in the sports world, but I have to tell you this: God as my witness, I had no idea the MISL was still in business. I thought they had gone the way of the dinosaur around 2002. There are about 15 sports-related networks available on my cable system and I honestly can't remember running across an indoor soccer game on TV since the Reagan Administration.

(5) Marshawn Lynch: His first-year stats now total 1,115 yards a one hellacious scramble to elude questioning by the police. It's understandable that the Bills running back has lawyered up for more than a week following a hit-and-run accident in Buffalo involving a vehicle registered in his name. Do the math, and you realize it's likely Lynch was the driver, but we won't know for sure until he finally makes himself available for questioning. In the meantime, can't he show some public regard for the victim, making a statement of some sorts expressing relief that the injuries in the incident involving his vehicle were minor?

(4) Cedric Benson: So much for having the court of public opinion tilt in favor of the Chicago Bears running back as he contests a charge of boating while intoxicated stemming from an incident last month in Texas. Over the weekend, Benson was hit with new charges &$151; DWI and running a red light - in Austin. Police say he failed a field sobriety test and refused to take a Breathalyzer test. On the plus side - listen up, Marshawn Lynch - he was reported to be cooperative with authorities following the arrest. And he'll be classy and understanding when the Bears fire his butt in about an hour.

(3) Nicholas Kaczur: Staying with the Bottom 10's NFL theme awhile longer, the New England Partiots offensive lineman gets sympathy for being the first driver in recent memory to get pulled over for doing 76 mph in a 65 zone on the New York State Thruway, where 80 in the right-hand lane often qualifies as Sunday driving. The ticket led to the discovery of the prescription painkiller OxyContin inside his truck, and Kaczur eventually ended up wearing a wire to help police take down his alleged supplier. Based on price and quantity info supplied by police, Kaczur may have dropped six figures on the drug over the last six months. Read my lips Nick: "This is your brain. And this is your brain on drugs . . ."

(2) Rick Dutrow Jr.: The outspoken trainer of Big Brown was having a pretty good spring right up to the point where he projected that winning the Belmont Stakes was a "foregone conclusion." His other nugget for the week was, "These horses just cannot run with Big Brown." And we now know that's a good thing, or else the homestretch portion of the Belmont would have lasted longer than the Chicago Bulls' search for a new coach.

(1) Pitcher Cody Martin and catcher Matt Hill: These guys aren't a battery as much as they are an assault and battery. Playing in the Georgia state high school finals, they combined for a boneheaded moment last weekend in Stephens County's 13-1 loss. Apparently upset with the plate umpire's balls and strikes calls in the game against Cartersville, Martin threw high and Hill ducked low, resulting in Jeff Scott being struck in the mask. The Georgia High School Association responded swiftly with sanctions. Scott was uninjured but apparently was so stunned that he missed the obvious response of ejecting one or both players. Better still, would anyone have blamed Scott if he had charged the mound?

 

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

(10) NBC: It doesn't rank with the Heidi game, but how could they not spend five extra minutes to let the final group putt out at No. 18 on Saturday in the LPGA's Ginn Tribute Hosted by Annika before signing off? At least one network runs past the allotted time for a sporting event almost every weekend, so the decision should have been routine. Sophie Gustafson, she of the monumental collapse Sunday, put her approach five feet from the pin and Karrie Webb hit into the greenside bunker at 5:55 p.m. A walk to the green, a two-putt par by the leader and Webb's up-and-down would have taken maybe 10 minutes, but NBC resorted to some announcer happy talk and then left the air at 6 p.m. for local news in the East. If General Electric qualified for Title IX funding, someone could have started a movement this week to get it revoked.

(9) Detroit Pistons: Consider the great run officially closed for the Pistons, who've made in to six straight conference finals but lost the last three. The Pistons had the Boston Celtics on the ropes with a 103-97 win at The Garden in Game 2 and then let their struggling opponent escape. Rodney Stuckey, Chauncy Billups and Tayshaun Prince combined to shoot 36.8 percent for the series as both young and old failed to produce. The Pistons would have actually matched up reasonably well with the Lakers in the NBA Finals; now the challenge is to replace some pieces of the puzzle that appear to have aged rapidly in the month of May.

(8) NBA: Nothing good could come out of the league announcing that the no-call on Brett Barry's possession at the end of Game 4 between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers was wrong. League spokesman Tim Frank came out on Thursday with a statement that a foul "should have been called." It's not like umpires failing to see a ball hitting the foul pole or the stairwell beyond the fence in right-center, as happened in baseball several times last month; in the case of the NBA refs, the (non-)call in question was a bang-bang judgment deal on a play that was somewhere between a nudge and a shove. Frank owed them the courtesy of saying a foul "could have" been called.

(7) Too many cars, too little track: Forty-three cars on the starting grid is often about seven too many on the shorter tracks, as NASCAR teams and officials were reminded Sunday. A one-mile oval doesn't lend itself to separation, especially in the early stages before the superior cars push the pace. The result can be messes like the one on lap 17 at Dover. Wrecks are exciting and part of the sport, but it's not much fun for fans when big names like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart and top-12 points list drivers Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne, Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick are all but out of the running before you've finished that first frosty beverage or ripped open the bag of pork rinds.

(6) MLS fan behavior: Throwing streamers on the field, a phenomenon that started last year in a couple of cities, was never really cute, cool or entertaining, but at least the "fans" had the courtesy to partially unfurl the rolls and loft them skyward. Now, though, the oafs are throwing 'em like fastballs and aiming for players. Worse, still, these morons are hurling more than paper. New England's game in Columbus last week deteriorated into something more dangerous as both bottles and racial epithets were thrown into the mix. A lit flare or two has been thrown toward the field in Toronto, too. We're way past the time for league officials to act, or else it's a matter of time before someone gets hurt.

(5) American tennis: How is it that Robby Ginepri, basically playing with about one and three-quarters arms, was the only American to reach the fourth round in men's or women's singles at the French Open? Ginepri had been oh-for-Paris since 2003 until getting on a roll this time to become the first U.S. male to reach the fourth round in five years and the only one of 19 men or women to advance that far this year. Andy Roddick's fine, but the nation's tennis fans yearn for another Sampras, Agassi or anyone named Williams, provided she's focused on tennis instead of outside distractions.

(4) Jose Canseco: The man was once a multi-tool major-league baseball player. Now, he's just a tool, spiraling into the sports scrap heap alongside Mike Tyson and John Daly. The former Oakland A's slugger, reportedly significantly in debt and out of favor with everyone in baseball, offered $5,000 to anyone who would step into the ring with him and headline a boxing card in July in Atlantic City. And the best he could come up with is former Philadelphia Eagles kick returner Vai Sikahema? Last time I looked, Sikahema barely rated as "B-list" guest material at family picnics. Cassius Clay himself couldn't hype this fight into anything more than a $6.95 PPV affair. If Canseco really wanted to make this deal fly, he'd step into the ring against . . .

(3) Danica Patrick: Let me say from the start that Patrick had a right to be peeved after getting wrecked on pit row by Ryan Briscoe, who may have been absent the day they taught race-car driving at race-car driving school. But what good was possibly going to come out of a confrontation with Briscoe at Indy last weekend? Even in the heat of the moment, Briscoe would have known enough to not retaliate if Patrick started poking or shoving, so she would have come off looking like a witch (or something like that). Patrick should be grateful an IRL official intercepted her before she could start something.

(2) Gary Carter: The former New York Mets catcher got off easy, being chided by Keith Hernandez for "walking around unconscious" for openly lobbying for Willie Randolph's managerial job. Truth be told, the clock is almost certainly ticking on Randolph's career with the Mets - hey, when it comes down to it, all managers are interim. But that doesn't change the fact that you never, ever go after someone's job. In my old neighborhood, guys who got too ambitious in that way were introduced to the business end of a 2-by-4. Apologies aside, Carter deserves an even more brutal fate that physical retribution: Make him manage the . . .

(1) St. Lucie Mets: At 12-43 and 22 games out of first place, these Mets are Charlie Brown-and-Lucy bad. Playing in the 12-team Florida State League, the Mets are 10th in batting average, 11th in on-base percentage and slugging percentage, have more caught-stealings than stolen bases, and have plucked more opposing batters than three clubs combined on their way to an ERA that's a run per game worse than anyone else. I'm pretty sure manager Tim Teufel would be more than happy to hand the clubhouse keys to Gary Carter.

 

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

(10) "Pacman" Jones: You'd think a guy whose suspension has already lasted longer than Jimmy Stewart reciting Homer's Odyssey would show a little more sense - and perhaps even a little sensitivity. But if Adam had 'em, those qualities sure didn't last long. Jones was about to be hauled into court last week on bad-check charges before coughing up the $20,000 he owed Caesars Palace stemming from a Sept. 3, 2007, visit. Though the NFL doesn't have a policy against casino gambling by players as long as they do not bet on league games, just showing up in Las Vegas is a horrendous PR move by Jones if for no other reason than his infamous trip to a strip club there in February 2007 preceded a melee that left a bouncer paralyzed. I'd be embarrassed to show my face there, let alone stiff a casino for eight months.

(9) Calgary Vipers: The United League baseball club traded 26-year-old right-hander John Odom to the Laredo Broncos for 10 bats, valued at about $655. The Vipers weren't going to be able to send Odom to the mound because of INS issues, but if all they want in return for a live human being is some dead wood, I believe the Detroit Tigers are still available.

(8) Florida Marlins fans: Don't confuse the issues here. It's a given that management is so penny-pinching that the next move will be to install pay toilets in the clubhouse. But the fact of the matter is the Marlins are winning, so it would be nice if fans took at least a minimal interest in the club. The "crowds" for last week's series against Arizona were 10,696, 11,227 and 13,233. Travis Henry brings that many people when the Denver Broncos hold family get-togethers.

(7) Greek Olympic Team: Eleven of their 14 Olympic weightlifters tested positive for a banned substance in March and were among 25 people hit last week with misdemeanor charges, all but scuttling the country's ability to compete in the sport in Beijing this summer. The coach blames a faulty batch of diet supplements from China, naturally. Good luck with that, but otherwise I suggest trying the Antonio Pettigrew "I did it" approach. Sure his name is now dirt in the world of track and field, but at least he won't get dragged through the mud for the next two years only to be found guilty in the end anyway.

(6) Speeding up the game: It's well and good that major-league officials are encouraging managers and pitching coaches to jog to the mound or at least walk briskly to help return baseball games to something shorter than Tom Clancy novels. But let's not forget the biggest culprit of them all now that Mike Hargrove hasn't stepped into the batter's box in 22-plus years: the looooong breaks between half-innings so that TV can cram in way too many car, beer and erectile dysfunction remedy commercials. One less commercial per break shortens the game by anywhere from 8

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

(10) Boston Celtics: It is technically possible to win an NBA championship without winning a playoff road game, but the air of invincibility dissipates every time the team with the NBA's best regular-season record (by a convincing seven games) gets taken to the limit in a series. The Celtics walked away from their second-round battle with the Cleveland Cavaliers with their title ambitions still intact but performing about as convincingly as Elizabeth Berkley in "Showgirls." I don't want to say Pistons in six is a sure bet, but I hear Steve Wynn is accepting Charles Barkley's $25K ticket on that proposition as payment in full.

(9) Tony Kornheiser's career plans: The multi-talented Washington Post columnist revealed that he's taking a buyout from the paper in part to devote more time to his radio, TV and long-form writing gigs. Speaking for the generation old enough to remember when there were still more than half a dozen great American newspapers, it's a shame that Kornheiser, 59, didn't drop one of his other duties (except for "Pardon The Interruption") and rededicate himself to the column writing that he more or less quit doing in 2006. Those of us who grew up reading the likes of Dick Young, Jim Murray, Mike Downey, Shelby Strother, Dave Kindred and Blackie Sherrod were always happy to set aside a few minutes for Korny.

(8) High school pimps and parasites: It's a safe guess that O.J. Mayo's name is going to get a lot of air time this spring and summer for reasons beyond his lottery-pick status. The report last week that USC's one-and-done basketball star was allegedly the recipient of thousands of dollars of benefits while still in high school is attracting a lot of attention thus far - with much more to come. Alexander Wolff and Armen Keteyian wrote the damning "Raw Recruits" in 1991, and the influence of "street agents" and "runners" on the college game has gotten worse since. The idea that grown men are new regularly dropping five-figure sums on 17-year-olds with the intention of reaping a 50-fold return on their investment a few years later is one more reason it would help basketball if the NBA would push its minimum age to 21.

(7) Billy Wagner: The Mets closer certainly stuck his foot in it last week by discussing the proverbial family business in public, forcing Willie Randolph to call a team meeting at a time when the Mets had enough on their minds - including a .500 record heading into their weekend vs, the Yankees - without Wagner publicly throwing teammates onto the Subway Series tracks. Wagner claims he was being critical of the media and not his teammates when he scolded reporters who wanted to interview him after Thursday's 1-0 loss to Washington. "You should be talking to the guys over there," he told reporters. "Oh, they're not there. Big shock." How can that not be construed as a knock on his teammates?

(6) San Jose Earthquakes: Bad figures to get worse for the 'Quakes, already mired in last place in the West in Major League Soccer. They've scored all of four goals in seven matches and play seven of their next 10 on the road. No truth to the rumor that they replaced "guaranteed win night" with "guaranteed goal night" on their schedule and then replaced that with a promotion guaranteeing that they would put at least one more shot on goal before the season ends.

(5) Newsday: Hey, we've all worked for a boss or two who we've wanted to see replaced. And we've all been warned, "Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it." Well, that's Newsday's nightmare these days. The proposed sale of the paper was announced last week, meaning ownership is changing from Tribune to Cablevision barring last-minute legal issues. Yes, sports fans, that means Newsday staffers are going from taking orders from the people who run the Chicago Cubs (no championships in a century or so) to taking orders from the people who run the New York Knicks (no clue).

(4) Jason Isringhausen: What's worse than a closer who can't get anyone out? How about a closer who puts himself on the disabled list by punching a television in a fit of anger. The Cardinals reliever, on the books for $8 million, is experiencing a miserable 2008 season with six blown saves already, a conversion rate that the Moors would have never accepted.

(3) Detroit Tigers: Baseball reached the quarter pole last week, and the AL Central cellar-dwellers need a Big Brown-esque burst soon if they're going to have any chance of reaching the postseason. But getting swept by Kansas City and languishing in last in the majors in team ERA is no way to instill confidence that Motown will be home to anything more than an 83-79 team this season. But take heart, Detroit sports fans. The annual Matt Millen follies are just two months away.

(2) Jack Crowe: So much for being able to call plays from the high moral ground instead of the sideline next season. The Jacksonville State coach booted Cedric Johnson, his only experienced QB, from the team in February for violating team rules but has now added Ryan Perrilloux, who was recently thrown off LSU's team for violating team rules and perhaps quite possibly bending a legal statute or two. If being a hypocrite requires a lot of paperwork, then get Mr. Crowe a box on No. 2 pencils so he can start justifying his new No. 1 signal caller. Jacksonville State has steadily been in the three- to six-win range for a decade and Crowe thinks he can break through with a guy who's got a better shot right at three-to-five right now than of being a stand-up citizen.

(1) TNT Sports: Charles Barkley's $400K gambling debt to Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas hotel made headlines and was talk-show fodder all week without a significant related issue being raised. The always-entertaining basketball analyst's game of choice reportedly is blackjack, which would seem to be fairly harmless. But it's also been reported that Barkley has spoken of profiting off the Indianapolis Colts' Super Bowl victory, and that's where his gambling gets problematic. If Barkley made money betting on a sporting event, he's almost certainly lost money on other games along the way. Doesn't it make you wonder If Barkley's commentary on NBA telecasts, then, has ever been tainted by bitterness over a lost bet or if he's backed off criticism of a player whose performance translated into a winning bet. A network news division would never allow its reporters to gamble on the people they cover. Where's the concern from the bosses at TNT Sports about the potential damage to their credibility?

 

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

(10) Malcolm Glazer: Manchester United announced a $113.4 million loss for last fiscal year despite revenue of $409 million, largely because of the 14.25 percent interest rate Glazer is paying on $296 million he borrowed in order to buy the team. Owning Man U is a feather in any sportsman's cap and the club recently was estimated to be worth $1.8 billion, but here's a thought: If you've got the scratch to take a controlling interest of a business this large, shouldn't you have met someone somewhere along the way who could have fronted the money at a rate that couldn't be confused for C.C. Sabathia's ERA?

(9) Ozzie Guillen: The Chicago White Sox manager had his usual busy week with 16 obscenity-filled rants that he regards as witty conversation sandwiched around the dollgate crisis, in which inflatable beauties were called upon as clubhouse d