After the Patriots surprisingly narrow 31-28 victory over the Eagles last Sunday night, the NFL smart guys kept talking about how the Eagles drew a blueprint for an upset of the Pats by a future opponent. What didn't make sense to me was how they kept dwelling on the Eagles' defensive plan which, despite shutting down Randy Moss and pressuring Tom Brady, still gave up 31 points and 410 yards to the Pats; if there was any lesson to be learned, it seemed to me that it was on the offensive side of the ball where Philly moved up and down the field with relative ease, throwing over the middle and underneath against soft Patriots coverage.

But whatever flaws were exposed, the fans sure didn't jump off the New England bandwagon. The undefeated Patriots remain 20-point favorites over the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night, a line that hasn't budged. It's hard to keep up with all the offensive records the Patriots might set this season. The Boston Herald noted another one--that 20 different Patriots have already scored touchdowns this season, one shy of the NFL mark. (Brady to a just activated Troy Brown anyone?) But there is likely another record in the offing, a gambling mark that nobody in NFL officialdom will note let alone commemorate. If the Pats get by Baltimore this week and Pittsburgh at home next week, they will almost certainly set the record for the biggest point spread in league history the following week and possibly again the next week.

Considering that the Pats gave more than three touchdowns to a decent Philly team, it's hard to imagine how high the line might go when the Pats hosts hapless division opponents, the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, on Dec.16th and 23nd respectively. The Patriots beat them by 24 and 21 points respectively on the road in their first meetings this season. And those games were played before Bill Belichick had new reasons to bear a grudge against his former assistant, Jets head coach Eric Mangini, for fingering him in the "Videogate" affair, and against ex-Dolphins coach Don Shula for suggesting that any Patriots' record this season would warrant an asterisk.

Gambling records are not easily tracked, but the current record for a point spread appears to be 24. The defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers set it in 1976 against the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that would go 0-14 that season. That spread may (or may not) have been replicated in 1993 when the San Francisco 49ers hosted the Cincinnati Bengals. History offers no betting lessons here: the Steelers easily covered, winning 42-0, while San Francisco managed only a 21-8 victory.

It is another measure of how far the sport of tennis has fallen, at least in America, that the Davis Cup Finals will be contested in this country, starting tomorrow in Portland, Or., with all the secrecy of nuclear disarmament negotiations with North Korea. I have no doubt that Portland is excited and will fill the 12,000-seat arena with flag-waving fans and that the hard core will find their way to cable's Versus where it will be televised live. But the typical sports fan, even the sports fanatics I hang with, don't seem remotely aware that the United States and Russia are about to duel for a 107-year-old Cup, the climax of the biggest annual international team sports competition.

I confirmed that with an informal poll of my family--top tennis players all in their youth (and some continue to play a decent game today). I posed a simple question: What major sports championship is being contested this weekend? Among the answers I got were some that were correct--the ACC football championship, the Big 12 football championship--and other wild guesses--NASCAR, men's college soccer, figure skating--that were totally off base. "Not a clue," conceded my cousin Al, even misguessing after I gave a pretty good hint--"tennis". "Wasn't the Master's final held already?" he asked. 

Tennis has undergone a long steady descent here into newspaper agate type and the cable hinterlands. The U.S. Open remains the one glorious exception, having been marketed shrewdly as a New York City festival and celebrity happening. Pretty much everything else has conspired against the game. The lack of an American men's champion of the first rank--Andy Roddick has not proved to be a worthy heir to the Connnors, McEnroe, Sampras, Agassi legacy--is a blow to a sport that has always been boosted by national chauvinism. And the on-again, off-again careers of our top women stars--now I'm a tennis player, now I'm a clothes designer, now I'm an actress--has, despite the success of the Williams sisters (or possibly because of it) made the sport seem almost dilletantish. And this year the sport has been dogged by widespread gambling rumors related to match-fixing. That the top Russian player, Nikolai Davydenko, is a focus of these investigations, doesn't add luster to the weekend's festivities.

The Davis Cup is already a complex, extended and diffuse competition with the locale of its matches determined by a confusing formula. Why Russia, which defeated Argentina in Moscow for the Cup last year, should not get to defend at home eludes me. But the home-court advantage--which is, above all, a choice of surfaces--would certainly seem to be a break for the Yanks (although the home team and the visitors have split the last 10 finals). The Davis Cup, like the Ryder Cup and the America's Cup and Olympic basketball and baseball, is a competition that the United States once dominated--it has won 31 times, more than any other nation--but has struggled with of late. Over the past decade, the U.S. team made it to two finals and lost both, on the road in Sweden in 1997 and again in Spain in 2004.

The USA last hoisted the Cup in 1995, with Pete Sampras providing most of the heroics in Moscow to best the Russians. There is no Pete Sampras equivalent on this American squad. Its doubles team of Bob and Mike Bryan, however, is tops in the world and should guarantee the U.S. team one point. But questions remain as to whether Roddick and James Blake can rise to the occasion, as they have failed to do in critical Davis Cup encounters previously. And, of course, if they do, will anybody know about it?

To an Athlete Dying Young

By Mark Starr 

Among the most conspicuous blessings of the holiday festivities was, of course, the gluttony--of the football variety. I watched all or parts of 19 games, seven NFL and 12 college, on television and capped my weekend by actually getting off my butt and out to the surprising Patriots-Eagles contest. No surprise here, though, I came away with a few football observations.

1) I suspect I’m in a minority, especially after the triple and quadruple overtimes in which Arkansas beat LSU to knock the Tigers out of the BCS Championship race and Tennessee nipped Kentucky to reach the SEC Championship game. Still, it confirmed for me that I don't like the college overtime system. It is not only distended, but is an entirely different game within a game--not unlike the dreaded shootouts to settle soccer championships. By giving each team the ball, it is supposed to eliminate the unfairness of the random coin flip that seems to dictate the results of NFL overtimes. But it still gives a huge advantage to the team that gets the ball second, allowing them to do whatever is necessary to win or tie. Throughout the years, the advantage of getting the ball first in the NFL has proved to be, at most, slight. (Sunday the two overtimes split: Chicago got the ovetime kickoff and marched down the field to score, but Arizona got the kickoff and coughed up the ball for a loss.) I would tweak the NFL rule one way. Skip the coin flip. Give the visiting team the ball first, a bonus for earning the tie on the road. Sudden death is great. College overtime, by contrast, is a slow death.

2) I have already ranted this season about the decline of the Big Ten and celebrated Ohio State's exodus from the BCS Championship game. Clearly the latter was premature Now, thanks to the chaos that is today's college football, Ohio State is miraculously back in contention--just needing a Missouri or West Virginia loss against Oklahoma and Pitt respectively in their final games this weekend. My issue, of course, was less with Oho State than with the other conference teams they beat to ascend so high in the rankings. So I wouldn't be surprised if Ohio State emerges as the betting favorite if they reach the championship game. Still, I'd much prefer to see an old-fashioned Ohio State-USC/Big Ten-Pac 10 showdown in the Rose Bowl. And if the Buckeyes whip the Trojans, everybody who wrote me angry notes can do it again--this time with the clear upper hand.

3) I don't want to dump on Andy Reid, whose off-field woes remind us of the NFL's relatively meaningless stakes. Nor am I a Donovan McNabb basher. Got to admire a man who became an Eagle to boos (when the Philly faithful hoped the team would draft Ricky Williams instead) and has played with grit before the league's harshest fans for nine seasons now. But it seems to me apparent that the Eagles don't need a superstar playmaker at the helm, if McNabb can even be called that any more, but rather somebody who'll run the offense, get the ball into the hands of Brian Westbrook frequently and get his passes off quickly and accurately. As far back as 2002, A.J. Feeley, then the third-string quarterback for the Eagles, started the last five games of the season and went 4-1. Last year, it was Jeff Garcia, subbing for an injured McNabb, who lifted the Eagles into the playoffs.. And this season, Feeley has stepped up again, rescuing a sputtering offense after McNabb was hurt against Miami, then almost leading the Eagles to the upset of the season against the Pats. Philly thrives, behind that huge offensive line, with a quarterback who can run Reid's version of the West Coast offense. Maybe McNabb can find rejuvenation elsewhere as Steve McNair did last season with the Baltimore Ravens. But it's clearly time for Reid to commit to change.

4) The Pats barely escaped the Eagles last night, reminding us how difficult it will be for New England to replicate the '72 Dolphins undefeated championship season. There have already been a slew of comparisons between the two teams. Truth is there is no valid comparison. Not only are today's teams constrained by the salary cap, but the NFL player today is a different species--check out the size of the respective offensive lines of the two teams 35 years apart--and they are, thanks to rule changes, playing an entirely different game as well. The '72 Dolphins, with three super running backs (Csonka, Morris and Kiick) ran the ball 613 times and threw just 259 or about 33 percent of the time. Hall-of-Famer Paul Warfield was the leading receiver for the season with 29 receptions. That Dolphins passing total is a few Sundays work for Brady and the Patriots  Last night, the Patriots barely ran the ball at all--and if you eliminate Brady's three scrambles, Maroney's three run-out-the-clock plays and two goal line rushes for TDS, the Pats put the ball on the ground just eight times while putting up 54 passes. The Eagles were only slightly more balanced, with 42 passes and 19 runs. If it's still true that you've got to run to set up the pass, somebody should remind Coach Belichick.

5) I found most of the TV game calls and commentary during my marathon football weekend perfectly serviceable. But I can't say I remember a single thing that was said, not a moment of revelatory analysis or soaring elegance. Certainly nothing to rival the pithy, funny and poignant commentary that I encountered last week while following the England-Croatia soccer classic on ESPN.com Gamecast. Football or baseball on Gamecast are rather minimalist affairs--strike one, pass to Moss for 10 yards etc. But soccer, with so little linear action, provides a different kind of forum. As the soccer game at Wembley wound down to the final three, desperate minutes, with England trailing 3-2 and needing a tie to advance to the European championships, the commentator summed it all up perfectly in minimalist fashion. Just eleven words: "One goal to save a nation's dream and one man's job."

Like every red-blooded American sportswriter, I am now compelled to follow the best basetball prodigies coming out of nursery school. So I have, of course, been hearing about O.J. Mayo for many years now. It was mostly tales of his prodigious talents along with a few hints of misconduct or, at least, questionable judgment. (As befitting a star of his stature, basketball suspensions were lifted, drug charges were dropped.) But earlier this year I finally got my first real introduction to the next great O.J. in a New York Times article by Lee Jenkins.

It detailed how an emissary from Mayo showed up in the offices of University of Southern California basektball coach Tim Floyd in the summer of '06. Floyd had heard of Mayo but, because he had no hopes of recruiting such a stud to his second-tier program, hadn't sent him so much as a brochure. Nevertheless, the gentleman informed Floyd that Mayo, a superstar guard from West Virginia, had already chosen USC, viewing the school and L.A. as central ingredients of his marketing vision. Moreover, the coach didn't have to worry about any other scholarships he might have lying around--"don't worry about recruiting, I'll take care of it"--because Mayo would bring along some basketball pals.

Mayo is reputed to be bright and academically capable, thus presenting no admissions problem. Still, one might think Floyd would be a little embarassed about this recruiting episode, given recent revelations about problems in the school's high-powered football program. That he might have balked, if only for a moment, after he asked for Mayo's cellphone number and was refused-- told essentially, "Don't call him, he'll call you." But Floyd simply viewed it as a welcome breakthrough for USC. basketball, one that, even if Mayo only stayed a year on his way to the NBA, might finally give the Trojans the prominence to challenge crosstown rival UCLA, longtime home of basketball gods.

So Mayo got USC and both got prominent billing (along with UCLA frosh Kevin Love) in SI's college hoops preview. And the story, by Grant Wahl, was even more frightening. Mayo's idol naturally is Los Angeles Lakers supestar Kobe Bryant, who has actually mentored the kid, or at least offered him some hoops advice. And anyone who has watched Kobe's one-man-team game in recent years knows that any advice he has offered is going to be lousy.

Now Mayo is not exactly underconfident or shy about shooting in the first place. But it seems like O.J.'s team was playing pickup ball against Kobe's team last summer when Mayo, who had drilled three straight, passed the ball to an open teammate who then missed what would have been the game-winner. According to SI, Kobe took him aside and chided Mayo for the selfless decision-making: "When you've got it going like that, take the shot…throwing it to him just because he's open doesn't give the team the best chance of winning."

Kobe does know shots; he led the NBA in shots last year, on the way to leading the league in scoring and the Lakers to a 42-40 record. And Mayo is a quick learner. He has put up 59 shots in USC's first three games, 24 more than any of his teammates. Of course, if the team wins, everybody will be thrilled with his gunslinging. But while USC is off to a 2-1 start, the team's home opener suggested it could be a rather bumpy year. Mayor scored 32 points and USC, ranked #18 in pre-season polls, lost 96-81 to Mercer University. Mercer, a Georgia school, is out of the Atlantic Sun conference, which includes another giant-killer, Gardner-Webb, which had upset Kentucky a few days earlier. Mercer, however, has now lost all three games since beating USC, including by 18 points to Ivy non-power Harvard.

In the 15 years I have been covering sports for Newsweek and the seven years I have been writing my "Starr Gazing" column, I have probably written the name "Barry Bonds" more than that of any other athlete. As a genuine fan of the game of baseball, that has not given me much pleasure. Several years ago, when I suggested that Bonds was most likely a cheater and a liar, I took more heat and abuse from readers than I ever have on any subject.

Who was I, they asked, to pass judgment on Bonds without more proof? At the time I wrote back, explaining that folks had apparently confused me with a court of law, I had the proof of my eyes and my brain and was not required to consider concepts like "beyond a reasonable doubt." Still, I was reasonably familiar with performance-enhancing drugs, courtesy of a lot of experience covering Olympics, and everything I knew-—indeed all reason-—convinced me that Bonds was intimately familiar with those things too. Now there will no longer be any confusion about the difference between a columnist and a court of law and Bonds clearly has far more to fear from the judgment of the latter than he did from anything I or any other sportswriter ever wrote.

It is rather strange how his indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice—almost four years after he testified before a federal grand jury investigating the distribution of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs at a lab called BALCO—mirrors Bonds' pursuit of Henry Aaron to become baseball's all-time home run king. As with that record set by Bonds this past summer, the indictment was a long time coming, but it always had a certain inevitability about it. One can't help but suspect that, with reporters saying only an indictment could stop Bonds from catching Aaron, federal prosecutors may have waited so that their motives were not clouded by baseball concerns.

Bonds' lawyer, Mike Rains, saw it coming several years ago, telling Newsweek and others that the government was setting a "perjury trap" for his client. It was not a concept I totally grasped. How can anybody fall a perjury trap, I wondered aloud, if they didn't perjure themselves? Now Mike Rains, has upped the rhetorical and metaphorical ante, wondering how a Justice Department that can't recognize waterboarding as torture can be trusted to distinguish prosecution from persecution. Before this case is over, federal prosecutors will have to demonstrate that they can hit a curve ball out of the park almost as well as Bonds did.

Perjury cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, especially when words like "knowingly" are sprinkled through the grand jury testimony. In grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonds even admitted using two substances identified as undetecatable BALCO steroids called "the clear" and "the cream", but insisted he believed that they were flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm. However, according to the federal indictment, prosecutors claim to be in possession of drug tests indicating that Bonds took steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. These tests are presumably the fruits of subpoenas that claimed samples from baseball's earliest drug testing, when the results did not count against the players—at least not on the baseball diamond. And prosecutors, armed with records from BALCO where Bonds was an enthusiastic client, have already won six cases stemming from that investigation. Just last month Olympic star Marion Jones, who for years had denied drug use as vehemently as Bonds has, pled guilty to two counts of lying to federal investigators—and later surrendered the five Olympic medals she won in Sydney.

At the very least, Bonds who has managed for years to maintain a high degree of bluster in the face of these accusations, now has something very serious—he faces up to 30 years in prison—to worry about. Far more serious than whether he will participate in Hall of Fame ceremonies if the Hall displays his record-setting ball branded with an asterisk. Now he must wonder whether he will ever make it to Cooperstown and, even if he does, what a Barry Bonds Hall of Fame plaque might say. Here's guessing that if Bonds makes it there, regardless of what his plaque says, fans will see the name Barry Bonds and read, as baseball blogger Bill Chuck has long it, B*arry B*onds.

I'd like to raise a glass of Champaign to the University of Illinois. When the Illini upset Ohio State in Columbus last weekend, they spared college football fans the pain of watching the Buckeyes' inexorable march to a second straight blowout loss in the BCS national championship game.

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Every four years, come the World Cup, fans of  European soccer boast about the continent's extraordinary depth and gripe that first-class European teams are forced to stay home while inferior teams from the rest of the world fill out the 32-nation field. (Europe will have 13 spots at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa).

Europe has certainly shown off that prowess--or call it parity--as the qualifying rounds for the second most important international competition, Euro 2008, wind up over the next week. Which is why the most exciting sports action Saturday will not be the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, with the Rose Bowl at stake, but across the pond where two of the world's great soccer powers, Italy and England, face the prospect of elimination from Euro 2008, scheduled for next June in Austria and Switzerland.

Their fates could be settled by two games. In one, Italy, which stands third in Group B (only two teams qualify from each group) travels to Glasgow to play a Scottish team that is one point ahead of Italy in the standings and undefeated--5-0--at home. If Scotland wins, it qualifies. Then Italy would have to rely on Ukraine to beat France, the World Cup runner-up, next Wednesday. At a minimum, a Scottish victory would assure that out one of the two World Cup finalists will be knocked out of next year's tourney. Italy, however, is famous for playing it close and almost always getting a result when it needs it. And at least the Azzurri control their own destiny on the field.

England is not so fortunate, having lost that luxury--and possibly its Euro chances--last month when it was defeated 2-1 in Russia, blowing the lead and then the game in the final 20 minutes. While England currently sits in second place just ahead of Russia in Group E, Russia has two games left to England's one and is guaranteed a place in the Euro field if it wins both contests. Since Russia is a mortal lock at home next Wednesday against winless Andorra, England's last real hope lies just outside Tel Aviv where a tough Israeli team will host Russia on Saturday. But in an adding-insult-to-injury development, Israel will be missing its best player, who hurt himself after scoring a hat trick while playing for Liverpool. If Russia wins, England is left praying for a miracle parlay: group leader Croatia would have to lose to Macedonia on Saturday and then again to England next Wednesday at Wembley--and, if I can parse the tie-breakers correctly, by at least three goals.

By this time next week, soccer fans may be left contemplating: Is a Euro really a Euro without Italy and England?

The most fascinating debate, the richest analytical terrain, in the NFL throughout most of this decade has been Manning vs. Brady. And for most of that time the conventional wisdom cast it as an updated version of Marino vs. Montana—the greatest pure passer in the game vs. a lesser arm, but the guy who makes the big plays. Manning was, of course, the new version of Marino, with the unkind cut as the guy who didn't—and some said couldn't—win the big one (most often against Brady's Patriots); Brady was Montana, the ultimate champion. What it came down to, in many NFL experts' view, was Mannning's two MVP awards vs. Brady's three Super Bowl rings. And to most of them, with all due respect to Manning, that was no contest.

Last season, of course, changed everything. Manning didn't win the MVP award, but he did win the Super Bowl and one of those Super Bowl MVP trophies that Brady had a pair of. And, even though Marino bristles at the notion, it lifted him past the former Dolphins quarterback to a more elevated perch in the NFL pantheon. Now that he had won the big one, with his awards and records and records still to be broken, might Manning now be regarded as the best ever?

At the same time, Brady's 2006 season elevated him too. He came within a few yards of leading the Patriots to another Super Bowl and did it with perhaps the worst set of wide receivers—Reche Caldwell, Jabbar Gaffney and Troy Brown—ever to play in a conference championship game. That game, indeed the whole season, called attention to the fact that while Brady has thrown to some very good wide receivers with the Pats—Deion Branch, David Patten, David Givens and a younger Troy Brown—he has never had a great one, a true number one. Folks began wondering aloud what Brady might do if he played with, say, Manning's extraordinary stable of receivers.

Apparently, Belichick must have wondered about that too. In the off-season, the Pats went out and obtained three speedy, talented veteran receivers in Randy Moss, Wesley Welker and Donte Stallworth. And the result has forced another revision in our view of the Brady-Manning rivalry. Suddenly the Pats and Colts seemed almost to have traded approaches to the game. And it is Brady who is now leading the league in passing and threatening to break NFL records, including Manning's record of 49 TD passes set in 2004.

Shakespeare wonders, in "Romeo and Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." More than five centuries later, his observations remain relevant, in this case to the Florida baseball team from Tampa Bay. The Bard might now wonder if the Devil Rays by any other name remain just as wretched a ballclub.

In case you missed it, the team just made its splash of the off-season, not, of course, by signing any useful players, but by changing its name, colors and logo. After 10 years and 10 last-place finishes in the American League East, Tampa Bay kissed off the Devil in its name--they are now just the Rays. The ugly green and black ensemble is gone, replaced by tasteful navy and light blue and the symbol of its team is not some sea creature, but rather the streak of Florida sunshine variety of ray.

It would be nice if it also proved to be a ray of hope for a  team that has averaged 64 wins during its decade of baseball (and happens to play indoors where the sun never shines). Unlikely though. The team has some terrific young talent in Carl Crawford, Delmon Young, B.J. Upton and minor-leaguer Evan Longoria and appears to lucked out with Carlos Pena who, after being dumped by three different teams since 2005, hit 46 home runs this year playing first base for Tampa Bay. But ownership has kept its payroll by far the lowest in baseball slightly below A-Rod's annual paycheck. It pockets the revenue-sharing payouts from rich teams, like division rivals New York and Boston, rather than reinvesting the windfall in the team. And until ownership spends some money to bring some pitching to Tampa Bay, the Rays by any name will still stink.

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Speaking of names, Don Shula's name seldom gets mentioned without the word "class" somewhere in the vicinity. (31,000 Google hits on Shula with "class" or "classy.) But this past week in New York, he had apparently forgotten to pack his class when he left Florida. The former Miami Dolphins coach, architect in 1972 of the only undefeated season (17-0) in NFL history, opined to the New York Daily News that if the Patriots went 19-0 this season, the achievement should be marked with an asterisk to reflect the "Videogate" episode.

Shula soon bore a distinct resemblance to present-day Dolphins quarterback Cleo Lemon, scrambling all over the place and desperately backpedaling. He had ignored the fact  that the incident took place in the first half of the first game of the season and that the NFL concluded that it had no effect on the game and, thus, none on this season. But possibly it was the league penalty, stripping the Patriots of a first draft choice, that jogged his memory: his Dolphins were also penalized a first draft choice, ironically for tampering when Miami hired Shula away from the Baltimore Colts in 1970. I just hope, in his apparent desperation to protect that "undefeated" franchise Miami has enjoyed, Shula doesn't next get on the bandwagon bashing the Patriots for running up the score. He might then have to be reminded that his '72 Dolphins beat the Patriots--in fact this very week 35 years ago--by a less-than-merciful 52-0.

Ever since his glorious romp--his 756th--around the bases to surpass Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home-run king, Barry Bonds has had a rather inglorious time of it. He limped to the season's finish--September was a total bust as Bonds hit .233 with just one homer and two RBIs--and finished his extraordinary 15 seasons with the Giants sidelined by injury. Now a free agent trying to extend his career by at least another year, Bonds has already popped off several times, none of them very jolly communications.

While he had originally termed the team's decision not to resign him disappointing, but "a business decision", he apparently reconsidered before publicly griping about the ingratitude of the Giants. After all his records and historic accomplishments, he said, "And then I got fired. Shame on me, huh." Then he took a shot at the Hall of Fame, saying he would not partake of any process in Cooperstown if the Hall displays his ball with an asterisk. (Fashion designer Mark Ecko bought the ball and, after a fan vote, branded it with an asterisk before donating it to the Hall.) Finally this month, he sounded a familiar complaint, that he has been singled out as a scapegoat for baseball's history of drug problems.

I have addressed that issue frequently, pointing out that Bonds not only has been a singular ballplayer on the field, but that he is also one of the few whose close association with BALCO, an illegal dispensary of performance-enhancing drugs, has been revealed in detail. Still, he overstates the case. A couple former superstars now out of the game, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire, once seemed mortal locks for the Hall of Fame. But Palmeiro's positive test for steroids and McGwire's stumbling testimony before Congress in which he would not deny using drugs have made both baseball pariahs. And Jason Giambi, whose grand jury testimony in the BALCO investigation along with Bonds', endured a public tarring over revelations of his extensive use of steroids and HGH.

Still, while Bonds may never shed the tarnish that drugs has cast over his record, he may feel a lot less lonely now--and even more so in days to come. This year has seen a steady trickle of names--Gary Matthews, Troy Glaus, Paul Byrd, Jose Guillen, former slugger Matt Williams and others--linked with acquisition of large quantities of steroids or human growth hormone. And now there are reports--confirmed by a MLB players union official--that 11 free agents, or about seven per cent of the baseball's current class, were asked to speak to former Sen. George Mitchell, who is heading up baseball's own investigation into past use of performance-enhancing drugs.

That report is expected to be released next month and there is a lot of ambiguity as to whether it will actually name names--lots and lots of names. It is possible that Mitchell could simply report that drug use was so epidemic--every bit as widespread as that performance-enhancing drugs proselytizer Jose Canseco insisted it was--that it would be almost easier to name the players that didn't use drugs. Those who were hoping to once and for all sort out the good guys and the bad guys figure to be disappointed. This was never a morality play about good and evil. Bad guys cheated, good guys cheated too; the result is a shameful morass in which the baseball establishment did nothing, cheapening and squandering its most vauable resource, the game's rich history. Any asterisk on Bonds is just a tiny part of the giant asterisk, now established in fans' hearts and minds, that marks and mars an entire baseball era.

Curt Schilling, who had already bid goodbye to Boston, is going nowhere. The 40-year-old pitcher became the first of the big-name free agents to settle his future, signing a one-year contract with the Red Sox. No athlete greets all subjects--sports, civic, politics--with more bluster than Schilling. And while I don't love his politics (conservative GOP) or the fact that he actually apologized to Barry Bonds for one of his acid, shoot-from-the-hip remarks, Schilling brings an unusual intelligence to his career on and off the field.

As a result, Schilling not only serves as his own agent, but also reports the deal himself--with extraordinary candor--on his official blog "38 Pitches". Schilling accepted $8 million in salary, with incentives and bonuses that could boost the total to $14 million. (He gets $1 million for receiving a single Cy Young vote as the league's best pitcher, a wonderful opportunity for a big payday for some sportswriter. Just joking, Curt.) The major sticking point was Schilling's weight and conditioning and the pitcher reveals he agreed to a "weigh-in clause" during the second round of offers and counter-offers, accepting $2 million in bonuses spread over six separate weight checks. Then this: "Given the mistakes I made last winter and into Spring Training, I needed to show them I recognized that and understood the importance of it…I also was completely broadsided by the fact that your body doesn't act/react the same way as you get older."

Even though the defending World Series champions already have five prospective starters, the deal would seem to be a no-brainer for the team. Starting pitching is the most prized commodity in the game and when former Twin Carlos Silva, with a career 55-46 mark, is being ballyhooed as the prized free agent starter in the market, Schilling seems an even greater bargain.Boston is now better positioned to give up a young pitcher if it decides to go after one of the bigger names--Minnesota's Johan Santana, Oakland's Dan Haren, Florida's Dontrelle Willis--being bandied about in trade rumors.

There is no doubt Schilling could have secured a bigger contract elsewhere, particularly in the National League where the diminishing speed of his fastball would not have been as big a factor. He has only won double-figure games in one of three seasons since his "bloody sock" tour de force led the Red Sox to the 2004 championship. But for Schilling, it is a chance to conclude his career in a town where he is a hero, where his family appears happy and where his and his wife's business/charity interests are established. It is always a pleasant surprise when an athlete appears to consider factors beyond the bottom line.

I, like most of my peers, used to view Schilling as a couple stats short of Hall-of-Fame stature, a top hurler who, because he was a late-bloomer, was not destined to reach Cooperstown. No longer. His 216-146 record along with 14th and climbing on the all-time strikeouts list compares very favorably with former Dodger Hall-of-Famer Don Drysdale's 209-166 record and 30th on the 'K' list. What should seal the Hall deal for Schilling is his post-season prowess, a record--with three different teams--of11-2 with a 2.23 ERA, including 3-0 for the Red Sox this past championship season.

Most of the post-game chatter surrounding the Pats' victory over the Colts had to do with epic themes, like good vs. evil, the Patriots vs. history and where handshakes fit in the great scheme of etiquette. There was naturally some controversy too, most of it raised by the winning side. The Pats wanted to know if the Colts had artificially boosted the sound to jam up their signals (the irony being that the Pats had to resort to easy-to-steal hand signals from the bench). And Pats fans wanted to know if the refs had it in for New England (with four pass interference calls--two defensive pass interference, one offensive pass interference and one non-call, all of them dubious, according to CBS analyst Phil Simms). Lost in all this was some really interesting fodder for my obsession with Belichickean analysis. Last Sunday provided a superb vantage point from which to consider Belichick's personnel decisions.

Adalius Thomas: When the Pats signed Thomas, the Ravens Pro Bowl linebacker and one of the two most coveted free agents on defense, less than a month after the Colts one the Super Bowl, it was widely viewed as an expensive response to the Pats' narrow loss to Indy in the AFC Championship. In that game, the Colts made the Patriots linebacking corps look as old as it is. The Indy rushing attack punished New England, with 125 yards on 28 carries, and tight end Dallas Clark ran wild across the middle, totaling 137 yards in receptions. Here was a typical analysis of the Thomas acquisition, this from Jeffri Chadiha on ESPN.com.

Whenever you play the 3-4 defense and you have several linebackers who can remember the Reagan administration, you are bound to have problems…. With Thomas in place, there is simply less chance of that happening.

So what happens on Sunday? Belichick plays a 4-2-5, with a safety Rodney Harrison lining up as a linebacker to neutralize Clark. And what about Thomas, the most expensive free agent in team history? Thomas isn't "in place". In fact, he is hardly ever on the field--only a few defensive series and even then at defensive end, just giving guys a breather. Is there any other coach who would have the steely nerve to devise a scheme for the biggest game of the season that planted their new star's butt on the bench? Incidentally Clark caught two passes for 15 yards.

Adam Vinatieri: New England fans have grown accustomed to seeing its Super Bowl stars--Ty Law, Willie McGinest, David Givens--leave for offers elsewhere that the Pats won't match. But no departure was more wrenching for the fans than that of Vinatieri, the greatest clutch kicker in NFL history whose heroics include perhaps the most dramatic kick in league history ("The Snow Bowl") and two Super-Bowl winners in the final seconds, after the 2005 season. Wworst of all, he then went out and signed with the Colts. Belichick had nothing but praise for Vinatieri as he exited. But there was a feeling in the Pats' personnel operation that Vinatieri's range had slipped, removing the long field goal as an option. Vinatieri's last 50-plus blast had come in 2002 and they teme tried very few (he was 0 for 4 the next three seasons); contrast that with other top kickers in  2005 for whom the long field goal is a weapon, like Neil Rackers, 6 for 7 from 50-plus, Jay Feely 3 for 5, Rian Lindell 3 for 3, Jeff Wilkins 4 for 5. But of even more concern was Vinatieri's short kickoffs, which were continually giving the oppositionexcellent position. That was decidely in evidence in Sunday's game. Each kicker, Vinatieri for the Colts and Pats second-year man Stephen Gostkowski kicked off five times. The Patriots' average starting position was the 30, the Colts' the 19. Everybody in the NFL will tell you that is a very significant difference.

Deion Branch: Belichick's decision not to pay Branch, their top receiver and a Super Bowl MVP, like a number one receiver, was undoubtedly costly last year. The Pats traded Branch and then had to pretend Reche Caldwell was a legitimate go-to guy--he can't even suit up with the Redskins this season--and Caldwell rewarded their faith by dropping two critical balls against Indy that likely cost them the AFC Championship. Branch has been solid with Seattle before being sidelined by an injury this season, but hardly spectacular. With the Seahawks, he has averaged four catches a game for 14.2 yards per catch and one TD every four games. Good numbers, but hardly numbers for a number one receiver. But number one--draft pick that is--is what Belichick pried from Seattle for Branch, himself a former second-rounder. That turned out to be the 28th pick in the 2007 draft, which the Pats then traded to San Francisco for the 49ers first-round pick this year. While the Pats were winning Sunday, the 49ers stumbled in Atlanta and are off to a wretched 2-6 start. So the Pats appear odds-on to wind up with at least a top ten pick for Branch. That would position them position to draft a top cornerback if they decide they can't afford to keep Assante Samuel. Or maybe they will be drafting high enough so that Belichick will finally find a linebacker with the skills and smarts to play in his complicated system. The last time New England picked in the top 10, they came away with All-Pro defensive lineman Richard Seymour. And, oh yes, as the Indy game attested, Belichick has managed to find a slightly better replacement for Branch in Randy Moss.

The worst thing anyone ever said about Bill Belichick, at least to his mind, came during his first head-coaching stint with the Cleveland Browns: they said he couldn't cut it as the top man. Since Belichick subsequently transformed himself into a "genius", winning three Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, the insults have become strictly personal. Belichick is continually described as a man devoid of social skills, whose public demeanor ranges from clueless to boorish.

This year Belichick-bashing has emerged as one of the central lines of the NFL season. Ever since "Videogate", a blunder for which the NFL exacted a steep price, sportswriters and fans have managed to find malice in his every move. As if it wasn't bad enough to be labeled to cheat, Belichick was scolded last week for unsportsmanlike conduct in running up the score—52-7 was the final—against the Washington Redskins and their Hall-of-Fame coach Joe Gibbs. This week the Pats' brilliant come-from-behind 24-20 victory over the defending Super Bowl champ Indianapolis Colts was barely in the record books before my mail began filling up with gripes about his unforgivable rudeness—"thug" was one chosen word—during the post-game handshake with Indy's Tony Dungy, the anti-Belichick who is probably the most popular and respected coach in the NFL today. Belichick blew by Dungy with a quick, extended hand and no discernible eye contact.

I don't believe there is a sportswriter working today—and that includes this Bostonian and Patriots fan—who doesn't like Dungy far more than Belichick. Still, I see absolutely no reason why Belichick should have been any more polite to him yesterday. After "Videogate" came to light, many NFL insiders, while chiding Belichick for his arrogance, admitted privately that he wasn't doing anything that pretty much everyone else was doing in one form another. Yet Dungy, when asked about it, described it as a "really sad day for the NFL", speculated that Belichick might be likened to Barry Bonds as men irrevocably tarnished in the court of public opinon and suggested that, as a result, all the coach's achievements were open to question.

I spent some time with Dungy this past summer talking about his new autobiography and I asked him about his relationship to Belichick. He indicated that they certainly weren't friends and didn't know each other very well But he said there was mutual respect. He said he was appreciative of how Belichick backed him when Dungy complained publicly about an ABC intro to Monday Night Fooball, featuring Terrell Owens and Desperate Housewives' sex siren Nicolette Sheridan, that he deemed offensive and racist. And he said that after the Colts stunning defeat of the Pats in last season's AFC Championship, Belichick was very gracious and spent more time talking to him afterward than standard courtesy required. Perhaps Dungy should have remembered those shared moments with a better Bill before he decided to hang his rival out to dry as a possible serial cheat.

You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone saying an unkind word about everybody's favorite, nice-guy manager Joe Torre. But not many folks found anything nice to say about the way Torre handled the Yankees bullpen throughout much of his New York tenure. The rap, a well-deserved one, was that he egregiously overused whichever reliever was his flavor of the moment, ruining the arms of guys like Ramiro Mendoza, Paul Quantrill and Flash Gordon. Oh yes, and of course Scott Proctor, whom Torre called upon 83 times for more than 102 innings in 2006 and another 52 times this past season before, with Proctor's arm presumably hanging by a thread, he was dealt to the Dodgers. Now Torre has dealt himself to the Dodgers and I suspect Proctor's right arm instantly began to throb.

Watching Torre in Los Angeles will be far more interesting than seeing him endure another tortured season in the Bronx. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the Hall to call, Torre, at 67 years old, puts his reputation and even that Cooperstown invite at risk. After all, he did manage three National League teams--the Mets, Braves and Cardinals--over 14 years with a notable lack of success, an overall winning percentage of .471 and just five winning seasons. His great strength with the Yankees was, of course, his even temperament and his steady hand--and his steadfast refusal to let bluster from the owner unsettle his talented team, which could then proceed about its merry, winning way.

For years now, I have been waging a lonely campaign against that ubiquitous Boston chant--you could hear it at Fenway Park, at any concert, even in church--of "Yankees Suck!" I found it crude, adolescent and, worst of all, painfully inaccurate. The New York Yankees didn't suck cause if they did, we here in Boston wouldn't have had to invest so much energy in pointing it out. It was far more a reflection of our jealousies and insecurities, a byproduct of the perpetual chase that we never won.

Apparently 2004, with its miraculous comeback, wasn't sufficient to retire the chant from our repertoire. That championship had too much of a kismet, once-in-a-lifetime feeling to cleanse our damaged baseball psyches. But 2007 should now do the trick. We will never rival the Yankees history, but right now their fans envy us. The Red Sox are the champions, this time without a a trace of fluke, and seem better positioned than the Yankees for the next championship run as well.

So there is absolutely no need to preoccupy ourselves with the Yankees. And I would suggest we can now retire "suck" from our baseball vocabularly--except, of course, for one thing. The National League really does suck. And it is important to hammer that home--the American League dominates interleague play, hasn't lost an All-Star game for more than a decade and has swept three of the last four World Series--because it is not some random, cyclical shift and it has huge implications for the game's future.