By Kim J. Harmon

T

he question asked by FOX News the other night – “should convicted felons (showing clips of Sebastian Janikowski of the Oakland Raiders and Marty McSorley of the Boston Bruins) be allowed to played in arenas paid for with YOUR tax dollars?” – is simply idiotic. YOUR tax dollars paid for that new library and new park and community pool, too. Forget it, Janikowski. No more borrowing books . . . one of my favorite shows is Law & Order but I think they got it all wrong. I mean, on that show they actually CONVICT people but, let’s face it, that’s NOT what happens in real life. First there was O.J. and then Ray Lewis and now Mark Chmura. Come on, Chmura is guilty of SOMETHING, isn’t he, even if it’s risk of injury? Gosh . . . hey, who was that basketball player sporting the cool new hair color (I would classify it as cranberry but she told me it was an attempt at auburn) last Wednesday? Oh, yeah, it took me a second but it was Jayme Beckham. Looking gooood . . . the Bethel High School gym sure is all spiffy and whatnot with a new gymnasium floor and new bleachers. Too bad it’s so, er, cozy . . . “THREE SECONDS! THREE SECONDS!” For some reason, fans are so fixated on three-second violations in high school basketball that that’s the only thing they can see on the floor. Forget about the foul on the baseline or the trip or the little hip check that all went unnoticed – SOMEBODY IS IN THE PAINT FOR THREE SECONDS! Come on, the three-second rule is great for college and the pros but how many players are there in high school that can take advantage of being in the paint for three seconds or more? Relax, willya . . . speaking of rules, even after talking to a high school and college referee, Tom Bowen, I still can’t see the logic in the five-second rule in high school. A player can dribble or hold the ball forever, if he or she wants, as long as no defender is challenging the play. But once a defender moves in, the count starts. Isn’t it hard enough trying to keep a dribble alive with someone trying to knock the ball away? Now we need a count, too? But, hey, what do I know? I can scarcely tell the difference between man-to-man and a matchup zone . . . one of the best things that has happened to high school lacrosse (at least in this area) happened last week when a South-West Conference was created for boys and girls. In the boys’ conference there will be Newtown, New Fairfield, New Milford, Masuk, Immaculate and Joel Barlow (right now, it will be between Newtown and New Fairfield who will be the first official SWC champion). In the girls’ conference there will be Newtown, New Fairfield, New Milford, Immaculate and Joel Barlow (right now, Newtown has to be considered a favorite). There was talk a year ago, but it has finally happened . . . speaking of conferences, the South-West Conference football divisions (Colonial and Patriot) were melted down and reformulated last week to take care of some glaring inconsistencies. No more large division and no more small division. Each division (as yet unnamed) will contain two Class L schools, four Class M schools, and two Class S schools. In one division there will be Newtown, New Milford, Brookfield, Jonathan Law, Bullard Havens, Bunnell, Immaculate and Weston and in the other division there will be Masuk, Pomperaug, Bethel, Foran, New Fairfield, Stratford, Notre Dame and Joel Barlow. The winner of each division will meet in the SWC Championship. Since all the Thanksgiving Day games are crossovers between divisions, there will be no conflict with the SWC Championship game which is held the previous week. Makes perfect sense . . . Ron Jaworski, the Polish Rifle, the guy who played quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles and is now an HBO sports guy – he had a high school football stadium named after him once. But just last week the school changed the name, saying that Jaworski never once came back to the town and, basically, never did anything for the school (i.e., donate money or make appearances or whatever). Sound familiar? . . . Don’t you just LOVE the major league baseball arbitration hearings? How some guy who was 8-16 with a 5.62 ERA argue that he deserves a $1 million raise is absolutely beyond me. In arbitration, the player and the team go into the hearings and have to throw stats around to argue their case. The player usually argues that he is great and the team argues that he stinks. I lost my book of quotes, but I remember one player saying, “We had stats that said I was the best pitcher in the league and they had stats that said I was the third-best pitcher on the team.” It’s just crazy . . . What isn’t crazy is the nearly unbelievable balance on the Newtown High School girls’ basketball team. Six different players – Lori Iwanicki, Jayme Beckham, Lisa Masella, Morgan Haines, Ally Gellert and Amanda Marsilio – have all scored more than 100 points yet only one player (Iwanicki) averages better than 10 points a game. That is one of the best things about this team – it could be ANYONE’S game on any given night . . . The NBA, though – that’s nobody’s game. Most of the time, it can be so booooorrrrrrinnnnng. Except when the New York Knicks and Miami Heat play. I think the NBA should give up the pretense that it’s a high-scoring league and go back to zone defenses and the 35-second clock. This should give us a better game of basketball and eliminate the dreaded isolation play . . . You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen someone with a sweeter touch from the outside than John Fiscella of the Newtown High School boys’ basketball team. As this is being written, Fiscella has already canned 26 three-pointers in 15 games this season. Now, that’s a stroke . . . the NBA All-Star game on Sunday was the lowest-scoring (221 total points) All-Star game in the last 27 years (ESPN just had to make that point) but it was also the best and most-exciting by far . . . Venus and Serena Williams, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi all guest-starred on The Simpsons on Sunday night. I was watching downstairs and right before Homer was ready to pull off an overhead smash on his new backyard tennis court, my daughter (sitting next to me) asked me what the boys were watching upstairs. I said I didn’t know – but when Homer’s racquet snagged on his pants and he ripped ‘em off trying to hit the ball there was an eruption of laughter upstairs that cleared up the mystery (of course, they are not supposed to be watching The Simpsons)    . . . One last word about the XFL (at least for this week). That opening scramble for the football, in lieu of the coin-toss, is the most innovative thing about the league and without question is something the NFL should do (but won’t).