By Kim J. Harmon

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sn’t it wonderful how the ratings for the XFL – that bastion of excess, crudeness and outlandish stupidity – have bottomed out so much that Week 3 games were rated lower than the Celebrity Deathmatch between Betty Crocker and the Pillsbury Doughboy? In the words of that famous whacko, Ross Perot (who may actually be an alien pod-person, although that didn’t stop me from voting for him), “What is that giant sucking sound?” . . . you can always leave it to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated to choke me up. Read his article on Dale Earnhardt . . . you know, it’s drives me out of my gourd (whatever that is) when baseball players refuse to report to spring training because they want to renegotiate their contract. Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox signed a long-term deal a few years ago which will pay him $9.9 million this year, yet the recent deals signed by Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Derek Jeter have bummed him out and now he wants a new deal. “TOUGH!” I would scream at him. If I’m an owner, I’d let him sit all season and I DON’T CARE how badly we need him. He signed the deal – LIVE UP TO IT! . . . you don’t know what excitement is until you’ve seen a tape of the Newtown High School 200-yard freestyle relay team just exploding off the blocks at the South-West Conference meet last Saturday enroute to not only a first-place finish, but a new school record as well. The squad – Matt Fries, Jeff Heller, Bryan Kotwicki and Kane Kunst – were seeded second, but didn’t even make this one close . . . hey, I’ll admit it, I was standing there on the pool deck not quite believing what I was seeing. I mean, you’re not supposed to jump up to such a big lead so fast . . . Seven different teams had a shot at winning the South-West Conference girls’ basketball championship and – no real surprise, perhaps – Bunnell High School did it. It was the second year in a row that the championship was won on a dramatic last-second shot. Last year, Kate Ryan won it for Newtown on a shot with seven seconds to go and this year Emily Thornbury won it for Bunnell on a last-second three pointer. Can it get any better than that? . . . seen on the t-shirts of the New Milford High School swim team last weekend – Pain is just weakness leaving the body . . . hey, as much as Newtown has every right to its intense dislike of the Bunnell-Stratford Co-Op swim team (the reasons would take too long to go into here), I think we’d all have to agree that the new logo (a B overlaid with a wavy S, the top half blue and the bottom half red) is pretty cool . . . now, Brian Reiff – he is a COACH, like it says right there in all capital letters. When one of his swimmers, Tim Robinson, was disqualified at the South-West Conference championship meet on Saturday for a false start (brought on, I might add, by the official’s whistle) and not allowed the opportunity to compete, all coach Reiff did was bring his swimmer (along with about 30 other people) back to Newtown High School to swim the 100-breaststroke for real and all Robinson did with that was shave three seconds off his personal best mark. Coach Reiff said, “We had a great time.” . . . should I be the one to point out that the Newtown High School girls’ basketball team was 4-0 this season against the CIAC Class LL tournament field (now 5-0 counting the first-round win on Monday)? Yep, the ‘Hawks defeated second-seeded Norwalk (19-1 on the season) once, defeated New Milford once, and defeated Masuk twice. Not too bad, huh? . . . why would something called The Polar Bear Run ever be canceled because of winter weather? Well, seems that polar bears (those around Lake Waramaug in Washington) don’t like freezing rain – which is okay, because I hate it . . . Tim Murtha of Newtown plays for the Immaculate High School ice hockey team and on top of being named All-Conference, helped lead the Mustangs to the South-West Conference Division I final against Notre Dame of Fairfield. The Lancers won, though, 2-1 and sent the Mustangs (14-6-1) home . . . no surprise, but Brian McGovern of Newtown, a senior at Fairfield Prep, finished first in the 1,600 meters at the CIAC State Open indoor track meet at Coxe Cage in New Haven. McGovern went 4:21.26 and defeated Alex Bloom of Guilford by four seconds . . . you know, I get a kick out of seeing the Abbott Tech girls’ basketball team doing so well in the Vo-Tech Conference. Tech finish the regular season 14-6 and ranked No. 10 in the CIAC Class S state tournament. It wasn’t but six years ago that Tech – formerly in the Western Connecticut Conference – was in the midst of losing something like 90 games in a row . . . listen, if we can discuss the NBA for a minute, I’m not one of those guys who is willing to give Patrick Ewing a lot of grief for his surly nature. I don’t care that he disdained the writers and shunned autograph seekers (now THAT is another gripe I’ll get into later). Just because he was surly and mean doesn’t detract from the fact that he was the GREATEST – he gave the New York Knicks everything he had, every night, and if you are waiting to throw some blame around for the Knicks not winning a championship then point to the front office, point to John Starks and that disappearing act in the NBA finals – point to someone else other than Patrick. Hey, I knew the Knicks had to move on without Patrick, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be a fan . . . isn’t it nice to see Donyell Marshall start to do something in the NBA? For years he languished at Golden State, hanging around with the wrong people and getting the wrong advice. Now that he’s with a veteran team, the Utah Jazz, the rest of the league is starting to see what fans of the University of Connecticut already knew – the guy could play . . .  listening to Imus in the morning, I keep hearing that commercial about how, in New York, distracted driving is against the law –obviously a law to stop people from talking on their cell phones and driving at the same time. But if distracted driving is the official wording of the law, is it against the law for me to drive anywhere in New York with my kids in the back seat? Because, come on now, with the arguments over who is touching who and who is burping too loud I’m pretty much distracted all the time . . .