HOTBOX

Sporting News, The, August 2, 1999

Since the time of hunters and gatherers, mankind and sweat have been intertwined as intimately as steak and eggs. And since the first athlete established the record for the 100-yard-running -for-my-life-from-that-ugly-T-Rex dash, athletes and sweat have gone hand-in-hand. From the gallons of sweat that poured off MJ's brow during Bulls' playoff games to John Madden's circling how far the sweat goes down the back of an offensive lineman's pants with his telestrator, "Never let 'em see ya sweat" just doesn't fly in sports (or on first dates, for that matter). The folks at Arrid recently released an "Ex-Stress Yourself" survey, seeking the situations that make people sweat and information on stress and sports. One of the questions was: "Which athlete do people think sweat it out the most in his/her career?." MJ ran away with the category with 33 percent of the vote (John Elway and Joe Montana tied at second with 6 percent). No female athletes were among the top vote getters--probably because women don't sweat, they perspire. Still, it would have been nice to see some data on Brandi Chastain. Another question in the survey was on the most stressful sporting event for fans to watch. The Super Bowl, at 52 percent, was first, followed by the NBA Finals at 16 percent. Makes sense that the Super Bowl would be No. 1, especially when you've bet your mortgage on the Falcons scoring at least three touchdowns against the Broncos--now, that's stress.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW: File this item in your "ain't nothing like the real thing, baby" file. Seems a new basketball league, called the ABA 2000, will start up in January. Cities that are slated to have franchises are New York; Chicago; Anaheim; Jacksonville; Tampa; New Orleans; Pittsburgh; Hartford, Conn.; Tidewater, Va.; San Jose; Memphis, Tenn.; and Nashville. As far as we can tell, there are only three things keeping the ABA 2000 from being as important as the original ABA: one, The Doctor ain't 21 years old any more; two, the NBA, which viewed the original ABA as an annoyance yet absorbed many of the league's stars, is more powerful than ever; and three, some things are so special, like the spirit of the original ABA, Las Vegas in The Rat Pack years and The Rolling Stones before they got old, they need not be repeated in a watered-down, '90s version.

MI CASA ES SU CASA: We finally found a story from a college campus that won't make you cringe or think twice about signing Lawrence Phillips to an NFL contract. Scott Howard-Cooper of the Los Angeles Times offers the following: "Jared Jones, a reserve quarterback at Florida State, knocked on the apartment door at 4 a.m., was let inside, asked the female residents to get the futon bed for him to sleep on, and started to raid the refrigerator. He ate pizza, he ate sandwiches, he ate tortillas, he was even boiling water to cook hot dogs when the three women came to a conclusion. None of them knew Jones. They asked him to leave, he refused, they called the cops. The police arrived to find Jones outside--with a package of hot dogs in hand. The students declined to press charges, so the police took Jones home, this time to the right one. `I wasn't really mad at him,' Kerri Crispell, one of the women, told the Tallahassee Democrat. `If I see him again, I'd joke with him and ask for my hot dogs back.'"