Gregg Doyel

Something's not right with those kids, and I'm talking about both of Michael Jordan's basketball-playing kids.

One of them, Jeffrey, turned down offers to play at small schools, where he could have actually played, to go to Illinois, where he couldn't. In other words, he chose to play in his father's shadow at a school where he couldn't play at all. And then he quit the team in June, only to decide last month that he wants to come back and (not) play after all. The kid's a mess, and he hasn't made a smart decision yet.

And he's the one I like.

This other Jordan kid, Marcus? I can't stand him. He's the kid who went to Central Florida, a school that has an adidas contract, and refused to wear adidas. He wants to wear Daddy's shoes, to which I'd say this: If wearing Daddy's shoes is that important, then pick a school that has a contract with them.

But no. Marcus Jordan insists on wearing Daddy's shoes at an adidas school, and that petulance has cost UCF an enormous shoe deal with adidas, which isn't about to be jerked around by a teenager with an overblown sense of entitlement. Good for adidas. Too bad for UCF. Shame on Marcus Jordan.

And nice job, Michael.

You hear me, Big Ten people? Not a damn word about any SEC conspiracies.

That Iowa-Indiana game was the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Questionable calls went to Iowa. A touchdown for Indiana was reversed on replays that never came close to showing enough proof to reverse the call on the field.

I'm saying it: I firmly believe those Big Ten referees, whether on their own or at the behest of the league, did what they had to do to keep the Big Ten's only BCS title candidate undefeated. And given how bad Iowa was for 3 1/2 quarters, they had to do a lot.

If you're a Top 25 voter and you don't vote Iowa down -- as in, worse than last week -- after this game, then you didn't watch the game. Or you didn't know what you were watching.

Pink shoes, anyway. He's supporting breast cancer awareness. Good for him.

He's on the field before the game looking very Viking-like. But he's not the most fired-up player on the field, or even close. The most fired-up Viking is some idiot named Albert Young, who wears No. 34 and plays running back. I've never heard of him, but he's strutting around and bobbing his head like he's Brett Favre.

Swear to God, this is a true story. I'm here Monday night for the Packers game at Minnesota -- the Brett Favre game -- and the first person I see when the cab drops me off outside the Metrodome is a guy wearing a No. 4 Vikings jersey with Favre's name on the back.

The second person I see? A guy wearing a No. 4 Packers' jersey with Favre's name on the back. Then it got ugly. The third person I saw had a No. 80 Vikings jersey with Moss' name on the back. Randy Moss ruins everything.

Meanwhile, the media is here in force for this game. Name a big-name sports writer, and he's here. Plus me. But I'm the only one writing pregame on Packers kicker Mason Crosby, who was booting 60-yarders like nothing. Apparently he likes kicking indoors. Something to keep in mind if the game is close down the stretch.

Look, Brett Favre is a charismatic football player and that was a great play in the pocket to elude the pass rush and buy some time and launch a laser of a throw toward the back of the end zone.

But poor Greg Lewis made the better play. That catch was friggin' absurd. The quarterback play on that touchdown was terrific, but the wide receiver play was even better. And that will get lost in all the Brett Favre love.

Just wanted to note that:

Greg Lewis made a hell of a catch, even if will go down in history as a footnote to the Great and Powerful Favre.

Lane Kiffin deserved to be crapped on for his antics this summer, and lots of us crapped on him pretty good.

But when Kiffin is right, he's right. Which means that the dude in the dumper today is Florida's Urban Meyer.

After Tennessee put up a surprising fight Saturday, and Florida looked shockingly unimpressive, Meyer basically blamed his team's play on the swine flu. The second I heard those comments, I felt sick myself. Because that's crap.

Kiffin was out of line all preseason by saying stupid stuff about Florida, but now Meyer is out of line for saying ... stupid stuff about Florida. And stupid stuff about Tennessee, too. Blaming that game on the flu was a weak move by Meyer, and Kiffin called him on it this week by saying, "After we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick."

Good for Kiffin.

Urban Meyer was a douche, and Kiffin called him on it.

That's a joke, right? It has to be a joke, because here's the punch line:

Jim Harrick.

Michael Adams, the Georgia president said to be on the short list to replace Myles Brand as head of the NCAA, was instrumental in the hiring of Harrick as Georgia's basketball coach in 1999. That was after Harrick had been fired for being a scumbag at UCLA, and it was after Harrick had behaved questionably -- and later found to be scumbaggedly -- at Rhode Island.

No matter. Adams liked Harrick from their years together at Pepperdine in the 1980s, so he pushed for his hiring. Adams was such an astute judge of character that he waived the school's nepotism rule to let Harrick hire his son, a complete and total buffoon named Jim Harrick Jr., on his staff.

You know how that worked out for everyone involved.

And this guy, this Michael Adams person, is a frontrunner to replace Myles Brand?

Only if the guy who hired Dave Bliss doesn't want the job, I guess.

Myles Brand had the strangest ideas. When he was president at Indiana, he had this crazy idea that his men's basketball coach should be a decent human being. When state legend Bob Knight went another route, Brand fired him. Just took the heat and fired him.

And when Brand became president of the NCAA, the crazy ideas continued. He truly believed student-athletes should be student -athletes. He thought they should graduate. And he thought that, if they didn't graduate, the school should be held accountable. The APR was created, and it has been fabulous. Graduation rates are up. Schools are scrambling to keep them up. Everyone wins.

Brand also thought cheaters shouldn't win, and he grew his investigative staff and unleashed the NCAA's fury on bogus prep schools and other greenhouses of scumbaggery.

The NCAA isn't a perfect place, but it is a much better place today than it was before Myles Brand took over.

The man was an idealist with great and noble ideas, and he will be missed.

RIP to a great, great man.

This is what happens when I'm nice to a school. That school lets me down.

Last week I was nice to Oklahoma State. Really nice. Too freaking nice, obviously, because I wrote that Oklahoma State, after beating Georgia, had the terrific defense to support its terrific offense.

How does Oklahoma State repay me? By giving up 45 points Saturday in a loss to Houston. And so now OSU tailback Kendall Hunter is hurt for the Rice game, and I'm supposed to care. Or any of us is supposed to care.

Forget that. Oklahoma State football committed the cardinal sin of losing horribly one week after receiving nice treatment from me. Remind me not to be nice to Oklahoma State again. Or to anyone, for that matter.

I need a bunny rabbit to kick.

That's right. They owe you money.

They owe you money if you bet on Jets games down the stretch of last season and made your bets thinking quarterback Brett Favre was completely healthy. Which he was not. He clearly was healthy enough to play, but apparently not healthy enough to play well, and the Jets went in the dumper along with his injured right arm. But they never told anyone, not even the NFL on the mandated injury list, about Favre's issue.

They lied, in other words.

Who paid for the Jets' dishonesty?

You did.

This is why I despise Eric Mangini. One of the reasons, anyway. He's a lying, sniveling, smug little weasel who took money out of your pocket. He's all yours, Cleveland. May you have the 5-11 record to show for it.

So I'm reading the latest story on Florida State vs. the NCAA -- a story that makes someone, and that someone is the president of FSU, look like a liar -- when it finally occurred to me what's wrong with this whole thing:

FSU athletes were cheating in a class on music history.

Who cheats in a class on music history?

Who needs to cheat in such an easy class?

If I'm the NCAA, I'm expanding this investigation to look at the entire FSU program -- and to make sure the school isn't admitting non-qualifiers to its school. Because if more than 60 FSU athletes in 10 sports had to cheat in a class on music history , well, that's an athletic department with some really stupid athletes.

I mean, the stress of being smarter than everyone else, and finding new and valid ways to remind everyone else, must be awful.

Not that he's doing a very good job of reminding anyone else.

He thinks he is when he pulls bush-league tactics like keeping the Browns' starting quarterback a secret. But he's not. He has two passing quarterbacks who will drop back and throw the ball downfield. He will pick one of them. Brady Quinn, Derek Anderson, whatever. The biggest differences between the two of them are these: Anderson is a lot taller, and Quinn is a lot better looking.

Unless Mangini thinks the Vikings will try to defend his quarterbacks with high heels or, um, high heels ... it just doesn't matter.

But Mangini thinks it does, and I'll tell you why. He thinks that he, in a similar situation, would be able to come up with a perfect and unique gameplan to defend Quinn, and a perfect and unique gameplan to defend Anderson. And so he's thinking that if he's that smart, well, maybe the coach of the other team is one-third as smart and might also come up with fairly damn smart gameplans for each Cleveland quarterback.

So the starter will remain a secret.

By and large I don't care much how the Browns do this season.

But I'd love for Eric Mangini to go 1-15.

Was the second shooter in the grassy knoll.

Landed on Sam Bradford's shoulder.

Gave Stephon Marbury a webcam.

Stole that video of LeBron getting dunked on.

Spiked the steroid test of David Ortiz.

Took the SAT for Derrick Rose.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth ...

How about that woman? She accuses Roethlisberger of rape, despite a veritable mountain of evidence -- including her own gloating words about having sex with the Steelers QB -- that no rape occurred. But now she says that if he admits to raping her, she won't sue him?

Don't hold your breath waiting for that admission, dear.

On second thought ... do.

And so did Phil Jackson.

Both coaches won championships with Michael Jordan -- Smith at UNC, Jackson with the Bulls -- and yet to present him into the Hall of Fame, Jordan picked ... David Thompson?

What?!?

It's an enormous slap in Dean Smith's face for Jordan to not only not pick him, but to pick a player whose best days were spent at rival North Carolina State. Seriously, Jordan is far too smart to have done this lightly. If I had to guess -- and I'm about to -- I'd guess that the relationship between Smith and Jordan is not good. Otherwise, how can anyone but Dean Smith (or Phil Jackson) present Jordan?

Then again, there's that old joke that goes something like this:

Q: Who is the only man in basketball history to hold Michael Jordan to less than 20 ppg?

A: Dean Smith.

Maybe Jordan carries a grudge.

Meanwhile, David Robinson picked Larry Brown to present him. So a member of the Dean Smith coaching tree will be represented at the induction ceremony. Just not Dean Smith himself.

At least Jordan didn't pick Mike Krzyzewski as his presenter.

But I bet he thought about it.

If this week's polls are any indication of the kind of season on tap in college football, the BCS is about to get embarrassed. Badly.

The Big East, a member of the BCS, has one ranked team ... No. 23 Cincinnati.

The Mountain West, a non-member of the BCS, has three ranked teams: No. 9 BYU, No. 16 TCU and No. 17 Utah.

Yet the winner of the Big East is guaranteed a spot in the BCS bowls, while the winner of the Mountain West is not. That's a problem, if this week's polls are any indication of the kind of season that takes place.

And the ACC isn't very good either. By the way.

I still don't like Boise State, even undefeated in December, as a national title contender. Not when its best win all season could end up being against an Oregon team that is now unranked.