Timeout

President Bush likes his books and his bike. The leader of the free world was recently quoted as saying he likes to burn at least 1,000 calories during his daily workout. And he has a reading race going with former adviser Karl Rove to see who can log the most books in a year. Rove told Rush Limbaugh that when Bush fell behind, 110 to 94, the president said it was because he was busy being the leader of the free world. My question is this: How does the leader of the free world have time for daily two-hour workouts and to read 100 books?

Peyton Manning survived the backlash of Baltimore. Now the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts gets one more crack at the salty New England Patriots and the elusive Super Bowl. The Colts and Patriots earned berths in the AFC championship game next week with two road upsets in a surreal divisional playoff round. Manning's reward for beating the Ravens on Saturday is a chance to shed the big-game albatross that San Diego Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer couldn't yesterday. Manning will face the team that has tormented him more than any other in his career and twice knocked him out of the playoffs.

Ravens coach Brian Billick offered a mea culpa for mismanaging the clock Sunday. Billick spent part of his weekly news conference yesterday acknowledging that he botched a timeout call in the final minutes of the Ravens' 23-21 loss to the Carolina Panthers. The sequence in question occurred on Carolina's final possession. With 1:15 left in the fourth quarter and on second-and-four from the Panthers' 43-yard line, running back DeShaun Foster ran up the middle for a 3-yard gain. Billick said he waffled on whether to call a timeout because he thought the officials might ask for a first-down measurement, which would have stopped the clock.

The turning point in what many are calling the best season of Chris McAlister's career came two months after admittedly his worst. That's when the Ravens cornerback decided to call a timeout on life. Panthers@Ravens Tomorrow, 1 p.m., Ch. 45, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Ravens by 3

Miami -- If they were mad before Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the Dallas Mavericks should be really, really mad for Game 6 tonight in Dallas. That's cussing, conspiracy-advancing, victory-guaranteeing mad. The Mavericks, already miffed at Jerry Stackhouse's suspension for Game 5, lost 101-100 in overtime to the Miami Heat on Sunday night and then lost their cool in the aftermath of some controversial calls. "The referees are trying to cheat us out of this," said forward Josh Howard. "What are we supposed to do?"

I hate NFL minicamps. The bottom line is I'm a baseball guy. Always have been, always will be. So it galls me every year when the minutiae of the NFL preseason pushes my first love from the headlines. I can accept the NFL's uberpopularity. Pro football is a great television sport, and those who sell it know how to make every game seem like an event. But minicamp? Ugh. That mini-rant aside, I can't deny the oncoming rush of football. Fantasy owners are pondering keeper lists, and mock drafts are popping up around the Internet.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The grind finally got to the Maryland women's basketball team. Seeking to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament for the first time since 1989 by knocking off the nation's top two teams on consecutive days, the No. 4 Terps ran out of gas and fell to No. 1 North Carolina, 91-80, in the final before 10,746 at the Greensboro Coliseum yesterday. Five players scored at least 12 points for Maryland, the tournament's No. 3 seed, which was playing its third game in three days.

UMBC led Vermont by 10 points with just less than a minute to play yesterday, but the fact that the Retrievers had been up by 20 just a few minutes earlier was enough to make coach Randy Monroe as animated as ever on the sideline. And he had good reason: UMBC had never defeated Vermont in six tries -- including an 0-4 mark in the Monroe era that began last season, making the Catamounts the only America East opponent it had yet to beat. But yesterday, the Retrievers ended that, never trailing on their way to an 86-73 win before 2,122 at the RAC Arena on a day when the school recognized nine former athletes being enshrined into the UMBC Hall of Fame.

THE UPGRADED Indianapolis Colts defense was on the verge of pitching a shutout last night ... until coach Tony Dungy and quarterback Peyton Manning pitched a fit. Dungy got a little irritated at the Ravens for calling back-to-back timeouts while he was trying to run out the clock on an apparent 24-0 victory, so he instructed Manning to take one more shot at the end zone. The incomplete pass stopped the clock and preserved just enough time for the Ravens to drive for a face-saving touchdown.

BOSTON - A friend of mine once worked for a Hollywood executive as chief assistant in charge of the calendar. That wasn't the actual title, of course, but it was the job description. This executive had a penchant for filling up her Palm Pilot weeks and months in advance. When the day would come, a day invariably brimming over with "unexpected emergencies," she would order another round of cancellations. And begin to fill in the future. My friend came to think of this as a binge-and-purge cycle.