Sports

NEW YORK -- The release of the Mitchell Report this month confirmed an ugly truth: America's got a big drug problem. I'm not talking about steroids; I'm talking about athletics themselves. Americans are addicted to competitive sports in ways that are profoundly unhealthful. And until we confront that problem, head-on, steroids will continue to plague us. Consider: Although every shred of evidence shows that adolescents do not learn well before 9 a.m., U.S. high schools start the day around 7:30 a.m. Why?

As Tiger Woods embarked on winning a fifth green jacket at this year's Masters, he took a moment to reflect on another athlete, someone nearly 10,000 miles away whose athletic uniform wouldn't come close to satisfying the dress code at Augusta National. "Anyone who is a sports fanatic, you are always going to be intrigued by other sportsmen, and what they are able to accomplish. What he's done, truly remarkable," Woods says. "Not only is he winning, but he's also setting records, world records.

Taking a spin around the sports media block while thinking about how much I'll miss all those Frank TV promos: With the World Series beginning next week, expect to hear the wails of protest about how Fox's Tim McCarver overanalyzes a game, stating and restating the obvious. Not to deny that point, but John Madden has accentuated the obvious in each of his network NFL gigs, yet he hasn't been subject to the same widespread criticism. Maybe McCarver would fare better if he had a best-selling video game named after him. A quick difference noted between the look of TBS' postseason baseball coverage and that of Fox: TBS doesn't go quite so heavily into the extreme close-ups of faces on the field, in the dugout and in the stands, meant to convey the high tension and intensity of certain moments.

It happens, inevitably, at every sporting event. Katie Odierno Funk hears the national anthem and her eyes well up with tears. It's true whether she's watching baseball or basketball, but it hits her the hardest, without fail, at the Army-Navy football game each year. She thinks about her father, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the commanding general of Multinational Corps-Iraq. She knows he will be watching, before he heads to bed, as much of the game as he can from Iraq. She thinks about her brother, Tony Odierno, also a West Point graduate, who lost his left arm when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into his Humvee while he was on a routine patrol in Iraq.

The first year into a potential eight-year deal is far too early to nail down concrete trends, and CBS Sports President Sean McManus is far too classy an individual to say "I told you so," but, if numbers from the Hollywood Reporter are accurate, McManus may have reason to do just that.After CBS yanked away the rights to the AFC from NBC last January with a $500 million-per-year average offer, McManus and Mel Karmazin, then the No. 2 man at CBS, said over and over that the network expected to make a profit from NFL telecasts, even if it was only a dollar.

This week's sports talk concerned some of those extravagant gestures fans love to discuss: A goal kicker tearing off her shirt in the thrill of the moment, a right-fielder making an equally passionate -- but obscene -- motion to heckling fans.Perhaps most surprising of all was a gesture of apology: Baltimore Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos attempting to make amends with a season ticketholder offended by Albert Belle's antics.The fan wrote he was humiliated in front of his niece when Belle held up his middle finger and grabbed various lower parts of his anatomy during a June 4 game at Camden Yards.

For all the technical wizardry Fox has brought to the table over its five years of operating a sports division, perhaps its most significant contribution is adding fresh faces to the sportscasting mix.Through Fox, national audiences have been introduced to such promising young phenoms as Joe Buck, Thom Brennaman and Josh Lewin, who have all become recognizable faces to the sports viewer and cornerstones of the network's operation."

In a few weeks, Mark Viviano will regain his regular sleep patterns, but he'll have to go to Atlanta to do it.That's because Viviano, who anchors sports on Channel 11's Saturday and Sunday morning news shows, as well as doing morning-drive sports on WBAL (1090 AM) and WIYY (97.9 FM), will be leaving the Hearst empire for an anchor slot with CNN/SI."I didn't have to wake up at 3: 30 in the morning, but I loved doing it. I loved working with [WBAL radio morning anchor Dave] Durian and everyone here.

More than 40 years later, Hank Goldberg remembers the pained expression on his father's face the day he told him he wanted to buy a car. Not so coincidentally, it was also the day Goldberg told his old man he had been introduced to horse racing.Goldberg, a racing analyst for ESPN, was drawn to the sport as a teen-ager by a friend whose uncle worked at Monmouth Park, and he hit a $450 double on his first trip to the track.Goldberg's father was a sports columnist, and when he told his dad that he wanted to get a set of wheels, the father naturally asked where he had gotten the money.

True to its tradition of trailblazing labor deals, the NBA has achieved something that the other pro leagues have only dreamed about: a limit on how much a veteran player can be paid.The tentative agreement the league reached with its players yesterday still contains exceptions for certain players -- chiefly the so-called Larry Bird exemption for re-signed free agents -- but the appearance of individual salary limits is a first for modern sports."It's a very important event in the field of sports labor," said Roger I. Abrams, a law professor at Rutgers University and an expert in collective bargaining.

When David W. McCreight took over as president of Under Armour more than a year ago, he came to a company that in many ways was the polar opposite from where he was working at Lands' End. Lands' End was nearly a half-century old with roots in the catalog business and looking for ways to revive, grow and stay relevant. Under Armour was an up-and-coming, vibrant company with marketing campaigns that resonated with the younger generation and plans to expand its line of athletic wear. "It was really sort of a once-in-a-generation sports brand opportunity," said McCreight, 46, who said the job allows him to combine his passion for sports with that of running a company.

It was race night at the NASCAR track in Richmond, Va., four years ago and Terri Livingston Kozel and Lori A. Livingston were on the hunt for T-shirts and other gear featuring their favorite drivers, Rusty Wallace and Carl Edwards. Avid racing fans who had followed the sport since they traveled to races with their dad as kids, the sisters were disappointed at each vendor they visited. They found the women's apparel unfashionable, and the men's T-shirts they liked were so long they couldn't tuck them in. "There was nothing edgy or fashionable," Livingston said.

I think the president should invite Erin Andrews to the White House for a beer. But if Mr. Obama wants to include the creepy peeping Tom who videotaped the ESPN reporter naked through a hole in her hotel room wall, plus all the clowns at Fox, CBS and the New York Post who televised the video or ran still pictures taken from it, he is going to need more than a picnic table on the White House lawn. It seems to me that if the president of the United States is now refereeing community racial dust-ups, we ought to be able to count on him to step in when the national media and the world of sports demonstrate - 30 years after the courts granted women sports reporters equal status - that they haven't learned a thing.

There comes a point in every man's life when he sits back, puts his feet up on the desk and thinks: How can I get a gig doing something I love that involves no heavy lifting? Ladies and gentlemen, I have found that gig. So let's get the introductions out of the way first, shall we? The name is Kevin Cowherd, and after years of writing a features column for The Baltimore Sun, I switch over today to writing a sports column. Actually, this is my second time with this gig - I was a sports columnist with The Evening Sun from 1981 to 1987.

The game: : Good defense, coaching were no match for tough Tigers. Sports, pg 1 results: : See how other teams fared. Sports, pgs 6,8 Bracket:: See 2nd-round updates. Sports, pg 8

A junior forward for Perry Hall's up-and-coming girls basketball team, Rachel Smith has been a varsity athlete since the first season of her freshman year. She also plays field hockey and lacrosse and was captain of the hockey and basketball teams this school year. Smith, whose Gators are seeded second in the Class 4A North region, averages 10.2 points and 6.3 rebounds. She plans to become a nurse. Smith also hunts deer with her dad. What is your earliest sports memory? When I first started playing [basketball]

Chipping away at this week's sports media notes so no one slips off the couch from a thin layer of information: * We've seen a flurry of activity in local sports talk radio in recent weeks. First, Rob Long left WNST (1570 AM) for Fox Sports 1370, where he has been doing a 9 a.m.-noon show for a couple of weeks. That meant a regular return to the airwaves for WNST's owner, Nestor Aparicio, in the afternoons. Then, 105.7 The Fan re-upped Anita Marks for another year. And, on Monday, WBAL (1090 AM)

Back with more sports media notes because, unfortunately for you, the tide of change sweeping the country doesn't include me yet: * Anita Marks is staying on the air in Baltimore for another year. On Wednesday, she signed a new one-year contract to remain at 105.7 The Fan, even though she had an offer to return to her native Miami area for a radio job, Marks said yesterday. "I had some other offers, but after it was all said and done, CBS Radio made it clear they wanted me to be part of the future," Marks said.

Piling up this week's sports media notes while wondering why winds can be high enough to knock down power lines but don't pack enough punch to blow all of the leaves from my yard to my neighbors': * Much punditry has been aimed at how the delivery of news on television, particularly as it relates to matters of politics this year, has become far too infused with viewpoints of the right and left. Not enough programs play it down the middle, the argument goes. (Please check out The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik's blog at baltimoresun.

Over the course of 17 races in 1 1/2 weeks, they celebrated Michael Phelps from the privacy of their homes, their excited voices careening off living room walls, waking up neighbors and stopping nearby traffic. But for the most part, the cheers and screams faded somewhere between Baltimore and Beijing. This weekend, the area's sea of Phelps Phanatics finally had their chance to let the Olympic champ know just what they thought of his eight-gold-medal performance at the Summer Games, and no doubt Phelps can still hear the echoes today.