Thoughts on Gov. Corzine, NFL policy, Hall of Fame

	Jon Corzine's crash on the Garden State Parkway broke the governor's leg, six ribs, his sternum and fractured a vertebra. AP
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The year was 1968. I was covering the summer Olympics in Mexico City and I was on my way to one of the venues, driving on the Pereferique, the freeway that ringed the city. All of a sudden there was this tremendous commotion of horns and sirens and flashing lights behind me. I thought it surely must be an ambulance or a hospital emergency and pulled the wheel right, hitting the shoulder of the road and nearly flipping.

It was the official entourage of Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee, on his way to some event or other. Eyes staring straight ahead, famous granite jaw set, Brundage sat there like a potentate in the flag-draped limousine. Away they went.

I started up again, and less than two minutes later there was an outburst of similar activity across the highway, coming back at me in the opposite direction. It was the same entourage. It had taken a wrong turn and was backtracking, with the same turbulence, as cars frantically tried to get out of the way of this maelstrom. And there was Brundage in the same pose, eyes locked straight ahead, etc.

I wrote a piece about it later in the tournament, after Brundage had come down on John Carlos and Tommie Smith with full fury and kicked them out of the Olympics. Avery Brundage. On his way to nowhere.

I bring all this up in answer to a letter from Bob in Mount Pocono, Pa. He wanted to know why the prompt meeting with Don Imus and the Rutgers basketball team was so important that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's entourage nearly killed the governor and a highway full of vehicles the other day. Honestly, I don't know, but all I can tell you is that these displays of highway lunacy scare the hell out of me, and I don't consider myself a timid driver.

This isn't meant as a rip of the governor ... poor guy, he's in an awful amount of pain. It's just that ... well, Mayor Bloomberg in New York has stripped his official city vehicles of flashers and sirens, after he caught one of his aides using them to beat the traffic home. In case you haven't heard the revised story involving Governor Corzine's accident, this is what has come out:

The accident occurred on a two-lane stretch of the Garden State Parkway, and from experience I can tell you that it's an old road that really should be widened. A white vehicle was in the left lane, a red van was next to it. The motorcade, traveling at 91 mph, was racing up the passing lane, bearing down on the white car, which moved over to its right. The red van was forced off the side of the road, much as I was in Mexico City. If it would have stayed on the shoulder it would have hit a mile marker, so it came back on the highway, causing the white van to veer left, forcing the governor's car to hit the rail. In other words, the motorcade literally ran a car off the road, causing the accident. If it would have been an older person involved, someone a little shaky behind the wheel perhaps, there could easily have been one or more deaths.

In answer to your question, No, Imus and his apology were not that important.

Newsflash No. 1, from Big Nate in Phoenix -- Viking cornerback Cedric Griffin is busted for wearing his pants too low in a Nightclub. Your comment, please.

Hey, what do you want from the guy? He was just hangin' out.

Newsflash No. 2, from John the Builder in Elk, Calif. -- How can the league fine Brian Urlacher $100,000 for wearing the wrong gear when mayhem on the field costs a player one-tenth as much?

It's all business, as Don Vito said. I don't know for sure exactly what happened, but an educated guess is that his sponsor, vitaminwater, told him to flash the stuff around during Super Bowl media day, and when the league fines him for not sticking with its own endorsed product, Gatorade, the company would cover. It's called free advertising. Worth the amount of the fine. So the NFL was really taking a bite out of the company, which was screwing with them, not the player.