Game on, but is it too late?

This week's top 10 (down to eight after two items failed to make the cut):

-8. Well it's about damn time. Apparently monkeys flew out of several people's butts and the thermometer in hell registered a brisk 23 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-5 Celsius), though we'll have to wait and see if what didn't kill them makes them stronger - the NHL and it's union have agreed in principle to a new collective bargaining agreement to end the lockout.

As badly as the union is getting worked over on this new deal, it might as well dissolve. It's hard to imagine how the players could have lost any more than what they eventually gave up.

And that's the scariest part of all this. What's going to happen when this CBA expires? If the owners were willing to lock out players because they can't stick to a budget, what are the players going to do after they've lived and worked under this awful deal?

-7. Just a little suggestion. I'm the biggest hockey fan I know (and aside from my brother, I'm the ONLY hockey fan I know, but that's an entirely different problem set for the NHL), but right now I feel like extending my middle finger at the league when they talk about mending their relationship with me. However, my love and loyalty can be purchased, so start writing the check, NHL.

If the league and the players are truly serious about making it up to the fans, there is one - and ONLY one - substantive way to do it: An across-the-board reduction in ticket prices. On top of that, fans should get into every team's home opener free of charge.

-6. Fiddling while Rome burns? Kansas' revelation last week that former coach Roy Williams handed out improper extra benefits to basketball players - none totaling more than $400 - is yet another example of the NCAA and its member institutions sweating the small stuff and whistling past the graveyard on the big stuff.

Student-athletes tool around campuses all across the country in Hummers, Beamers and Benzes without raising so much as an eyebrow, but a kid who sleeps on the floor of an assistant coach's apartment for a couple of days while he finds a place of his own warrants a suspension (which actually happened to an Oregon State football player several years ago).

Good sleuthing, everybody!

-5. Chasing Tiger's tail. While everyone who likes to bag on Tiger will point out that the Woods of 2000 would have buried the rest of the field yesterday (despite the fact that we've now had at least a couple of years to come to terms with the idea that it is highly unlikely he'll dominate like that again), the fact remains that the last nine times Tiger has held the 54-hole lead at a major, he has gone on to win.

If I were a betting man - wait … I AM a betting man; better make that if I were a betting man with money - I would lay every 5-pound Scottish note with Jack Nicklaus' face on it I had for Tiger to win.

-4. Growing expectations. Most of the people who suggest that Michelle Wie should stick to playing with other women until she starts winning are probably just finding a polite way to be sexist.

At some point, though, Wie is going to have to stop coming tantalizingly close - as she did in the U.S. Open last month and in her run for a Masters invitation last week - and actually finish strong. She's getting a bit of a free pass right now because of her age, but the public and the media only have so much patience for potential.

-3. Arguing for the sake of it. The debate over whether or not Rafael Palmeiro is a hall-of-famer is just another example of the manufactured bluster that passes for discourse in sports these days.

Eddie Murray was a first-ballot hall-of-famer, without even a sniff of an uproar about it. Who can make a serious, legitimate argument that Palmeiro's career has been so appreciably worse than Murray's to preclude him from induction?

By the way, Palmeiro already has more home runs that Murray and barring injury or retirement will likely finish with more RBIs and hits (Palmeiro got his 3,000th last week, prompting this faux debate).

The only differences I see are that Palmeiro has been a designated hitter more often and Murray had the foresight to spend good chunks of his career in both New York and Los Angeles.

-2. The most tiring story of the summer. Will Larry Brown and the Pistons just decide already? There hasn't been a less interesting story dragged out this long since that Britney Spears/Kevin Federline show was on.

-1. Lowest of the low. Police arrested a little league tee-ball coach in Pennsylvania last week after the coach offered to pay one of his players $25 to throw a baseball at a mentally disabled teammate, according an Associated Press story. The boy was hit once in the head and once in the groin.

The coach did not want the kid - who is 8, by the way - to play in the game because of the disability. Police charged Mark R. Downs of Dunbar, Pa., with criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors, criminal conspiracy to commit simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.

This requires no further commentary.

Andrew Hinkelman is a sports writer for The Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at hink@dailyinterlake.com