Parity

This year's Baltimore City girls basketball championship left a lot of folks wondering how a title game could end in an 81-18 romp. Fourth-ranked Western was used to winning lopsided games, but a few opponents came closer than City did in the final, including No. 10 Southside, 65-44; Poly, 43-39; and Mervo, 61-38. Those three teams, however, were in Division II with the Doves. Only one could advance to the city final. In the championship game, the team with the best record in Division II plays the team with the best record in Division I. The schools are aligned by a blind draw every two years, said Southside boys coach Dana Johnson, the District IX representative to the state girls basketball committee.

A statement was made by the little guys at last week's Central Regional of the NCAA men's golf tournament. The team from Augusta State, known more for the Georgia town in which it is located rather than the level at which it plays, crushed the field by nine shots. The individual champion in South Bend, Ind., was Korey Mahoney, a junior whose only Division I scholarship offer coming out of high school in East Lansing, Mich., was from Eastern Michigan. This week, when the top 30 teams and six lowest-scoring individuals from the three regional sites converge on prestigious Caves Valley in Owings Mills for the 2005 NCAA men's championships, Augusta State and Eastern Michigan's Mahoney will again be looking to prove that there is no such thing as an underdog.

When the men's lacrosse committee gathers in Indianapolis on Sunday to figure out the 16-team NCAA tournament bracket, it will examine Rating Percentage Index positions, strength of schedules and, above all, tournament candidates' wins against top 5, top 10 and top 15 opponents. "Bad" losses probably will not carry enough weight to make a difference, said committee chairman Jon Hind, Butler University's assistant athletic director. For starters, numerous teams likely to fill out the 10 at-large bids have three, four or five losses, a reflection of the parity in the sport.

During the middle of March, when two high-profile teams suffered defeat at the hands of then-unranked opponents, the world of collegiate men's lacrosse felt the tremors. In retrospect, the major upsets absorbed by Navy and Maryland against Bucknell and Dartmouth, respectively, don't look as monumental. Those events appear to be signs of a trend that could become an entrenched part of the game. Remember the days when a select group of programs, led by Syracuse, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, formed the elite, which sailed through seasons without a serious threat from opponents located in the sport's larger, lower tiers?

Fights over two issues that threaten civilian jobs and pay raises already are beginning in Congress just months after last year's wrangling ended. The first, and perennial, debate is over pay parity. President Bush has again proposed a larger raise for members of the military than for civilian employees in his 2006 budget - 3.1 percent versus 2.3 percent. It's the president's fifth such attempt, but so far Congress has overturned the disparity every year. Despite the streak, civilian workers worry - and fiscal conservatives hope - that the pattern will cease every year.

WHAT HAPPENS when a struggling single mother supporting two children loses her part-time job? Like other workers, she is assisted with Unemployment Insurance (UI), right? Wrong. In Maryland, those who are unemployed and seeking part-time work are ineligible for UI benefits. Fifty years ago, Maryland's highest court interpreted the unemployment law as requiring applicants for benefits to be able and available for full-time work. The harsh effects of this policy fall disproportionately on women, especially low-income women, and prove that the state doesn't support family values such as caretaking.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Even though NASCAR contests races on high-banked speedways, it wants a level playing field. And, this year, perhaps more than any other, NASCAR has taken steps to give its Winston Cup series an NFL-like parity. Throughout its history, NASCAR has been willing to tinker with rules nonstop - trying to make sure one make of car doesn't have a mechanical advantage over another - so much so that the specifications have been known to change from week to week. Now, after years of talking about it, NASCAR has finally gone to a common, aerodynamic template.

Parity keeps pulling the front-runners back to the pack this season in what promises to be a wonderfully chaotic finish to the AFC playoff race. The Oakland Raiders started 4-0, but sank to 4-4. The Miami Dolphins started 5-1, lost their quarterback and quickly retreated to 5-4. The San Diego Chargers started 6-1, but have been blown out twice since then. Now, the AFC is set for its craziest December stretch run in recent history. In the 10th year of free agency and the first year of realignment into eight divisions, the NFL has created a mad scramble for playoff berths.

WASHINGTON - For the first time, half of the adults infected with the virus that causes AIDS worldwide are women, chiefly as a result of sexual intercourse with infected men, the United Nations said yesterday. The trend has been building for years but has only now been confirmed through more refined statistical methods and improved reporting of infection with HIV, the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The world figures largely reflect the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, the world's worst-affected area, where nearly 1 in 11 adults are infected.