FanFare 11/21/02

Briefly

Baseball

A special marketing task force was formed by baseball commissioner Bud Selig on Wednesday following a season that saw drops in regular-season attendance and World Series television ratings. Selig is calling the task force "Major league baseball in the 21st century" and said he will include people from marketing, advertising, the media and academia.

David Wells' personal trainer, Scott Yeckinevich, testified that a man taunted the player about ordering an egg-white omelet before punching Wells at a Manhattan diner. Rocco Graziosa, a 27-year-old bartender from Yonkers, N.Y., is on trial for charges of misdemeanor assault, menacing and possession of a weapon -- in this case, a butter knife he allegedly waved at Wells.

Basketball

Shaquille O'Neal plans to make his season debut for the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night at home against the Chicago Bulls. The All-Star center, who had surgery on his arthritic right big toe in early September, is scheduled for another checkup by team doctors today.

Boxing

Despite putting himself at the mercy of the Nevada Athletic Commission, Fernando Vargas was suspended for nine months and fined $100,000 for testing positive for steroids following his Sept. 14 knockout loss to Oscar De La Hoya. Though the suspension was retroactive to the De La Hoya fight, it means Vargas cannot fight until June 15 and will miss a proposed April comeback fight that was to be televised on network TV.

Colleges

Tim Jankovich has joined the Illinois men's basketball staff as an assistant coach, coach Bill Self said.

Colorado freshman football player Jeremy Bloom said he will appeal a decision in his lawsuit against the NCAA. Bloom, also an Olympic skier, sought a court order last summer. He wants to be allowed to keep earnings from TV and modeling jobs created by his skiing success while playing for Colorado.

Football

Washington Redskins coach Steve Spurrier, trying to reverse a two-game losing streak as well as mounting criticism from within his own team, said Danny Wuerffel will start and get a chance to play the entire game Sunday against the Rams. This is the fourth starting quarterback change made this season by Spurrier, whose offense is ranked 26th in total yards, passing yards and points.

Golf

Funai Electric Co. will be the title sponsor of the PGA Tour event at Disney World, increasing the purse to $4 million next year. Funai, a Japanese maker of electronics, becomes the eighth company this year to join the PGA Tour as a title sponsor.

Horse racing

Computer programmer Chris Harn admitted in court he was the inside man for a series of betting scams on horses that culminated with a $3 million win from the Breeders' Cup last month. He also implicated his two co-defendants, who were his fraternity brothers in college. Harn, 29, of Newark, Del., told a federal judge he used his job at Autotote, which handles most of the nation's racetrack and off-track betting, to manipulate bets during races. In pleading guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracies, Harn said he used one co-defendant's Off Track Betting account to place a Pick Six bet on the Oct. 26 Breeders' Cup "and later modified it so it would win."

People

It's prime time to pucker up, Charles.

Charles Barkley said Wednesday he would honor his ill-advised bet with TNT co-analyst Kenny Smith by smooching his colleague's rear-end on Barkley's talk show tonight.

Barkley's bet came last Thursday night as he and Smith debated the weaker-than-expected game of Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' 7-foot-6 rookie center from China.

Barkley said he'd kiss the above-mentioned part of Smith's anatomy if Yao scored 19 points in a game. At the time, the bet seemed a safe one for Barkley: Yao averaged just 3.3 points in his first six games before he scored 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting in a loss to Phoenix last Friday night.

"I am going to pay up," Barkley said Wednesday on CNN's "TalkBack Live" program. "If you make a bet, you pay up."

-- From wire reports