In Albany, Mark Singelais reports that AFL owners
continued to meet late yesterday in Chicago and "should
announce today" whether they will cancel the 2000 season.
AFL Deputy Commissioner Ron Kurpiers "wouldn't indicate in
which direction the owners are leaning." The AFL has said
that it will have a season if the players form a collective
bargaining unit and drop its suit against the league. The
Teamsters union continued on Wednesday "to try to organize
the players into a union" (Albany TIMES UNION, 2/24).
ISIAH SPREADS HIS GOSPEL: ESQUIRE's Charles Pierce
profiles CBA Owner Isiah Thomas, who discusses how expansion
could impact the league. Thomas: "Let's be safe and let's
say we'll have three CBA teams in Michigan. You can have
those three teams in what we'll call CBA-1, and you can
possibly have a couple of CBA-2 teams, and three or four
CBA-3 teams, and so on." More Thomas: "Will there ever be
one-to-one team affiliations like there are in baseball? I
don't know, because that's a conversation that has to occur
between the [NBPA] and the NBA. If they agree, we'll be
glad to give them twenty-nine teams out of our system that
they can use as farm teams" (ESQUIRE, 3/00 issue).
HAVE YOU SEEN THE NBA STARS TONIGHT? CNNSI.com's Frank
Deford wrote under the header, "NBA's Star System Is
Failing." Deford: "No longer does [the NBA] have any stars
who are popular enough to open a show -- to get people into
the tent." Deford wrote that the league and NBC seem
"determined to continue to place all bets on the star
system." Deford concluded that "any sport blessed enough to
have a divine presence briefly [like a Michael Jordan] in
its midst can sit back and let the superstar open the show.
But lacking that, any sport must have confidence in itself -
- in its sport. The NBA has got to start putting on its
game face" (CNNSI.com, 2/23).
LEAGUE NOTES: In Detroit, Becky Yerak profiles CART and
writes on "numerous changes ... planned" for the series.
Yerak: "CART is evaluating 12 new venues -- proving there's
demand for CART races -- though not all will get events.
It'll add one in Europe in 2001 or 2002, probably in the
[UK] or Germany." Yerak also notes that CART next month
will relaunch its own TV show on ESPN2 (DETROIT NEWS, 2/24).
...In Toronto, Perry Lefko reports that the CFL "plans to
gauge" the interest of Univ. of Notre Dame AD Mike Wadsworth
about becoming CFL Commissioner. Wadsworth will step down
from his ND post in the next few months (TORONTO SUN, 2/24).
