Will This Sport Ever Come Into Its Own?

What would be the outcry in Major League Baseball if New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner also owned the Dodgers, Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Giants? Or from NFL fans if the Oakland Raiders’ Al Davis also owned the Rams, Dolphins, Bears and Colts?

It flat-out couldn’t happen.

Yet, in Major League Soccer, Philip Anschutz and his Entertainment Group own not only the champion Galaxy, but also the Chicago Fire, Colorado Rapids, D.C. United, New York/New Jersey MetroStars and San Jose Earthquakes. And the Hunt family owns the Kansas City Wizards and the Columbus Crew.

Anybody see conflict of interest here? Or could it just be that nobody cares?

Trivia time: Who is the only coach to have won the Rose Bowl game with a Pac-10 team and a Big Ten team?

Sober facts: During the holiday season, the need for designated drivers seems especially important. If you could have any sports personality as your designated driver, who would you choose? Anheuser-Busch conducted a poll and found that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tiger Woods were the favorites.

Earnhardt got 42% of the vote, followed by Venus Williams with 16% and Derek Jeter with 12%. If a golf cart was to be the mode of transportation, Woods was a runaway winner with 43%.

Surprised? Don’t be. Earnhardt’s sponsor is Budweiser.

Passing it around: Joe Gibbs won three Super Bowls as coach of the Washington Redskins and has won two Winston Cup championships as a car owner.

What makes it more unusual is that he won the Super Bowls with three quarterbacks, Joe Theismann in 1983, Doug Williams in 1988 and Mark Rypien in 1992, and the stock car titles with two drivers, Bobby Labonte in 2000 and Tony Stewart in 2002.

Bowl precedent: When Mike Price coaches Washington State in the Rose Bowl game, despite having signed to coach Alabama next season, he won’t be the first lame-duck coach in the game.

Bernie Bierman had already agreed to move on to Minnesota when his Tulane team accepted a Rose Bowl bid for the 1932 game. He was at the helm as the Green Wave lost to USC, 21-12.

Happy days: Paul Kariya, the Mighty Ducks’ superstar wing, on how the Angels’ World Series win helped the hockey team:

“That was one of the best things to happen to Orange County,” he said on “Best Damn Sports Show Period.” “It gave us tremendous momentum when we started the season.”

Trivia answer: John Cooper, with Arizona State in 1987 and Ohio State in 1997.

And finally: The Denver Broncos and the Raiders may be meeting today with the AFC West title on the line, but a fascinating sideshow will be coverage by Raider linebacker Bill Romanowski on Bronco tight end Shannon Sharpe.

Sharpe claimed Romanowski intentionally injured him when they played Nov. 11 and Sharpe suffered a dislocated right elbow.

Responded Romanowski, a former Bronco, “Well, Shannon’s got a big mouth, that’s what I think about it. If he wants to cry about it, that’s his deal.”

Asked if would try to get even, Sharpe told the Denver Post, “If we had the division locked up ... sure, no question. But not now, there’s too much at stake.”

-- Shav Glick