Referee

An infusion of talent has kept alive Coppin State's quest for a record fourth straight regular-season title in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, but it was the old-timers who delivered last night's 78-68 win over Florida A&M.With the Rattlers' 7-foot-1 sophomore center, Jerome James, giving Player of the Year candidate Terquin Mott fits inside, the Eagles were forced to turn to the perimeter and transition for some offense.Kyle Locke had five three-pointers and a season-high 21 points, and point guard Allen Watson had a game-high eight assists and 16 points.

SATURDAY afternoon, the warm sunshine of Indian summer begged for touch football, so the neighborhood boys and I grabbed our commemorative Ravens ball - believe it or not, we've been able to score touchdowns with it - and headed for an athletic field a few blocks away. There, we discovered a pee-wee football game between teams from Towson and Edgewood-Joppatowne. It was a delight to watch - until it became "unfortunate." Boys on both sides seemed to have been coached well, demonstrating sound blocking and clean tackling.

NEW YORK -- Heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe and title challenger Michael Dokes share the same birthday, Aug. 10.But last night, Bowe, 25, proved he is just approaching his fighting prime, while Dokes, 34, is heading for boxing's ash heap.Bowe, who as a youngster in the crime-infested section of Brownsville in Brooklyn, N.Y., dreamed of one day fighting a championship bout at Madison Square Garden, made a triumphant homecoming by destroying Dokes after 2:19 of the first round.It was as much of a mismatch as the gamblers, who made the unbeaten champion (33-0, 28 KOs)

I usually hate it when fans attribute a loss to an official's call. Every game is a complex organism composed of thousands of interdependent actions. Therefore, reducing any result to one pivotal moment has almost always struck me as folly. That said, I believe that if referee Bill Carollo had not whistled a 15-yard penalty on Terrell Suggs to extend the Tennessee Titans' fourth-quarter drive Sunday, the Ravens would have won the game. Good professional officiating is as much about the calls you don't make as the ones you do. Does anyone seriously question that, under a strict reading of the rule book, referees could call penalties on every down of every NFL game?

Matthew Swerdloff, who worked in real estate and was a lacrosse referee, died Saturday at Anne Arundel Medical Center after suffering a heart attack while refereeing a scrimmage at Anne Arundel Community College. He was 64."He was the Charley Eckman of lacrosse," said Joe "Spanky" Reppert, a lacrosse referee. "His colorful and flamboyant style, which always played to the crowd, never held him back from making the big call."The game has been his life since the 1950s. He lived lacrosse," Mr. Reppert said."

All the show-stopping incredibility of the NFL manifests itself -- so unnecessarily -- in the latest invention it has thrust upon its game. There's now a special privy, of sorts, where the officials go, upon request, to relieve themselves of a bad decision. The newest contrivance, little booths on opposite sides of the field, resemble outhouses, which were used before modern plumbing came to the country. The referee, in certain emergencies, is required to leave the scrimmage zone, where the hitting is going on, to examine the televised replay of a call that one of the coaches may have disagreed with.

GREENBELT - Aaron McCown, a youth football coach embraced by his team despite a criminal past, was sentenced yesterday to 61/2 years in prison for using a loaded pistol to intimidate a referee. Like many others, U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow seemed to consider McCown an enigma: a man with a lengthy record - including heroin dealing and assault - who earned a community service award from the Johns Hopkins University five years ago for volunteering to help coach the Old Town Gators, a Pop Warner team in East Baltimore, each fall.

MIAMI -- Baltimore heavyweight Hasim Rahman was knocked from the unbeaten ranks by David Tua on Saturday night and lost his bid to become the No. 1 contender for Evander Holyfield's International Boxing Federation title. But, in a strange way, he may have enhanced his boxing career."I don't think Rahman's stock went down in losing this fight," said Lou DiBella, programming executive for HBO, which televised the 12-round elimination bout at the Miccosukee Casino that ended in a hail of protests after referee Telis Assimenios stopped it 35 seconds into the 10th round.

Barring bad weather or a plumbing emergency, I plan to attend the final game of the neighborhood's Sunday afternoon touch football season. I am the referee, the dad with the whistle, the only adult on the field.The pickup teams, composed of a handful of 11- and 12-year-old boys, have played either nine or 10 games this year. No one counted. One game was rained out. And another game was threatened by grass seed.The combatants arrived at the makeshift gridiron, the playground of the Bolton Hill Swim and Tennis Club, to find that portions of the field had just been seeded.

Two weeks ago, Jerry "The King" Lawler suffered a heart attack on live television. In the time since, websites have reported and speculated on Lawler's condition and the events surrounding the incident, which played out on live television. On tonight's episode of Raw, fans had the chance to hear from The King himself, who shared some shocking details about his condition immediately after awakening at the hospital. Lawler did not even remember being part of a tag team match on that episode, let alone the events that followed.