She Will Get the Dope When It Comes to a Medal

The warning has been issued.

Jackie Kelly, Australia’s sports minister, says that even if the International Olympic Committee doesn’t identify those who fail drug tests in the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, she will do so.

“If I hear there’s a positive,” she told England’s Independent on Sunday newspaper, “I’ll be chasing it down every burrow because it means an athlete has walked off with someone else’s medal and that’s not on.

“We want the real winner on the podium. It’s a poor second to receive a medal in the mail 10 years later.”

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Trivia time: Who is the only person to have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the National Soccer Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame?

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Screen pass: The NFL’s ban on throat-slashing gestures by players prompts this observation from the Miami Herald’s Dan LeBatard:

“These kids the NFL is so interested in protecting are playing graphic football video games in which the players flex and dance and tear the spleen right out of the other guy’s body--video games, it needs to be noted, from which NFL Licensing Inc. profits.”

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Hustle on: Pete Rose, banned for life for gambling, believes baseball needs to check its own house a little closer.

“They can harp on the gambling situation,” he said, “but I know for a fact there are eight ballparks that have big gambling casino advertising inside the ballparks. So if they are really 100% against gambling, don’t take the casino’s money.”

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Outspoken: There’s at least one man who can criticize Minnesota Viking wide receiver Randy Moss and get away with it.

“He’s our owner,” Moss said after he had been blasted by Red McCombs. “He owns me. He owns our coaches. He owns Coach [Dennis] Green. I think he’s entitled to say anything he wants to.”

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Bears repeating: Former UCLA quarterback Cade McNown’s four-touchdown, 301-yard performance for the Chicago Bears in a 28-10 victory over the Detroit Lions left the Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti looking forward to 2000.

“If this was Y2Cade,” he wrote, “Sunday was a day of compliance.”

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Relegation blues: The Clippers’ woeful 19-point half against the Lakers prompts a suggestion from the Baltimore Sun’s John Eisenberg.

“Let’s make it a rule,” he says, “any NBA team that scores three points in a quarter, as the Clippers did, has to play in the CBA for a year.”

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Trivia answer: Lamar Hunt.

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And finally: Dave Kindred of the Sporting News points out what we all will lose with Charles Schulz’s impending retirement.

“No more Charlie Brown? Think what that means. No more Charlie trying and trying and trying to kick a football or throw a strike. This is terrible. Because if you love sports for what sports can be, you had to love good ol’ Charlie Brown. He never quit trying and he knew that trying was all that really mattered.”