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Trouble ahead?

Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post, on Lawrence Phillips’ planning to play in the NFL’s European league: “The Autobahn just got more dangerous.”

He’ll probably get detoured by the law.

It’s still a man’s sportsworld

Women did not fare very well on The Sporting News list of the 100 most powerful people in sports.

Just six women made the list released Tuesday, and none higher than No. 46, Anita DeFrantz, who is a vice president of the International Olympic Committee.

Other women on the list were No. 71, Sara Levinson, president of NFL Properties; No. 88, Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation; No. 90, pro golfer Se Ri Pak; No. 96, Val Ackerman, president of the WNBA; and No. 98, Sandra Ortiz-Del Valle, a teacher-coach at Humanities High School in New York City.

Michael Jordan, who was No. 1 last year, slipped to No. 4 with the top spot going to media mogul Ruper Murdoch.

Only six of the 100 places on the list went to athletes and one place did not even go to a human. No. 100 was awarded to Glory, a Beanie Baby.

Give this guy the gold for gall

In the years before Salt Lake City won the 2002 Winter Games, its bid committee paid for college educations for six relatives of members of the International Olympic Committee.

Salt Lake Organizing Committee officials insisted, however, that the bid committee’s privately funded $500,000 “humanitarian assistance” fund was not set up as a mechanism to buy the votes of IOC members as they looked to Salt Lake in 1991 and 1995 as the potential site of the Games.

“This was such a minute part of that effort, that to stretch it to a campaign of vote influencing rather than a campaign to work in the spirit of the Olympic movement, I don’t think is justified,” said SLOC President Frank Joklik.

SLOC officials on Tuesday provided general details of the fund, which operated between 1991 - the year Salt Lake lost the bid for the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, Japan - and 1995, when it was awarded the 2002 bid. Joklik said that, in all, 13 individuals were given scholarships or athletic training.

Six of them were “direct relatives” of IOC members, mostly from Africa.

Joklik insisted the fund was set up to aid athletes and give a leg-up to future leaders in poor countries.

But he acknowledged that it is likely that the IOC relatives who received money likely were from well-to-do and influential families that would be in a better position than most in Africa.

With paid friends like these …

Steve Rosenbloom in the Chicago Tribune: “Montreal Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur ripped Canadien players as overpaid, lacking in pride and being ‘just one of 27 teams in the league.’ “Lafleur still draws a paycheck from the Canadiens - as a public relations ambassador.”

The last word …

“I can remember when the total purse for the tournament was $100,000. Now, we couldn’t get the caddie to come for that much.”

- Byron Nelson, on the purse of GTE Byron Nelson Classic increasing to $3 million.