Deion Sanders

INDIANAPOLIS -- In a dawning era of quick-fix football, the Indianapolis Colts made the quantum leap from also-ran to playoff contender yesterday.They achieved legitimacy with a searing second-half comeback that riddled the Dallas Cowboys, 34-24, before a raucous RCA Dome sellout crowd of 56,860 and a national TV audience.Down 14 points in the first half, the Colts outscored the Cowboys 31-7 over the final 32 minutes of the game, riding a wave of big plays from their big playmakers -- quarterback Peyton Manning, running back Edgerrin James and wide receiver Marvin Harrison.

The natural tendency, during times like the commemoration of an event as significant as Jackie Robinson's cracking of baseball's color line, is to take stock of where we are, what has changed and how things are likely to look. And you've no doubt heard a lot in the past few weeks about how far sports and our society have come since April 15, 1947, the day Robinson took a tremendous leap of courage, the first of many he took.But the distance we've traveled and the places we're likely to go are limited by the fact that most of the African-American athletes who have followed in Robinson's footsteps haven't built on his example of bravery.

IRVING, Texas -- When the Green Bay Packers play the Dallas Cowboys today for a berth in Super Bowl XXX, it will be a matchup of the small-town, sentimental favorites against the free-spending, flashy team that more resembles a corporation.The Packers are the guys in the white hats representing everything that's good about the NFL. They're a community-owned team from a small Wisconsin town where the fans turned on their porch lights last Sunday at 1:15 a.m. when the team flew home from San Francisco.

CAL RIPKEN stands astride the year in sports like the ancient colossus (the Colossus of Arthur Rhodes?).Ripken blots out all other sports stories like some kind of eclipse (or blots them up like some kind of quicker picker-upper -- hey, another endorsement possibility).Ripken is this year's Jimmy Stewart, his lap around the Camden Yards field like George Bailey's winking skyward at Clarence the angel (as opposed to Peter the Angelos).Yes, Ripken is a simile waiting to happen. And, in the case of this piece, he'll still have to wait for a good simile to happen.

This brash young cabernet is a bit raw and unpolished, but it's a lot of fun in its bumptious way. It's not very complex and it needs some time in the glass to tone down, but it has a kind of in-your-face swagger that's fun, though hardly classic. (A wine for Deion Sanders fans?) What makes it work is the flavor -- lots of blackcurrant and cedar. Give it two or three years and it could acquire class.

The TV Repairman:The Fox Network is talking a good game about what it is going to do to popularize hockey on television, but its claims fall down a little bit when you consider it's not even going to begin doing games until April. Hey, ain't that baseball season?After regionalizing Sunday games during April, Fox will skip ahead to the Stanley Cup final for Games 1, 2, and 7, which figure to be staged sometime in June.The net says it's going to go heavy on player personality spots by "taking the helmets off the players," hardly a new approach.

MIAMI -- At the start of the season, when Deion Sanders spurned a better offer from New Orleans to sign with the San Francisco 49ers, Saints owner Tom Benson thundered, "What kind of a Mickey Mouse organization do we have out there?"The NFL now has the answer.It has one that's going to play in the Super Bowl tomorrow.One of the reasons the 49ers were able to do it is the creative way they were able to handle the salary cap -- in part using their winning reputation to lure players like Sanders for below their market value.

News . . . but mostly views:The magazine Inside Sports obviously took the name seriously in its October issue (already?). It goes inside a prison in Indiana and has ex-quarterback Art Schlichter, who has been incarcerated for about 10 months now, author a piece on his seemingly never-ending gambling problems, which started here as a Baltimore Colts rookie in 1982.* Elsewhere on the gambling front, the folks who are trying to get unrestricted casino gambling approved for the state of Washington have made a brilliant move: Everyone who votes on the referendum in an upcoming election will get a dividend from 10 percent of the profits taken in by slot machines, an amount projected to be upward of $100.

New spring league suspends operationsJust 2 1/2 weeks before opening day, the Professional Spring Football League has suspended operations because of a money crunch, commissioner Rex Lardner said yesterday.Lardner said officials from the new 10-team league, which includes the Washington Marauders, need about $1 million by Monday. Meetings with potential investors are planned for the next three days.He said that if the league cannot start this season, it may begin in 1993.* Deion Sanders says he will reveal tomorrow which of his two Atlanta sports -- baseball or football -- he will make a full-time career.

He has a tattoo of Donald Duck on his right shoulder blade. He lists Deion Sanders and Jim Thorpe as the only professional football players he admires. And his nickname has little to do with being from Texas.Gabriel "Tex" DeLeon is not a typical high school junior, and he's not a typical high school football player.A 5-foot-8, 168-pound running back and defensive back at Towson High, DeLeon has rushed for 752 yards on 65 carries and has scored four touchdowns this season. His 242 yards on a muddy field at Loch Raven last Friday marked his third straight 200-yard game.

Every team in the NFL covets speed. Al Davis can't get enough of it. Wide receivers have to have it. Defensive backs' job security depends on it. The best teams all have it in generous supply. The teams that don't, all draft high. The Ravens, who have their share, are always trying to procure more. This offseason, they signed free agent Domonique Foxworth, one of the fastest cornerbacks in the league, to join Fabian Washington, who once ran the 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds, in the secondary.

Hordes of unruly celebrity worshippers have never been a problem at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. No swooning teens, no throngs of paparazzi. In fact, it's pretty safe to say the threat to public order posed by celebrities traveling through the airport is probably next to nothing. Finally, we know why. Turns out the Maryland Transportation Authority Police are on top of that action. A half-dozen officers have been trained to provide an armed escort to celebrities and other dignitaries as a free service to assist their travels.

It's more than midway through January and I think we've all finally recovered from year-in-review features plastered throughout the media. We're all forward-thinkers, right, so it's time we start to look ahead. Goodbye 2005, hello 2006. Lucky for you, I've seen the script and can provide you this sneak preview of just what they'll be saying. ... Feb. 1: "I've sincerely enjoyed my time with the Ravens' organization, but it's time for me to pursue other endeavors. The Olympics are later this month and I have a curling dream to fulfill."

In a twisted way, Ravens coach Brian Billick is viewing the predicament his team is in - and the overwhelming league history that dictates this season will be nothing special - an unexpected, but not wholly dreaded, challenge. Since 1990, only 17 of the 121 teams that have lost their first two games have made the playoffs, or roughly 14 percent. Granted, the Ravens, with three former Defensive Player of the Year award winners (Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Deion Sanders) and a former 2,000-yard rusher in Jamal Lewis, figure to be more talented than the vast majority of those teams, but that has not been evident on the field yet, especially in Sunday's 25-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans.

NFL Injury Report Sunday's games Ravens at Tennessee RAVENS: Out: QB Kyle Boller (foot). Questionable: WR Devard Darling (thigh); CB Deion Sanders (thigh); LB Terrell Suggs (back); TE Daniel Wilcox (hip). Probable: LB Peter Boulware (knee); TE Todd Heap (foot); RB Jamal Lewis (finger); S Ed Reed (thigh). TITANS: Questionable: LB Keith Bulluck (calf); T Brad Hopkins (knee); DE Antwan Odom (knee); LB Cody Spencer (abdomen); TE Ben Troupe (foot/ankle). Detroit at Chicago LIONS: Out: QB Jeff Garcia (ankle)

Flanked by two teammates with Louisiana ties - Ed Reed and Alan Ricard - Ravens cornerback Deion Sanders challenged his professional sports colleagues to donate $1,000 to help with the relief effort from the wreckage caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Sanders asked each team from the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL to elect a captain to serve as the point man in collecting the money. Sanders said he will oversee the project, and his goal is to give at least $1.5 million from the NFL players alone to the Red Cross.

NEW ORLEANS - Maybe the most telling moment of the preseason for the Ravens' defense came midway through the second quarter. After giving up a 47-yard reception to the Saints down to the Ravens 18-yard line, the Ravens held New Orleans to 10 yards on the next five plays. The Saints had to settle for a 28-yard field goal from Nate Fikse, leaving middle linebacker Ray Lewis and safety Ed Reed high-fiving and celebrating in the end zone. First-year coordinator Rex Ryan has added some personal touches to the defense for 2005, but that unit for the Ravens remains dominant heading into the regular season after last night's 21-6 win over the Saints at the Superdome in preseason game No. 3. This group is more fun to watch than in previous years because Ryan has so many toys and schemes.

As Dale Carter prepares to resume a career that could have been finished at least three times before, the Ravens cornerback does so with one minor concern. Just how will, after all this time off, the lungs hold up? Mercifully, Carter can relate that solely to whether he is in football shape and not a blood clot in that area that nearly cost him his life last year. "I have to go out there and control myself," said Carter, who figures to play in his first game since the middle of the 2003 season when the Ravens play the Saints in New Orleans on Friday.

Ravens camp update Reunion time: It was alumni day for the Ravens, who hosted former defensive linemen Rob Burnett and Michael McCrary in the afternoon practice. Both players were key parts of the record-setting 2000 defense. Maryland men's basketball coach Gary Williams also attended the session. More Moore: Clarence Moore followed up a solid practice Wednesday with an even better one yesterday, beating Chris McAlister for touchdowns twice in one-on-one drills, then out-jumping Bill Alford on a fade route for a touchdown during full-team drills.

Re-acclimate Jamal Lewis to football. For the first time this year, Lewis will catch a break. The Ravens have stressed patience in light of his turbulent offseason and intend to bring him along slowly. The 2003 NFL Offensive Player of the Year spent four months of the offseason in a federal prison and the past two in an Atlanta halfway house after pleading guilty to using a cell phone to try to set up a 2000 cocaine deal. Lewis is expected to report to camp a few days late to finish out his sentence and likely will be limited until the team can gauge his physical status.