MY COUCH -- Every now and again, there's a day like this one, so full of blood-boiling sports headlines that you'd do anything for a PTI guest spot.

(Or maybe you jones for a seat on Around the Horn, a sort of PTI cubed, where yours truly has appeared in Woody Paige's stead a few times in the last few weeks. In answer to the two questions I've been asked the most: No, I did not have to overcome elephantitis of the jaw as a child. And no, I am not blind. The lighting in the mini-studio that doubles as my rant-center recalls the surface of the sun, and apparently makes my pronounced jaw line even more so. But thanks for asking ...)

The impulse to point out the egregious, the flagrant and the ridiculous is especially acute in September, the Grand Central Station of the sporting calendar. The NFL, and its countless ways to lose your money and self-respect (Jay Fiedler in the third round? Ravens minus-3?) has finally arrived, along with its band-loving kid brother, college football. Baseball finally feels meaningful, or if you're a Dodger fan, nauseatingly familiar. NBA training camps will soon be open, even as you're still digesting the singular absurdity of our Olympic disaster, bronzed for posterity.

Meanwhile, any day now, another college basketball coach will do something, anything, to besmirch his already-shaky reputation, only to solemnly apologize and tell us how sorry he is that his bad judgment interfered with his true life's work "teaching kids," etc. etc. And the NHL? In most calendar years, right about now, we'd be getting ready to passionately invest in the world's fastest pro sp... well, no we wouldn't, really. (But at least now we won't have to fake it.)

Yes, it's all on parade this month, this week, this day, enough news that one blog just won't do. Herewith, then, a dissection of the fish wrap at your side:

WEEK 1 OF THE NFL

Every year I cover pro football, I'm amazed anew at the power it holds over this country. Like most of you, I grew up watching both games on Sunday, a desperate (and unfortunately Roman Catholic) child who pleaded with his groggy mother to get up in time for the 9:30 mass because, though crusty Monsignor O'Sullivan's fire-and-brimstone sermons kinda freaked me out, at least I'd only miss the first quarter of the early game. Ever since, the NFL has filled a pseudo-religious role in my life -- What Would Vince Ferragamo Do? -- as it's grown into the nation's fervent worship of choice.

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Of course, betting and fantasy football have altered the nature of said worship. Back then, I wasn't drafting church hymns -- "With my first pick, I'll take On Eagle's Wings" -- or betting the over-under on when the first altar boy would fall asleep. (I'd have always gone with the under.) And while traditionalists gripe that such base distractions have perverted our game, I respectfully disagree. No, they've stoked our NFL love, given an insanely violent and maladjusted sport a makeover, allowing all sorts of people to enjoy some aspect of the high-scoring, high-stepping carnage. Fantasy football is, like reality TV and Pillsbury Bake-Offs (you go, Ballard), so very American; it gives us a sense of participation and control, in between commercial breaks. And gambling? I'll bet you 10 bucks most of you will have something riding on an NFL game at some point this year, and that -- good or bad -- you'll enjoy that game more because of it. That's not an endorsement ... just a fact.

And as for what really matters in regards to the NFL? We learned absolutely nothing last week. (Well, I learned that Pittsburghers do a mean tailgate, but I figured as much.) It's too early to throw yourself in front of traffic, Ravens fans, nor should you be gauging the Brownies' Super Bowl prospects, Bechtel. Remember, at this time last year, the Patriots were just trying to stanch the bleeding after losing to the Bills, 31-0. With free agency and salary caps leveling the playing field, the NFL has become, as you'll hear incessantly this year, an 8-8 league. Everyone's still in it, folks.

Except those of you who traded on my "expert" standing for fantasy assistance. You're toast.

BARRY BONDS APPROACHES No. 700

I will tread lightly here, since this unfortunate man's rewriting of baseball's record books has proven, for so many of you, too compelling to further avoid, question, dismiss, etc. BALCO be damned, a growing number of media types -- with visions of "756" surely dancing in their heads -- are crying about what a mockery teams are making of the game by not pitching to Barry Lamar Bonds, by walking him in hopes of avoiding his familiar, insufferable rounding of the bases after the home runs that would seem his birthright.

Well, they're not. See, that's why this record is, in part, so hallowed -- because it's hard to last long enough to have a chance to hit 756 home runs. William C. Rhoden of The New York Times just a few days ago took Diamondbacks manager Al Pedrique to task for Arizona's serial avoidance of Bonds over the weekend, when the absurdly muscled Giants slugger was walked six times. In so doing, Bonds broke his own record for walks in a season, with 201 and counting. Well, what about those other 195 free passes, Mr. Rhoden? Or is it that those didn't come on your watch, didn't inconvenience you with a road trip that would continue on to Milwaukee, where you'd be forced to watch even more bad baseball?

In the rush to forget what a rancorous, toxic person Bonds can be, to pretend that his last four seasons -- which, we're constantly reminded, are arguably the greatest quadrennial in the game's history -- haven't been helped by a seemingly inhuman transformation of muscle tone and incongruous reversal of the aging process that sapped the reflexes of every slugger to come before him, we're asked every day to warm to Bonds' home run record chase as though it were already, rightfully, his.

But regardless of your personal opinion of Bonds' feats, know that I've checked the rule book and discovered this little nugget: Teams don't have to pitch to Barry Bonds. If they'd rather walk him and take their chances with the merely human in S.F.'s lineup, that's their prerogative. The Giants lead the league in runs scored, so it's not exactly the wisest strategy. But if teams decide they'd rather not let the man beat up on the young pitchers they're developing in already-lost seasons, or engage in one of the most self-reverential home-run trots of our time (Reggie Jackson had nothing on BLB), or simply beat them with one swing of his bat, they're perfectly within their rights to do so. So get over it.

NHL LOCKS OUT ITS PLAYERS

Is it possible for a sport to be clinically insane? In what feels like their 496th "work stoppage" (or whatever euphemism for league suicide they're calling this) in the last decade, pro hockey may finally have finished itself off.

Ten years ago, this sport seemed poised to take that exponential next step up the country's pro-sports-worship pyramid. The league was expanding, the hockey was top-notch, and with baseball canceling its '94 World Series, there seemed a chance for a real foothold for the Fourth Major. Ever since, of course, this sport has taken bad decision-making and shortsightedness (I'm looking in your direction, Gary Bettman) to new heights.

Now it appears this "don't-call-it-a-strike" struggle between players resisting the owners' wish for a hard salary cap (Aside: As much as it pains me to admit, I'm with the owners on this one; while anti-free market, a rink-leveling cap is the only way to keep the league competitive and profitable, and doesn't seem to have hurt a little thing called the NFL) will drag on for how long, no one knows. Or, as the sport will soon find out, cares.

THE METS FIRE ART HOWE...BUT DON'T, REALLY

One could argue they never should've let lame-duck GM Steve Phillips suggest the hiring of the old-school, laid-back Howe in the first place. But that was just one of the host of mistakes this horribly run franchise has made in recent years. Passing on A-Rod, missing out on Vladimir Guerrero, moving Mike Piazza to first and back again, trading its two best pitching prospects at the deadline for a half-hearted run at a division crown it hasn't won since the 1980s ... the list of head-scratchers is endless.

But to fire a guy effective at a later date has got to be the dumbest of them all. What does it say about an organization to keep someone in control of its assets that has nothing invested in their further growth, health, etc. (Think your boss would can you and then let you make that big presentation? And if that did happen, would you not laugh through your tears?)

The only thing more pathetic was Howe's response to the firing. "If you know at the end of the season that your paths are going to separate, it's a tough situation," a smiling (?) Howe said yesterday. "But I'm not a quitter, and I'm not going to leave this team in the lurch. I know things haven't gone well. But I'm going to finish this thing out, with a lot of class and my head held high, doing the best job I can."

Yeah, Art, about that job: You no longer have one. And no, you're not a quitter ... you were fired. So take the Mets' cash -- and you're into these bumbling idiots for two more years and $4.7 million -- and go home.

CHRISTIAN LAETTNER SIGNS WITH THE HEAT

What a huge signing. They needn't even play the season, really. Just get the ring sizes for Shaq & Co. and forgo all the ... kidding, people.

You can't get everywhere from Grand Central.

THREE OTHER SPORTING THOUGHTS

1) Forget the length of Texas Rangers reliever Frank Francisco's suspension for after throwing a folding chair into the stands early Tuesday morning during a brawl between Rangers relievers and A's fans in Oakland and breaking Jennifer Bueno's nose. Let's talk prison time. (And, just maybe, deportation.) Sorry, Frankie, but there's also no aggravated-assaulting in baseball.

2) After Ryder Cup captain Hal Sutton challenged his players yesterday by suggesting they'd be remembered for Ryder Cup failures, Tiger Woods -- he of the pedestrian 5-8-2 Cup record -- hit back at Sutton, stumping reporters by asking if they could name Jack Nicklaus' Cup record (a healthy 17-8-2, as it turns out), then asking if they could name his number of major championships (a hallowed 18). Not that he doesn't care or anything. Way to fire up the boys, Eldrick.

3) Red Sox-Yanks this weekend. Woo-hoo.

THREE OTHER SPORTING THOUGHTS, NON-SPORTING EDITION

1) So I almost never agree with the New York Post's onerous Andrea Peyser, but her take on the more onerous Martha Stewart is right on the money. So Stewie wants to do her time now so she's out in time "for spring planting"? Trumped-up charges and unfair-example-of-a-government-witch-hunt or no, Martha's utter lack of shame is, well ... shameful.

2) R.I.P, Johnny Ramone, who died yesterday at the young age of 55. That's three of four band members in three years. Tough.

3) Like it or lump it -- and as you've likely divined by now, I fully embrace my hollow addiction -- reality TV is not the place you normally find much of anything "genuine." That is, unless you've been watching the WB's (or UPN's, or whichever's) Amish In The City, in which five Amish twentysomethings on rumspringa -- a sort of extended spring break, when they leave their communities to decide whether to continue forever with the Amish or live in the outside world (and, presumably, enjoy the occasional rum and Coke) -- live with five "city kids" in, shockingly, a Hollywood Hills mansion. The show, with none of the editing sleight-of-hand so prevalent in the genre, has left me embarrassed, week after week, to be of the "city" that produced the five obnoxious, mean-spirited, clueless dolts. Meanwhile, the quintet of loving, decent, hard-working, well-meaning Amish kids have actually humbled me on several occasions. So let me be the first to say to you, Mose & Co.: Go back. This world's not good enough for you.

AND FINALLY ...

If you've slept on the singular genius of another of my favorites, HBO's Da Ali G. Show, then you're not alone. In a "Talk of the Town" piece in this week's New Yorker, a Kazakhstani emissary takes the show's creator and star, Sasha Baron Cohen, to task for his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh journalist who also happens to be vaguely racist and fairly anti-Semitic.

Roman, my man, ease up. (And you, too, Jewish Defense League, who rapped Cohen for the same character's performance of a song called In My Country There is Problem, in which the refrain begins, "Throw the Jew down the well ...") It's a little thing brilliant, creative, forward-thinking comedian/social commentators like to call satire.

See you next Thursday, people. And to the many of you kind enough to inquire as to my wonderful grandfather, O'pa thanks you. And so do I ...