And No Sidebar Conferences

The Beverly Hills Sports Council, an agency that represents such top athletes as Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco, is organizing an upcoming seminar for sports agents that includes as its featured speaker someone who knows a thing or two about representing athletes, albeit not in the usual sense.

Addressing the subject of “Damage Control and the Athlete” is O.J. Simpson defense lawyer Robert Shapiro.

Simpson, accused of murdering ex-wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman, isn’t the only athlete in trouble who has hired Shapiro.

He previously represented Canseco when he faced charges of illegally carrying a gun and also defended baseball player Vince Coleman when he threw a firecracker into a crowd of people.

The two-day July seminar, called “Breaking Through as a Sports Agent” and scheduled for Harrah’s Las Vegas, is being promoted as “a seminar providing essential techniques for success in athletic representation.”

Given the plodding pace of the Simpson trial, it’s unlikely anyone will know by the time the seminar takes place whether Shapiro’s latest representation is a success.

P.S.: I’m Outta Here

In an inadvertent case of bad timing, an announcement was mailed out last Tuesday by the chairman of the Time Warner’s Warner Music Group trumpeting to the music industry his latest hiring.

It read: “Robert J. Morgado is pleased to announce that Richard Esposito has joined Warner Music Group as a senior vice president.”

Later that same afternoon, Morgado himself was fired by Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin.

All Bark So Far

Hoping it won’t go down in history along with the Aztecs, the Express, the Cobras, the Blades or the Thunderbirds, the latest second-tier Los Angeles sports franchise is planning a marketing campaign to raise its profile.

The announcement last week from the Los Angeles Ice Dogs (they play hockey in the International Hockey League) says the team is trying to position itself as something of a discount alternative to Southern California’s major sports teams.

“This team is very family oriented and mindful of the strain placed on families’ entertainment budgets by the other major league teams in the area,” the team says.

According to the team, the Ice Dogs campaign will be “unleashed” in mid-May.

Darwinian Management

For the executive who has everything. . .

A Festus, Mo., company is advertising nationwide in the Robb Report--a magazine aimed at wealthy executives--a chance to spend quality time with a monkey. “Have you ever dreamed of spending a day with a live chimpanzee, but thought it wasn’t possible? Well, now you can,” the ad reads.

Co-owner Connie Braun said that two of her 14 chimps appeared at a 65th birthday bash last month for Arkansas chicken tycoon Don Tyson.

The chimps wore khaki pants, she said, and polo shirts with Tyson patches on them.