Referee

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.

Aaron McCown, a popular youth football coach with a criminal past, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to using a loaded pistol to intimidate a referee at a Pop Warner game in September in Montgomery County. McCown, 31, of Baltimore, who won a prestigious community service award from the Johns Hopkins University five years ago, could receive a maximum prison sentence of 10 years after signing a plea agreement with the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. He could end up with a shorter term than that, depending on how his case and background are evaluated by authorities before sentencing May 12, said officials involved in his case.

Shannon Troyer and Elizabeth Gordon have officiated field hockey and girls lacrosse games for several years, and each has tried to recruit friends to referee without much success. The women, who played both sports in high school, said officiating was a natural progression after Troyer, 26, played field hockey at Delaware and Gordon, 28, played club lacrosse at Maryland. They love the job and have encouraged others to try it to help ease a shortage of referees in field hockey and, to a lesser extent, lacrosse.

Michael Jordan started settling for fall-away jumpers. Larry Bird missed a dunk in a playoff game. Magic Johnson shoved a referee. And now, David Stern is losing the spring in his legs. The greatest commissioner in the history of American professional sports isn't acting like it lately. On the eve of another NBA season, Stern tossed up another brick, and now we're at the point where we expect it. Two years ago, he ushered in the regular season by instituting a dress code. Last year, it was a new ball that nobody asked for. This year, it's a blanket pardon for all the referees found in the offseason to have violated the rules against gambling.

Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who pleaded guilty yesterday to federal conspiracy charges, is a key informant used by prosecutors to build a case against gamblers suspected of betting on professional basketball games, according to court records. Donaghy, 40, who admitted having a gambling addiction, stated during his guilty plea in Brooklyn federal court that he sold out his 13-year career as an NBA referee for cash payments from gamblers to whom he gave confidential information. Once implicated in the probe carried out by the New York squad of FBI agents assigned to cover the Gambino crime family, Donaghy provided information to the FBI that led to the arrest of two other suspects, the records indicated.

WASHINGTON -- Whether it's a White House sex scandal, dogfighting allegations or a referee accused of betting on games, the rules are the same: Be candid, be reassuring and, most of all, get your message out before public opinion hardens. Just ask Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis, Frank Luntz and Robert S. Bennett. Together, these crisis management experts have steered politicians and corporations through such well-known scandals as the Monica Lewinsky investigation and the Enron collapse. Responding to a Sun request, the experts offered some pointed suggestions for sports leagues dealing with image-damaging allegations.

West Chester, Pa. -- One thing certain about Tim Donaghy, the former NBA referee who is at the center of a federal sports gambling investigation, is that he left an impression. Longtime friend Frank Capece, a New Jersey attorney, described Donaghy as a "good, decent guy who, if he had a weakness, it's that he wanted to give his family everything." A neighbor of Donaghy's here, where the referee lived until 2005, developed a far different opinion. "Tim could change in a minute," said Pete Mansueto, who filed a lawsuit against his onetime friend of 15 years in which Donaghy was accused of stalking and harassing Mansueto's family.

Now that it has happened, you realize with frightening clarity how feasible - and how damning - it would be for referees, umpires or linesmen to be corrupt and how lucky the four major professional sports leagues in our country have been not to have confronted this issue before. The explosive news that Tim Donaghy, who just resigned as an NBA referee after 13 seasons, is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly betting on games he officiated, has rocked the sports world, and justifiably so. Referees are entrusted to uphold the integrity of the game.

NEW YORK -- The specter of point shaving rocked the NBA yesterday with revelations that the FBI is investigating referee Tim Donaghy for allegedly betting on games, perhaps including those he officiated. Donaghy, 40, a 13-year veteran of the league, recently resigned amid the probe and is expected to be arrested as early as next week along with associates identified as sports gamblers from southern New Jersey, several law enforcement sources told Newsday. Donaghy's associates were said to have been affiliated with organized crime, identified by sources as "a bunch of South Jersey gamblers."

Edward Alexander Griffith III, a retired commercial real estate broker and appraiser who was active in Baltimore County politics and earned decorations as a World War II bombardier, died of sepsis Monday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Ruxton resident was 84. Born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park, he was a 1942 graduate of Boys' Latin School. He joined the Army's Air Corps and became a bombardier on B-24 Liberators. He flew 52 combat missions, including the celebrated raids on the Ploesti oilfields in Romania.