A, B, C … easy as 1, 2, 3: get out your No. 2 pencils. It's time for another pop quiz

20 Now that Yao Ming is the NBA's leading vote-getter for the All-Star Game, does that mean we can no longer Put This Loss in Perspective by saying, "Two billion Chinese don't care"?

19 At $18 million for next year, after only $6.8 mil lion in 2004, isn't Roger Clemens a bargain?

18 If you traded Tom Brady for Peyton Manning, wouldn't the Patriots be the best team of all time?

17 When Bill Parcells goes into the Hall of Fame, shouldn't the first thank you in his speech go to Bill Belichick, who built the defenses that won Parcells' Super Bowls?

16 With a football in your hands, is there any place in the world more dangerous than two steps from a Patriots linebacker?

15 So, the 2005 Heisman is Matt Leinart's to lose, right?

14 If Sean Taylor and Clinton Portis can be fined a combined $20,000 for violating the NFL's uniform policy, doesn't it seem reasonable to fine Randy Moss $20,000 a game for the far greater crime of being Randy Moss?

13 How could newspapers make the mistake of reporting that January 17 was Muhammad Ali's 63rd birthday when everyone knows he is 22 and screaming, "I'm king of the world"?

12 When ESPN called contemptible boxing promoter Don King "a snake oil salesman," why didn't he take it for the upgrade it is rather than file suit against ESPN for $2.5 billion?

11 For that matter, why hasn't The Snake Oil Sales Association of America sued ESPN for putting their people in the same sentence with King?

10 That television camera operator chewed out by 6-10 Randy Johnson for putting a camera "in my face," was he standing on a ladder or what?

9 Speaking of Sean Taylor, isn't it remarkable that a student-athlete can attend the University of Miami and not know that J, M and N are three letters of the alphabet between I and O? (He failed to name those letters in a sobriety test when asked by a state trooper to go from E to O. After a judge dismissed a drunken driving charge because he didn't think Taylor was all that sloshed, Taylor's lawyer said, "The alphabet test, to me, is kind of confusing. I don't think anybody's asked Mr. Taylor to say the alphabet since fourth grade."

(Reminds me of a North Carolina State tutor who worked with a prize Jim Valvano basketball recruit of the mid-1980s, Chris Washburn. She said Washburn didn't know the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic, didn't know Mexico from Spain, had no idea whether Canada or France was to the north of the United States and couldn't locate North America on the globe. When I did a column on the student-athlete, Valvano's agent said, "Nobody knows geography."

(Yikes, we have created a world of lawyers confused by the alphabet and agents who think geography is quantum physics or something.)

8 Does the winning bid of $30,200 marked for tsunami relief in exchange for a few minutes with Barry Bonds in the dugout also get you a six-pack of flaxseed oil?

7 Isn't the president of the Florida Senate correct when he says the Marlins are trying to "blackmail" the state into putting up $60 million to help build a domed stadium?

6 And won't the Marlins get it, anyway?

5 With the team's name becoming the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, does that mean we'll have the New York Giants of East Rutherford, the Washington Redskins of Landover and the Dallas Cowboys of Irving?

4 What's the last sport you'd suspect in a doping scandal? (Right. Curling. When a U.S. team member from Wisconsin didn't show for a drug test, the World Anti-Doping Agency suspended him for two years. He said and didn't want to take the retired test.

(But redemption is possible, as Bob Costas once pointed out when ballroom dancing was being considered as an Olympic sport: "It's nice to see it's legitimate again after all those steroid and point-shaving scandals of the past.")

3 Is it just me, or does anyone else think Anna Benson, the former teenage stripper wife of Mets pitcher Kris Benson, has her status as a pop-culture tart confirmed when her agent declares, 'I think of her as Howard Stern with Oprah's heart"?

2 As this NHL season disappears, shouldn't we remember that when commissioner Gary Bettman moved to hockey from the NBA, former Magic general manager Pat Williams said, 'I gave Gary a hockey puck once, and he spent the rest of the day trying to open it"?

1 And Dan Daly of the Washington Times asks, "Who can't remember the alphabet--in any condition? I mean, come on, A, B, C, D, E, S, P, N."

DAVE KINDRED

dkindred@sportingnews.com

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