Something smells rotten to me about the circumstances, in this final week of the NFL regular season, that have established the Tennessee Titans as 6-1/2-point favorites over the Indianapolis Colts playing at home in Indy and the Washington Redskins a whopping 9-1/2-point favorite over the best team in the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys.

Both are critical games, with Tennessee and Washington needing wins to reach the playoffs. And both teams under normal circumstancers would be underdogs. But the crircumstances turn out to be anything but normal. Colts coach Tony Dungy and Cowboys coach Wade Phillips have both indicated that they intend to play their starting quartergacks, Peyton Manning and Tony Romo, on a limited basis at most, preferring to rest them as well as other key starters for the upcoming playoffs.

And the response from NFL and its pundits seems to be that these teams are entitled to do whatever they want. It is apparently irrelevant that the game means a great deal to Cleveland, Minnesota and New Orleans. Having already gained a playoff bye and with this week's game meaning nothing to them, the conventional wisdom around the league suggests that Colts and the Cowboys not only can, but apparently should do whatever is required in this final game to bolster their post-season prospects. And if that means resting Manning and Romo or anybody else, so be it. By dint of their records, they are said to have earned that right.

Let's take the Colts game for example. I happen to believe the Colts are not at all indifferent to the outcome of Sunday's game. In fact, I think Dungy and his staff would actually prefer to have Tennessee win and to reach the playoffs. That result would most likely send Tennessee on to play the San Diego Chargers in the wild-card game the next weekend. And it's reasonable to assume that the Titans, with their rugged defense ranked 5th in the league, would give the Chargers high-powered attack a stiffer contest than the Browns, with their 31st-ranked defense, or at the very least inflict a pounding on them, softening them up for their next opponent. Which in all likelihood will be Indy. And that's how a loss to Tennessee might come full circule to bolster the Colts in the playoffs.

So the Colts would appear to be operating strictly out of self-interest by losing on Sunday. Yet self-interest can be carried only so far. The Colts couldn't possibly announce their intention to deliberately lose the game without the NFL coming down hard. All they can apparently do is field a lineup that is far more likely to lose the game and hope for the best, or in this case the worst.

Tony Dungy is the moral pillar of the NFL and wouldn't do anything that he didn't believe was countenanced by league rules. Moreover, I'm not sure I could formulate a rule that would adequately cover this situation. Still, my gut feeling says there is something wrong when Tenneessee can punch its playoff ticket by going through Jim Sorgi and the Colts rather than Peyton Manning and company. Frankly, it smells rotten to me.

How much bang for the buck can a watch company get when it uses New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the athletic embodiment of how "Unstoppable!" its watch is? Its a Saturday Night Live-worthy laugh line every time I hear it, but even more so when it's airing, as it did last night, during a Giants game. I don't think "stoppable" is quite sufficent as an antithesis to describe how Manning fared against the Washington Redskins Sunday night. If he wasn't stopping himself with weak-armed throws or foolish retreats in the pocket and into enemy arms, as he was much of the first half, then his teammates were lending a hand by dropping his occasionally accurate passes, as they did much of the second half. His final numbers were 18-52 for 168 yards, or about three yards per attempt. Hard to sell a watch, I know, with the catchword "Pathetic!"

You know it's a really bad game when Giants coach Tom Coughlin looks upset on the sidelines. Okay, so he always looks a man whose head is about to implode. But who can blame him? Coughlin has spent four seasons in New York watching Manning and waiting for him to demonstrate that he is an NFL quarterback of the first rank, let alone worthy of the very first pick in the draft. And it doesn't seem to be happening. Frankly, Eli doesn't seem to be improving at all and perhaps not even a quarterback of the second rank. Coughlin surely rues the day that Manning esentially forced himself on the Giants by refusing to play in San Diego. Who in his right mind would want to hand off to Ladainian Tomlinson in the lush climes of San Diego when you can put the ball in the belly of Brandon Jacobs in the windswept Meadowlands? In that ill-fated Giants deal, San Diego not only got quarterback Philip Rivers, who may not have convinced fans either, but appears to be at least Manning's equal, as well as some draft choices, one of which yielded Shawn Merriman, a consensus first-team All-Pro.

Most NFL insiders and Giants fans were surprised when Coughlin wasn't dumped after the team's late-season fold last year so there's certainly no guarantee that making the playoffs this season will mean he's back for 2008. But even at 9-5 in the medicore NFC, the Giants are no lock for the playoffs right now. With a winter's trip to Buffalo next week and then the Patriots due in town for the final weekend of the season, the Giants could have a classic Coughlin swoon and find themselves, at 9-7, in a maze of tiebreakers with the Vikings, Saints and Redskins that, quite frankly, this correspondent is unable to decipher.

The way the Giants competed last night, one has to consider the possibility that the team simply panicked at the prospect of doing too well, say 11-5, and keeping Coughlin around to scream at them for another whole year. However it turns out they finish, if the Giants do reach the playoffs, bet the ranch that it will be one game and out. Followed very shortly by their combustible coach.

When it came time to announce the results of the two-year investigation of steroids in Major League Baseball, it was no surprise that the three parties involved—former Senator George Mitchell, league commissioner Bud Selig, and players association head Don Fehr—insisted on holding separate press conferences in separate venues. Considering it practically took an act of Congress for there even to be an investigation, why would the three sides cooperate with each other now? And so it was, three different press conferences, at three different hotels. Let the three-ring circus that is Major League Baseball begin.

First stop, the New York Grand Hyatt Hotel. I knew I was in the right place when I spotted Jose Canseco lurking around the lobby. Jose, after his 2005 tell-all “Juiced” was published, has been all too willing to talk about how he and others—lots of others—injected themselves and each other with steroids. Today, Jose wasn’t commenting. But he was available to have his picture taken. Say cheese!

Inside the spacious Grand Hyatt ballroom, and it would seem more spacious as the day went on, a few hundred reporters sat eagerly waiting to get their hands on the report 21 months in the making. And then it came, all 311 pages of it. As aides passed out copies, the room hushed as we all rifled through its pages, searching the legalese for the only thing we really wanted—names. And as we found them, the whispers rose above the crowd. “Clemens! Pettitte! Tejada! Miadich!… wait, who? Bart Miadich, a middling minor leaguer who spent portions of two seasons pitching for the Anaheim Angels before fizzling out in Japan in 2006, and who suffered some serious “roid rage” according to the report, was one of a number of players fingered as dopers by former Mets batboy turned pusher-man Kirk Radomski. In fact, if Radomski hadn’t agreed to cooperate with Mitchell, which he did as part of a plea agreement he struck when federal prosecutors busted him on steroid distribution charges earlier this year, it’s not sure how much thunder Mitchell would have brought to the table today.

After a lengthy summary of the report, in which he compared investigating Major League Baseball with brokering a peace deal in Northern Ireland, Mitchell dropped a bombshell: Do not discipline players, he said. It will only cost more money and bring more pain to baseball. “All efforts need to look to the future,” said Mitchell.  Oookay, but speaking of the future, the children, doesn’t refusing to punish these players send the wrong message to the kids who cheer for them? “We’re all human,” Mitchell answered, before waxing political about responsibility, accountability and deterrence. Then through a barrage of questions, Mitchell refused to drift even the slightest beyond his mandate of investigating steroids. Should this affect Hall of Fame balloting? How much did it cost? Is this a particular indictment of Barry Bonds? No comment. But, asked whether the players union was cooperative, Mitchell did finally concede, it has not been. Blast, too bad they’re not here to comment.

We’d have to wait until 6 PM to get their take on the whole they stonewalled us thing. In the meantime, it was off to the Waldorf Astoria for the swanky MLB presser. Six blocks up Park Ave in a gale of freezing rain, we all gathered in the 18^th floor Palm Room of the Waldorf, where, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, looking as frumpy and squinty as ever in the bright lights and flashes of the cameras, pronounced boldly, almost defiantly, “This is a call to action and I will act!” Selig announced that he embraced all 20 of Mitchell’s recommendations, and practically patted himself on the back in describing how proactive baseball has been in ridding itself of steroids. Use “appears” to have declined, Selig trumpeted. Teams are no longer given 24-hour notice prior to one of its players being given a random drug test. Human Growth hormones have been banned, though there’s still no way to test for it. The league has even partnered with the Partnership for a Drug Free America. “But!” Selig insisted, finger raised in the air, “fans deserve a level playing field, and Major League Baseball remains committed.”

So, will he investigate players? Punishment will be determined and doled out on a case-by-case basis, said Selig. Does that include striking stats from the record books? Or perhaps noting them with an asterisk? “Case by case,” Selig reminded us. “I have a lot of work to do,” he said. And how much does he consider himself at fault for this whole mess? “It happened. As I said before, this document should serve as a road map and if it serves that purpose…” Yeah, apparently not at all. Oh and also, despite the MLB having had the document for three days, Selig hadn’t finished reading it yet, which, conveniently, gave him the ability not to comment on many of its specifics or its scope or even what he intended to do about it, other than to reiterate that somehow, someway, at some point, he would act.

Right, moving on. For act three we jaunted just down the block to the Intercontinental Hotel, and its 3rd floor Madison Room, which, though ornate and wood-paneled, was about a tenth of the size of the Grand Hyatt ballroom. Aha, and now we saw their plan: march us around in the freezing rain and cram us into progressively smaller rooms, they’re trying to wear us out. And it was working. By 6 PM Donald Fehr, executive director of the MLB players association, entered and gave a terse, unapologetic, at times combative press conference. Though first asserting how cooperative the players association has been, he did concede that “perhaps” steps could have been taken sooner. However, with Selig acting unilaterally as he did in announcing the investigation two years ago, the players association was essentially left with no choice but to represent the players as it felt it should, which essentially meant they told them to stonewall the investigation. Not that Fehr said it so bluntly. He urged players to find other lawyers to advise them, given the ongoing criminal investigations. Throughout, Fehr refused to speculate on any number of fronts, because he too hadn’t read the report either. Though Fehr perhaps had a better excuse. Mitchell’s investigative team he ran out of his law firm DLA Piper, hadn’t sent the players association a copy of the report until 1pm that afternoon, and it was just one hard copy at that. “We had to make all the copies ourselves,” said MLBPA communications director Greg Bouris.  So it seemed, that Mitchell, tired after two years of being denied access to players and lacking the power to subpoena them, was determined to stick it to the players association by sending them one hard copy of his 300 page report. And so with each of the three parties touting their own compliance and lack of fault, the day ended and we walked, tired and cold, once again into the freezing rain.

Major League Baseball has had no claim to the sacred for a very long time—certainly not after many of its big-name players began falling out of the pharmaceutical closet. And this year it truly descended to the profane when Barry Bonds, just months ahead of his federal indictment for lying to a grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, broke the game's most hallowed record as its all-time home run king.

So perhaps nobody should have been surprised—certainly not after some of the rare confessors, like Jose Canseco and the late Ken Caminiti, described steroid use in baseball as epidemic—by anything former senator George Mitchell revealed today as a result of his investigation into drug use in the game. Still, there had to be gasps throughout the nation as the greatest pitcher of the modern era, Roger Clemens, was fingered as a drug cheat right alongside Bonds. For his part, Clemens is denying everything. Late in the day Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, issued a statement calling the inclusion of his client's name "very unfair." Hardin said, "He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are totally false allegations. He has not been charged with anything, he will not be charged with anything, and yet he is being tried in the court of public opinion with no recourse."

Nobody, certainly not Mitchell, was pretending that the list of some six dozen names was comprehensive. Most of those named appear to be players unlucky enough to have procured steroids from one of two men: Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets clubhouse assistant who cooperated as part of a federal plea agreement, and Brian McNamee, Clemens's former personal trainer who became a New York Yankees strength and conditioning coach. And the report owes a clear debt to "Game of Shadows," the book about Bonds's ties to the BALCO drug lab. Still, after a 21-month chase, with virtually no players cooperating with him and no special investigatory powers, Mitchell did name names that reflected a broad cross-section of the game, from a potential Hall of Famer to marginal big-leaguers, from bulked-up sluggers to scrawny infielders, and pitchers of all stripes—not just pin-.

The list included current big-name players—Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, Eric Gagne, Paul Lo Duca, Gary Sheffield, and Brian Roberts—as well as former stars—Kevin Brown, Chuck Knoblauch, Lenny Dykstra, David Justice, Mo Vaughn, Matt Williams and Benito Santiago. (See a gallery of some of the biggest names among current players in the report). Except for Clemens, none of the players named in the report had immediate comment. Mitchell insisted that he didn't simply rely on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, but that he had corroborating evidence. Still, some of it, at least as produced in the report, seems rather sketchy, vague and possibly inconclusive.
 

Read the Full Column Here

Never say never in sports. But I will truly be shocked the next time an NFL team turns to the college ranks to find a head coach. OK, maybe USC's Pete Carroll might stand as an exception, if only because he is a proven commodity, having--like Norv Turner, who got his third chance this season-- already flopped with two NFL teams.

Bobby Petrino is the latest college wonder to sign on with the NFL--in his case the Atlanta Falcons--and quickly retreat back to the college ranks. His was certainly the most disgraceful exit yet. Petrino left for the University of Arkansas with his team mired in last place in the NFC South and three games remaining on the schedule of his rookie season. Hell, he wanted out so badly that he took about a two million dollar annual pay cut to get out of Atlanta. In the great Georgia tradition, frankly my dears, he didn't give a damn.

He joins ranks with two other celebrated college football coaches, Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban, who, after brief flirtation with the NFL and dismal results, sought sanctuary back in the college ranks and, in particular, the SEC. I had dinner with Spurrier at a Virginia steakhouse shortly after he was named Washington Redskins coach. Let me admit I was totally charmed listening to how football was football, he wasn't one of those obsessive 24/7 guys and he sure wasn't going to give up his golf game. Which added up to a 12-20 record over two seasons, before he headed off to University of South Carolina and the links. And after two season there, with his name--surprise, surprise!--in play for openings at the University of Alabama and the University of Miami, Spurrier got an extension and a raise to $1.75 million per season.

Of course, that's chickenfeed compared to the record, eight-year, $32 million deal that Alabama tendered to lure Saban away from the Miami Dolphins. Saban, billed as the NFL's next Belichickean genius after winning a national championship at LSU, stumbled to a 15-17 record in two season in Miami. Of course with hindsight, as the Dolphins threaten to go winless this year, that might have been his most brilliant coaching job yet. And who wouldn't believe him when he proclaims that Alabama will be his final stop on the coaching carousel?

Petrino, of course, had no idea when he took the Falcons gig that Michael Vick was about to begin a prison stint rather than his seventh NFL season with Atlanta. But he certainly should have had a clue that pro athletes weren't going to be quite as intimidated by and welcoming of his dictatorial style; the near mutiny by his players now stands as his NFL legacy. I'm sure when those Arkansas kids meet roadblocks, they will be appropriately inspired when Petrino tells them to man up and just push on through it.

At the same time, Falcons owner Arthur Blank has to take much of the blame. He certainly would never have run Home Depot this way. If Blank (or anybody for that matter) still believes that character remains an important part of leadership in NFL football, he had plenty of warning signs about both his quarterback and his coach. He chose to ignore them and embraced both men enthusiastically. Enough has already been said about Vick's betrayal. Petrino, in 25 years of coaching, has had some 16 different jobs with 11 different teams. Personal ambition seems to have dictated his every move. It was widely known that during his longest stint, four years as head coach at the University of Louisville, he put his name out there for almost every major opening, college or pro. He took the Falcons job shortly after signing a 10-year extension in Louisville. So why would anybody be surprised when, less than a year later, he bolts town and his five-year Falcons deal?

All this will make it awful hard to find a rooting interest when Alabama meets Arkansas next season. I guess all you can really hope for is that Petrino meets with every bit as much success in Fayetteville that Saban did his first season in Tuscaloosa. Alabama managed to lose its final four games of the regular season, including most ignominiously to Louisiana-Monroe (4-3 in the Sun Belt Conference) and, most unhappily, to arch-rival Auburn. They're already writing ballads about Saban down there--and they are funny, but not very fond. Good luck, Nick, in the Independence Bowl.

Petrino is only the latest in a long line of successful college coaches--Dennis Erickson, Lou Holtz, Dan Devine, John McKay to name but a few--who for whatever reason couldn't win in the pros. But can I take back what I said about Pete Carroll? He actually had a winning record--33-31--in four seasons with the Patriots and the Jets and took the Pats to the playoffs twice. By the NFL standards set by Spurrier, Saban and now Petrino, Caroll stands as a giant.

The New England Patriots' rematch with the New York Jets is being billed as "The Revenge Game", which makes it hard to distinguish it from every other game the Patriots have played this season. Most NFL writers are convinced that Belichick, having been embarrassed by Jets coach Eric Mangini in the opening game's now infamous "Videogate", has embraced a scorched-earth approach to the season---taking aim on a historic 19-0 season.

Belichick never acknowledges such considerations, making light--or what passes for light for somber Bill--of any motives other than winning. When the Steelers' backup safety Anthony Smith guaranteed a victory over the Pats before last week's game, the Patriot coach and players barely acknowledged the boast--except to say they don't do that kind of thing. So it must have been just a coincidence that all four Brady TD passes appeared to be at Smith's expense--on one, the flea-flicker, Brady seemed almost to wait for Smith to just not catch up to the receiver--and Brady could be seen at one point barking in Smith's face. After the game, Belichick couldn't resist one pointed dig for a postscript: "We've played better safeties than that."

Belichick chooses once again to maintain that there is nothing special at stake this Sunday. But if Smith, an unknown backup, can provoke the Pats that way, it's hard to believe that a coach that Belichick regards as a quisling--one who embarrassed him not to mention cost him $500,000 and a first draft choice--will not be targeted for some humiliation in what has been an already humiliating season for the sophomore coach. While Randy Moss can't leave Mangini in his dust on a post pattern, the Patriots can, at the very least, be expected to show even less mercy to the Jets than they have other teams. And that's in a season in which they have shown their opponents absolutely none.

Still, the most fascinating thing about the Pats' potentially historic run--and that last word is truly ironic--is that Belichick is doing it in unprecedented fashion, one that defies the bedrock beliefs about football that coaches, analysts and fans have all come to accept. "You can't win without establishing a running game," "You;ve got to run to pass," etc.--Belichick has ignored all that and virtually thrown the run out of the Patriots attack. If you don't count Tom Brady's one scramble and Laurence Maroney's two clock-killing carries at game's end, the Pats ran the ball just six times against the Steelers on Sunday. At one point, the Patriots threw the ball on 33 consecutive plays. Of the 11 other likely playoff teams, only one, Dallas which was playing catchup the whole day against Detroit, ran the ball less than 20 times, and the other ten teams averaged about 30 rushes apiece.

Is it possible that Belichick is not only taking aim in history, but is intent on going 19-0 while pulling an absolute Sinatra--"I Did It My Way!" ?

Last May's Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar de la Hoya WBC light middleweight championship bout led with a splendid verbal jab--"The Fight to Save Boxing." Never mind that no fight can, with that implication, "save" boxing or that boxing is muddling along and may not require saving. Sports fans bought into the notion big-time and, as a result, the fight last May on HBO-PPV set financial records.

The problem with that kind of hype is that the fight then carries huge expectations. And though the judges deemed it close--a split decision for Mayweather--the bout didn't come close to meeting the fans' dreams of a fight classic. Boxing afficionados may have witnessed an interesting tactical and technical fight in which two talented skillful stylists boxed, though they seldom engaged. Casual fans saw a bit of a bore in which neither fighter looked like he could knock out the other or, indeed, that they were really trying to. To insiders, that was hardly a surprise; retired Chicago Tribune boxing writer Michael Hirsley, who covered the fight, recalls that 90 percent of the boxing writers, in the traditional, pre-fight poll/pool, picked Mayweather to win--but not a single one picked him to win by other than a decision.

So now along comes Mayweather's next fight--Saturday night against Brit Ricky Hatton for the WBC welterweight crown--and it has the potential to be a far more interesting, challenging and spirited affair. But not surprisingly, the public is loathe to get sucked in for another disappointing buy. And that reluctance leaves little doubt that, while Mayweather, at 30, is still in his prime, remains undefeated as well as Ring Magazine's number one-rated pound-for-pound fighter, is a "Pretty Boy" (that's his nickname, as he constantly reminds us) and has enough celebrity now to cha-cha-cha on "Dancing With the Stars", he still has not engaged the average American sports fan. It was clearly the "Golden Boy" de la Hoya who drove the TV gate last time.

At the time of his fight with Mayweather, de la Hoya, at 34, could only be regarded as a former great  with diminished skiills. He rarely fought any more and when, in the latter years of his career, he had taken on elite fighters--Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosely, Felix Trinidad--he had lost. Hatton, by contrast, is just 29 years old and boasts a 43-0 record with 31 knockouts. Immensely popular back home in England, Hatton doesn't appear to be one of those English palookas who comes to America with an inflated reputation built against soft opponents and buoyed by home cooking. He was Fighter of the Year in 2005 and has already crossed over to win his last three bouts in the States.

Most important, he is an indefatiguable stalker, providing the hope that he just may wade in against Mayweather and pursue him around the ring. If there are legs in the hoary, boxing cliche that styles make fights, Hatton's style is somewhat reminiscent of that of Jose Luis Castillo. Castillo fought Mayweather twice back in 2002 and, particularly the second time around, gave him about as much trouble as anyone ever has in the ring. Coincidentaly, Hatton's last fight, in June, was against Castillo and he knocked him out in the fourth round.

Of course, there have been other fighters who were determined enough to try and mix it up with Mayweather and ended up, as Floyd tattooed them, looking very slow by comparison. And despite Hatton's apparent iron will, Mayweather might still be hard to catch if he decides to box and run (and to hell with the fans). But then again, it's just a fight with a chance to be a good one. Nobody's pretending it's going to save anything.; And if it saves me from boredom on a wintry Saturday night, that could be just enough to make it a big winner.

My favorite journalistic feature is the Conventional Wisdom column created by my Newsweek colleagues. What makes it so brilliant is that while it takes its shots at the major characters on the world stage, it is, above all, self-mocking. Our dearly-held opinions are, in fact, ephemeral and what's up one week can be down the next--without anything much changing except public perceptions.

The New England Patriots are a perfect embodiment of the up-to-down arrow phenomenon. Was it just Thanksgiving when the football talk at the table was how the Pats were making their scorched earth way toward a historic and seemingly inevitable Super Bowl triumph, arguably the best team in NFL history. Now, after eking out a come-from-behind victory over the Eagles and lucking out a come-from-behind win over the Ravens, the Pats are overrated, ripe for the picking, destined for a fall and clearly the former best team in the history of the NFL.

I thought it was kind of ridiculous how the football cognoscenti kept insisting there was a blueprint for upsetting the Pats in last week's performance by the Eagles. It had something to do with knocking Tom Brady around, which seems like a pretty good blueprint for beating almost any team. For my part, I just thought the Eagles, particularly backup quarterback A.J. Feeley, played particularly well and that was confirmed for me by his stumbling performance against Seattle this weekend.

However, there was definitely a blueprint in the Ravens game plan. On offense, they challenged the Pats' front seven with Willis McGahee, exposing the weaknesses in the slightly too old and slightly too slow Teddy Bruschi and Junior Seau tandem. It reminded me of how, for all Peyton Manning's brilliance, the Colts' running game was the key to victory over the Patriots in last season's AFC Championship. On defense, they took a cue from the 2001 Patriots as well as a couple former champions in other sports, the Philadelphia Flyers' "Broad Street Bullies" and the Detroit Pistons' "Bad Boys".

They hit, tackled, held and tugged on the Pats' receivers all night long, the theory being that the refs won't call all of them, won't even call most of them. It was reminiscent of the way the Pats smacked around the Rams receivers in their first Super Bowl win and Indy receivers in the 2003 AFC Championship. Though rule changes were supposed to curb that approach, it worked beautifully for the Ravens for almost 60 minutes until the refs finally blew the whistle on the tactics. Certainly the Steelers, who come into Foxboro this Sunday with the added boost of the Pats playing on short rest, would seem capable of employing exactly the same run-up-the-gut offense, smashmouth defense, only with a far better quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger than the Ravens' Kyle Boller.

Perhaps nobody should be surprised when an underachieving team--the Ravens were 13-3 last year--with a Monday Night Football national showcase almost pulls off a major upset. And bad weather or a bad field can prove a great leveler, which is how Pittsburgh went down to the final seconds before beating the hapless Dolphins 3-0 on Monday night a week earlier. The weather factor may haunt the Patriots again later in the season. At 12-0, they have essentially clinched home-field advantage for the playoffs. That has proved to be a huge boost in past seasons when Antowain Smith or Corey Dillon provided the Patriots with some running muscle that made frigid temperatures and an icy field the home team's friend. But Laurence Maroney is a different kind of runner, much more of a dancer, and he hasn't yet demonstrated any "get on my back" capabilities that would make anyone think he can consistently lug the ball down the field.

All of the Pats' likely playoff opponents in Foxboro--Jacksonville, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Indy--boast better running attacks. New England has become a high-flying dome team and dome teams have not fared well in Foxboro come January.

The Bowl Championship Series got lucky this weekend when its #1- and #2-ranked teams were beaten, sparing the nation a Missouri-West Virginia national championship game that only a computer could love. And now the BCS has skirted major controversy by giving fans an attractive title showdown, matching two storied football programs, Ohio State and LSU. from two historically powerful football conferences, the SEC and the Big Ten. And it doesn't hurt that there is currently a rare consensus, that these two teams sit 1-2 atop all the polls. 

Of course, an attractive title showdown shouldn't be confused with a game between the two best college teams in the nation. With memories of last season's Florida romp over Ohio State still vivid, LSU has been established as a six-point favorite. And I suspect that Oklahoma and USC, two hot teams which are headed to the Fiesta and Rose bowls respectively, would be favored over the Buckeyes too. After all, USC was quickly established as a 14-point favorite over the University of Illinois, the team that marred Ohio State's perfect season with an upset in Columbus.

I have already stated my case that Ohio State is rewarded by the BCS year after year for dominating what has arguably become, as talent continues to gravitate away from the snow belt, the weakest of major conferences. This season not a single Big Ten team defeated another major conference team with a winning record. And because the Big Ten doesn't have a title game, Ohio State didn't have to earn its way into the BCS mix, as LSU, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech all did, by winning one additional game against a tough, conference opponent at a neutral site.

But one could just as easily ask why LSU? Going into the final weekend, Virginia Tech was rated #6 on the BCS maze, one spot ahead of LSU. Virginia Tech proceeded to beat 11th-ranked Boston College by two touchdowns in the ACC Championship while LSU slipped by 14th-ranked Tennessee in the SEC Championship. In the new rankings B.C. is still above Tennessee (#14 to #16). Yet somehow LSU leapfrogged Virginia Tech. We may all agree that LSU is the better team, but that doesn't mean such computer machinations make sense. Maybe the computers factor in New Orleans mojo; LSU may be the only team capable of sustaining a party there for the entire five-week run-up until the Jan. 7th kickoff.

There are plenty of other gaping holes in the BCS system. Georgia and Kansas got rewarded with BCS bids for not reaching their conference championships while Missouri got punished--odd team out along with Arizona State--for actually beating Kansas on its way to getting pummeled in the Big 12 championship. But beyond the obvious--that the BCS system is inherently flawed, even ridiculous--I have no complaints. In fact, I kind of relish the chaos emanating out of this season of parity.

LSU or Ohio State will be crowned with the BCS championship trophy. But USC, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech and even Hawaii could muster legitimate claims to the number-one ranking with impressive showings in their respective bowl games. And then the national championship can be settled where it once was an always should be--in the nation's bars where fans convene and debate such things. You know the places: the ones where folks are still arguing Notre Dame-Michigan State 1966.