01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 25, 2004

Three mini-columns for the price of one . . .

MOUNT ST. CHARLES

So now it's over, this streak that was so much a part of Rhode Island sports history. Twenty-six years is an an unbelievable string, and that's the problem. It's too unbelievable.

For the Mount streak always has been complicated. For all its notoriety, it pointed out the idisosyncratic nature of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, in which the built-in advantages of the parochial schools have long been apparent. It pointed out the inherent advantage of the Mount -- with its own rink, its tradition, the sense that Mount has long been a magnet, luring kids from all over.

And the irony?

Winning something 26 times invalidates it. Winning something 26 times only serves to show the inequities in the system. Winning something 26 times only demonstrates how uneven the playing field has been. I first wrote this in 1989 when Mount had just won its 12th straight title, under a title that said, "What does Mount's 12th title prove?"

Which is not to take away from the individual accomplishments of the coaches and players through the years. Winning is never easy, regardless of the built-in advantages. There were times when Mount was not the best team, but won anyway.

Still, it was time for this to end. It long ago took on a life of its own, the Mount players playing not so much to win the state title but to not be the team that ended the streak, the streak hovering over every final series like some tired old ghost. Even now, the story was not Toll Gate winning, but Mount losing. For almost a couple of decades now the only real story of the schoolboy hockey season around here has been Mount and its streak.

That's unfortunate.

But now it's over, and I suspect we're all going to be better off for it.

TY LAW

Pardon me if my eyes glaze over with this Ty Law contract dispute, this football version of he said, she said. We've seen this all before, of course. It's become as much a part of professional sports as agents and salary caps and other things that belong on the business page. It's all the same script: player wants new contract, then gets in a huff when the team doesn't want to give it to him. Ho hum.

So this would all be business as usual except for one thing. Law has done what so many athletes now do -- treat this fantasyland as if it's real life.

Do you remember his statement that he has to eat?

Think about that remark for a second.

Here is someone who makes roughly $9 million a year saying he has to eat. Think about that the next time you have to fork over half a mortgage payment to buy a couple of tickets to a Pats game. Think about that the next time you take a look at your paycheck.

Don't misunderstand. It's not the fact that Law wants more money that's objectionable. It's the fact he somehow thinks he deserves it, somehow thinks he's going to generate a groundswell of public sympathy for his cause, the fact he decided to go public with this whine. The fact he resorted to that tired old saw that the Patriots somehow "disrespected" him.

Spare me.

What Law should do is apologize to every Pats fan. Then he should get down on his hands and knees and thank the football gods he's fortunate enough to live in a society so warped, one whose priorities are do distorted that it pays people millions of dollars to play a game that little kids play for free.

ALLEN IVERSON

Can we have an NBA season without AI in a controversy?

Apparently not.

This time, it's Iverson feuding with interim coach Chris Ford, a classic clash if there ever was one. If it's not Iverson becoming offended when Ford didn't start him, it's Iverson again having issues with practice and being on time. But those are just the specifics.

This is a culture clash, a microcosm of the old NBA and the new NBA. To Ford, being on time is important. How you practice is important. How you conduct yourself is important. For he's a product of a time when all that was part of what it meant to be on a team.

To Iverson, though, these things are irrelevencies. What's important is what you do in the game. What's important is if a coach respects you. All the rest is basketball foreplay, nothing more than coach-speak. Iverson has always been a star in his own movie, portrait of the new NBA superstar. He does what he wants, pure and simple. And why not? It's made him rich and famous, right? He is one of the winners of the basketball sweepstakes, the ghetto dream, Cinderella in expensive sneakers.

To Iverson, Ford is some dinosaur who might as well have parachuted in from Pluto. No matter that Ford once played in the NBA. Or that he coached icons such as Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. To Iverson, Ford's just another old guy who has nothing to do with his life.

And in that context, he's right. Ford is an interim coach, will be as gone as last month's hit song when the season ends. Iverson just got a new six-year contract worth over $100 million, every dollar guaranteed. He's going to worry what Chris Ford thinks?

Not a whole lot.

In the world Iverson inhabits, Ford is no more than an inconsequential irritant, not even a worthy adversary. For Chris Ford might win a minor skirmish here and there in this culture clash, but Allen Iverson won the war a long time ago.