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 Let’s guess a little about what teams may be in the Super bowl this year. Many big names have switched teams in 2008; can they help their teams to reach an elite status? What about Brett Favre; are his Super bowl chances better with the Jets? The Packers GM, Ted Thompson, hopes not. Here are some of the Super bowl contenders for the 2008 NFL season:

New England Patriots

New England tops this list in 2008. Forget about the astonishing loss to the Giants in last year’s Super bowl; a terrible end to a historical season. Coach Belichick will once more have his team ready to win.

Bill Belichick is too much of a genius to allow his team to lose again the way they did in Super bowl XLII. You better believe that the Patriots offensive line is working overtime in practice to avoid the humiliation that the New York Giants put them through. The Patriots will be attempting the impossible once again in 2008; they want to finish what they started in 2007.

San Diego Chargers

If there is ever a time for a team to win a championship, the time is now for them. Philip Rivers has a true receiving corps now that the wide receiver Chris Chambers is aboard. Chambers was obtained at the week six trade deadline in 2007 and played very well. He even excelled against the Patriots in the AFC Championship. He had seven receptions for ninety yards against former Patriot and elite cornerback Asante Samuel. With a full off season working with Rivers, look forward to big things in 2008 from these great players.

The San Diego team will again get marvelous play from Ladanian Tomlison and their defense. The Bolts are more prepared than ever in 2008; now if only they could get past The Patriots.

Jacksonville Jaguars

David Garrard, the Jacksonville quarterback, showed why the team let Byron Leftwitch go in 2006. Garrard in twelve starts threw eighteen touchdowns and just three interceptions in 2008. The Jaguars management thanked his efforts by giving him the richest contract in franchise history (six years, sixty million dollars). With the new receivers Jerry Porter and Troy Williamson; Garrard now has genuine playmakers to throw the ball to.

Everyone knows how tough the Jacksonville defense is, even with the loss of defensive tackle Marcus Stroud to the Buffalo Bills. The defense will hold its own in 2008. Now the question is if Fred Taylor can stay healthy for the third consecutive season. If the defense remains strong, and the running game is effective all year, The Jaguars are definite title contenders.

Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings will be looking to build upon the success of 2007 Rookie of the Year Adrian Peterson. With another great year from Peterson and the running back Chester Taylor, the Minnesota team will be chasing the championship too. If the quarterback play of Tavaris Jackson doesn’t make mistakes, the running game and offensive line will take care of the rest.

The Minnesota defense was pretty solid in 2007, ranking number one against the run; a key to any championship team. In 2008, it can only get better after trading for the 2007 NFL sack leader; defensive end Jared Allen. Everything that Minnesota needs is consistent quarterback play and they will be in their way to 2008.

It appears that the AFC is the dominate conference and has the most quality teams, or is it that the NFC relies too much on just one secret weapon? The three AFC teams previously listed all have the same thing in common; a star quarterback, a solid running game, and a powerful defense. The Vikings have all the requirements in the list, except for the star quarterback, maybe this is Tarvaris Jackson’s year to shine. Only time will tell!

It’s just the Cowboys’ second preseason game, so there’s no need to make a big deal about the final score, said the Cowboys’ offensive and defensive starters turned in a very weak performance on Saturday night against the Broncos.

In fact, that might not be strong enough. What about crappy? Or maybe you’d prefer atrocious. Well that’s the idea.

Whether you want to focus on the offense or the defense doesn’t really matter, because each was equally incompetent in the Cowboys’ 23-13 loss against Denver at Invesco Field at Mile High.

Most of you have watched enough preseason football to realize that the final score isn’t really that important… sure, the coaches and players want to win, but it’s more important for the starters to demonstrate they’re going to be ready to roll when the regular season starts.

And that is something that didn’t happen in Denver.

Matt Leinart says he knows how tough it will be to change his perception as a party boy.

Go to the next level In the Arizona Cardinals’ training camp for his third NFL season, he seems to be not worried about it, preferring to simply home in on football.

“People can think what they want, but the important thing I’ve always said is what my family sees and knows, and what my team and coaches know,” he said. “My team and my coaches know that I work my butt off that I’m in every day lifting weights, studying, even at home.”

Leinart’s had calmed down a bit before some photos showed up last spring on the Internet. One showed him in a hot tub surrounded by four young women. Another showed him holding a beer bong as a young woman drank from it.

It was a setback for Matt, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner, who was selected 10th overall in the 2006 draft.

“We had conversations about it, and I know after the incident, it was devastating to him because he had worked so hard even after he’d gotten hurt during the season and then in the off-season not to put himself in those situations,” Coach Ken Whisenhunt said.

Leinart said he simply had to learn from it.

“It’s one of those things where it seems I can’t do anything,” he said. “If I go out to dinner, somebody might say something. It just got to the point where it’s not worth it anymore. There are some sacrifices you have to make being a quarterback in the National Football League.”

Leinart said during his heady days leading Southern California to the Bowl Championship Series title.

“Being the kings of L.A., S.C. football at the time really was like that, and we had a good time,” he said.

After being drafted by the Cardinals, he threw a big bash in Las Vegas that featured some close moments with Paris Hilton. Then news announced that his former girlfriend, Brynn Cameron, a Southern California basketball player, was pregnant with his child.

Leinart was making more news off the field than on it, but the arrival of a skillful young quarterback still elicited excitement in victory-starved Arizona.

Just five weeks into his rookie season, Matt became the Cardinals’ starting quarterback and had immediate success. But there were the inevitable downs too, and when Whisenhunt replaced the fired Dennis Green a year ago, Leinart faced a complete change in offense.

He recognized he was lost.

“Last year, I had no clue what was going on; this year, I feel like I do,” Leinart said. “I have a command of the offense.”

Whisenhunt reproached Leinart about not working hard enough at times, too.

“That’s natural with a lot of young players, not just the quarterback or not just Matt,” Whisenhunt said. “As you are in the league a little bit longer, if you’re going to be successful, those guys mature, and you’re seeing that with Matt.”

Then in the fifth game last season, he took a serious hit against the 49ers and was lost for the season with a broken collarbone. Then he spent the rest of the season on the sideline watching Kurt Warner play quarterback.

Warner threw for 3,417 yards and 27 touchdowns, but Whisenhunt named Leinart this season’s starter.

“He’s a lot more comfortable, a lot more familiar with the offense,” the quarterbacks coach Jeff Rutledge said. “When he gets in the huddle, you can sense that confidence, you can sense that leadership.”

Warner alleged he should be the starter, but that did not deter him from praising Leinart’s growth.

“I see a better understanding of what we’re trying to do,” Warner said. “This is the best I’ve seen him play since I’ve been around in three years.”

Rutledge, an NFL quarterback for 14 years, called Leinart “a great young man.”

“I love being around him,” Rutledge said. “What other people I think perceive is so much different from what I perceive, which the other coaches perceive, what his teammates perceive — because we know him.”

Once reluctant to talk about his son, Cole, Leinart is now openly proud.

“He’s running all over, talking and everything,” he said. “I miss him.”

A good season would go a long way on the road to erasing any negative feelings the Cardinals fans might have about Leinart’s additional activities. Matt said he was ready to take the good with the bad.

“I’ve always known being a professional athlete is tough, let alone being a quarterback in the National Football League,” he said. “There’s a lot on you, a lot of pressure on you to succeed. You take the glory and you take the falls, but that’s what I signed up to do.

“This is what I feel like I was born to do is play football, and I love it.”

Summer is about to end and the fans all over the country can’t wait for September 4^th, the date when the 2008-2009 NFL season starts. Everyone’s wondering if a Manning will take home the Super Bowl title once again, or if the Patriots can improve last year’s almost perfect record with a Super Bowl win. According to ESPN.com the New England team is the strongest one in the league, followed by the Colts and the Chargers with the Dallas Cowboys and the Jacksonville Jaguars rounding out the top five. Last year’s Super Bowl winners, the New York Giants, came in at number 6! Since the season hasn’t started yet it’s still anybody’s game, and you never know if your favorite underdog team will rise up to dominate the 2008-2009 NFL season.

The NFL consists of 32 teams that are divided into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), each of which has four divisions. The NFL season is played during the late summer, through autumn, and into January.

The professional teams play 4 exhibition games, and then 16 regular-season games. Teams play one game per week, using the time between games to recover, do the training, and prepare for the next one. Each team receives one week without a game, known as a bye, during the season.

At the end of the season, each conference has separate playoff games to establish which team would be the conference champion. The top team in each division automatically qualifies for the conference playoffs and is ranked number one through three based on its win-lose record. Three additional teams, called “wild cards”, also qualify for playoff berths based on their win-loss record in the conference.

During the first round of the playoffs, the lowest-ranked wild-card team plays the lowest-ranked division champion, while the other two wild-card teams play each other. The losers are eliminated and the winner of each game advances to play one of the remaining division champions in the semifinals. Semifinal winners move forward to the conference finals, and the winner of that game is proclaimed the conference champion.

The winners of the National Football League’s championship are awarded annually with the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named in honor of former Green Bay Packers coach. The Super Bowl is the final contest of the NFL’s season. Each January the AFC and NFC champions play against each other for the title of The Super Bowl. This event reaches hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. The first Super Bowl took place in 1967, when there were actually two separate football leagues, the NFL and the American Football League (AFL). In this game, the Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL in what was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The game was renamed the Super Bowl in 1969.

Every April the NFL conducts its amateur draft, in which each team obtains the rights to the professional services of the best college players. Any player who is three seasons out of high school qualifies for the NFL draft, if that player renounces college football eligibility by early January. To decide the order of the draft the NFL goes by the win-loss records of the previous season, so that teams with inferior records draft earlier than those with better records. The NFL draft consists of seven rounds. Those players not selected in the draft can be invited to try out for a team and are sometimes signed to contracts as free agents.

The NFL is one of the biggest businesses for players, owners, advertisers, and other industries tied to the sport. NFL franchises generate huge earnings for host cities, in addition to promoting civic pride and national exposure. Therefore, cities often compete for teams, offering prospective teams bigger and better stadiums, guaranteed fan support, and various economic incentives. In the 1980’s three NFL teams relocated: the Raiders moved from Oakland, California, to Los Angeles in 1982; the Colts moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Indianapolis, Indiana, and became the Indianapolis Colts in 1984; and the Cardinals moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Phoenix, Arizona, and became the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988 (later changed to Arizona Cardinals). Several other moves happened in the 1990s. In 1995 the Los Angeles Rams became the St. Louis Rams when they moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis, and the Raiders returned to Oakland. The Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1996; the team was renamed the Baltimore Ravens. In 1997 the Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee and became the Tennessee Titans. Other teams have agreed to stay in their home cities only with the promise of new facilities in the future.

New teams are occasionally accepted into the NFL, and there is usually fierce competition among cities to be selected as the home for a new team. In 1995 two of these expansion teams began to play: the Carolina Panthers, in Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Jacksonville Jaguars, in Jacksonville, Florida. A new Cleveland Browns franchise began to play in 1999. In 2002, the newest expansion franchise was the Houston Texans, started playing at Reliant Stadium.

The trade of Brett Favre to the New York Jets ended the Favre era in Green Bay. The Jets now have their undisputed starter at quarterback. Would this be the year when head coach Eric Mangini and his team replaces New England as AFC East Champions?

If Favre was tired after the Packers playoff run last year, he really has a lot of work to do now in this one. Favre will have to learn a new system and a new lifestyle in New York. And he also will have to deal with the New York media.

Brett is no doubt a country boy, born and raised in Mississippi. Playing and living in Green Bay was just like the south, now he will be one of the most important players in one of the biggest cities of America. Could he get used to the bright lights and the busy streets of New York? Could he return the Jets to the Super bowl? Only the time will tell.

It’s going to be a big step for someone that was too tired to continue his NFL career back in March. Learning the new strategies and type of play of his new teammates won’t be easy. Favre will have train harder this year than in previous years with the Green Bay team.

The Packers got what they wanted by trading Brett out of the NFC. Tampa Bay was thought to be Brett’s new team but the New York Jets were more determined to land the future Hall of Fame quarterback. Depending on the Jets win-loss record and Favre’s playtime the draft pick traded for Favre could be between a first and fourth round pick.

 The Release Of Chad Pennington

With the new quarterback on the roster, Chad Pennington’s job in The Jets is over. Pennington was released allowing the young Kellen Clemens to assume the role of backup and learn a lot from a legend. This trade could help New York in the present and future. The pressure is on for Mangini to win, and adding Favre to the team could guarantee at least a playoff spot in 2008.

The New York team now find themselves as legitimate contenders to dethrone the New England Patriots. If the Jets can maintain a running attack, allowing Favre to do play action and roll out passes, the famous legend could be very successful in New York. He knows football so learning the Jets style of play shouldn’t be too hard for the experienced quarterback.

 Brett Favre’s New Offense

The New York team had a busy off-season and added some solid new and old talent on both sides of the ball. Favre will have a hard offensive line anchored by free agent guard Alan Faneca along with talented youngsters Nick Mangold at center and D’Brickashaw Ferguson at left tackle.

Having time to find the open receiver will not be a problem for the Jets new quarterback.

Talking about receivers, Favre has a few talented ones to throw to. Laveranues Coles has had a productive career and had six touchdowns the last year. Along with the veteran Coles are other younger and skillful receivers like Jerricho Cotchery, Wallace Wright, and Brad Smith. Not the best group in the league, but Brett has been successful with less talented receivers in the past.

Favre will also benefit himself by being able to hand the ball to the former Bears running back Thomas Jones. Jones is a great player that will take pressure of Favre to be perfect every week. Along with free agent fullback Tony Richardson, an excellent blocker, the New York Jets offense is enormously improved from the 2007 squad.

Favre: Playoffs or Get Out

The legend Brett Favre needs to have a solid year in The Jets for this trade to make sense. If he doesn’t play good and the Jets don’t reach the playoffs, the media in New York will strongly criticize Favre and the Jets. It is a love-hate relationship between the Jets fans and their professional teams, so by adding Favre to the team the fans expect the best in 2008.

If Brett does not perform well and the Jets don’t make the playoffs it could be Brett’s last year. There still two years remaining on Favre’s contract so his intent may be to finish out his current deal, but failure is not an option in the New York team. A 6-10 season and the fans will be asking for Favre’s release.

With this player’s ability though, he should have no trouble turning the Jets back into contenders. He better hope he can anyway. After all the fuss to play anything less than success will be highly scrutinized.

The quarterback Donovan McNabb had a terrific game, with a promising performance at Pittsburgh, in the first preseason game. His performance was only rivaled by maybe just one player, the rookie DeSean Jackson. The receiver/punt was continuously found blazing past defenders both before and after catches.

Eagles safety Sean Considine said:  “His ability to get open and his ability to get downfield have been impressive,” “He can create separation and the quarterbacks have a lot of confidence in him, which is pretty unusual for a rookie. It didn’t take long for them to figure out he was getting open.”

And it hasn’t taken long for Jackson to figure out the complicated West Coast offense of Reid and offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg.

“He is one of the faster ones that I have coached,” said Mornhinweg of Jackson’s skill to grasp the offense. “There are a couple of things that he has that allows him to be a really fast learner. First of all, he’s a natural player. His movements are just natural. He does a lot of things that we teach that he just does naturally. Secondly, he’s really sharp, football wise. Really, for him it takes him once or twice, maybe three reps, and he’s got it. He can take it from the classroom to the field very quickly as well. Those are all good things. We’ve got a long way to go and he’s got a long way to go. He’s done a nice job up to this point.”

The Angels seem to do everything right. Their starting pitching is phenomenal. Anytime Jon Garland is your number five starter and you had 2 starters in the all-star game, neither of them being your ace John Lackey, and you are doing this all with a guy who nearly won the Cy Young last season, Kelvim Escobar, having missed the entire season with injury, your starting pitching is historically good.

The Los Angeles Angels earned themselves a weekend sweep at home of the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox and I mean earned. They came from behind twice, both times late in the game. The Angels now have the Major’s best record and, I’m not giving up on the Red Sox, but they look for real and have the look of a champion.

Their bullpen may be even better. They have an excellent set up crew and do not often give leads back. Francisco Rodriguez has 40 saves and, no it isn’t September; it’s July. K-Rod has the chance to not only break, but shatter the all-time single season saves record of 57.

Their offense doesn’t have true homerun power, but they can hit homeruns and they manufacture runs. Chone Figgins is one of the most underrated players in baseball. He may have been the MVP of the league last season because of what he does for this team. He’ll hit at a .300 clip and steal bases almost every time he’s on. That means there is a 30% you’ll have a man at 2nd, with none out, in the first. Casey Kotchman is the type of #2 hitter than can handle the bat, get Figgins over to 3rd, and get a single up the middle if no one is on. Then, you get to the “power” guys in Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter and you have a good chance to score in every inning and slowly build leads, or chip away at them.

They also have one of the best coaches in the world in Mike Scioscia and a very underrated GM. Their GM has taken a lot of heat for not making moves in the past, for big power hitters. He took heat for not trading for Mark Teixiera last season or Miguel Tejada in the off season or even Matt Holliday now. However, he doesn’t need those guys and the guys that would have had to give up, normally become stars. Last season they had the opportunity to trade Casey Kotchman, Joe Saunders, and Ervin Santana to the Rangers for Mark Teixiera. At the time, that might have seemed like a good move. Santana was struggling, Saunders was a sort of middle of the road prospect, and Teixiera would have been a huge upgrade over Casey Kotchman at first base. Now, Kotchman is a .300 hitter and both Santana and Saunders are all-stars, this season.

The Angels have a system in place with their manager and GM. They draft guys in a mold and call them up, without ever really having to go outside of the organization for help. They make do with what they have moneywise, which is not really that much. They aren’t necessarily like the Marlins who wait 5 years to be very good for 2-3 years or even really the A’s, who are good for 4-5 years, and then have 2 off years. They are like the Braves in the 90s, who had the established manager in Bobby Cox and the homegrown talent built in a mold.

That Braves team won the division every year for 14 years. The Angels are like that. They are in it every year, without having to have a giant payroll. They have been in it every year since 2000 and, while they only have one World Series title, in 2002, they have been very close other years and always give themselves the chance to win. This might be the year they win again.

There will never be another scene quite like it, or another match, for that matter. Wimbledon closed down a 132-year era Sunday night with the greatest tennis match ever played.

That’s not just The Chronicle’s opinion, but the measured view of Bud Collins and a half-dozen of the most experienced tennis writers in the world, all of them in a state of stunned admiration as they sat down to address their keyboards. They held fast to the John McEnroe-Bjorn Borg legend for 28 years, and hated to give it up, but Rafael Nadal’s 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7 victory over Roger Federer set the standard of brilliance.

An innovative Centre Court roof, retractable and an answer to every rainstorm, will be in place next year - and not a moment too soon. It was so dark at 9:16 p.m., the moment Federer’s netted forehand ended this match, they couldn’t have played another game. But that only adds to the magic. Bared to the skies since 1877, the fabled venue seemed to take on a mind of its own, extending the last roofless Wimbledon until the last vestiges of light.

What a scene: Nadal flat on his back after four hours and 48 minutes of glory, the longest Wimbledon final in history, made nearly two hours longer by a pair of rain delays. Nadal propelling himself into the Friends Box (leave it to Rafa to take the most difficult route) and coming out of it with a Spanish flag. Nadal walking along the roof above the TV broadcasters to reach the Spanish royalty, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia of Asturias, who made the very worthwhile journey to London. And then Nadal back on the court, in a swirl of flashbulbs, to celebrate the first Wimbledon men’s victory by a Spaniard since Manuel Santana in 1966.

Even for those who have closely followed Nadal’s career, it was difficult to grasp the breadth of his accomplishment. He should have been a broken man after those two spirit-crushing tiebreakers. Time after time, on crucial points, Federer rendered him helpless with punishing aces. Federer is “the best in the history,” as Nadal put it, and once his disappointment gives way to perspective, he’ll know he hit some of the most clutch shots ever witnessed.

“It’s hard for me to appreciate it right now,” Federer said afterward. “I can’t look at it as a feel-good thing. Probably later in life, I’ll be happy about the way I fought, the way it lived up to expectations. And congratulations to Rafa, a great competitor.”

It was altogether fitting that Borg was in the stands, bundled up against the rain and chill in the Royal Box. Nadal became the first man since Borg to win the French Open and Wimbledon consecutively (Borg did it three years in a row, 1978-80). The way Nadal took down Federer, who had won the last five Wimbledons, was reminiscent of McEnroe’s brazen challenge to Borg, hastening him into an early retirement. Most relevant, though, was the comparison to Borg’s 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-7 (16), 8-6 victory over McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final.

There’s no question that the 18-16 tiebreaker represented the most riveting episode in the sport’s history, as untouchable as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. The case for Federer-Nadal rests on its unrelenting tension, the sustained brilliance, the fact that neither man let a troubling moment get him down. Forget any notion that Nadal is “in Federer’s head,” as some observed after the French Open. Maybe that was true in Paris, but not here. Federer was simply beaten, and if you witnessed his sequence of down-the-line forehand winners - there must have been 25 of them, each more mind-blowing than the last - you wondered how that was possible.

“I only saw one case of nerves,” said Collins, of ESPN and the Boston Globe, a man who attended his first Wimbledon in 1961. “That’s when Nadal double-faulted with that 5-2 lead in the fourth-set tiebreaker. Both guys just fought and fought, not a single letdown. Losing that tiebreaker would have destroyed most guys. But not Rafa. Jesus, is he tough.”

Try to imagine putting up this five-set scoreline against Federer: 66669. That’s what it took to keep Federer and Borg tied at five straight Wimbledons. Federer closed out the third set in a blur of aces and forehands, but the fourth-set tiebreaker swung hard the other way, Nadal holding that 5-2 lead with two serves coming. His double fault was a net-cord job, trickling over but landing wide, and Federer shot him a look as if to say, “You’re giving me that now?”

The thing about Nadal, separating him from most everyone in tennis, is that he fights harder than an angry pit bull. The fact that he might have choked, in sports parlance, didn’t occur to him. He came up with such a sensational shot at 7-7, a down-the-line forehand pass on the dead run, “I really thought it was over,” Federer admitted. But that’s when Federer defined himself, answering that excruciating match-point pressure with the calmest of backhand winners, struck cleanly down the line. And as the match drew even, Federer raised the possibility of becoming the first man since Henri Cochet, in 1927, to come from two sets down to win a Wimbledon final.

Although it only stalled the inevitable, Federer hit a shot in that final game I still can’t believe. It was match point at 40-30 for Nadal, and he put a first serve exactly where he wanted it. With the casual aplomb of a gentleman pouring a glass of wine, Federer sent it whistling through the darkness with a blistering cross-court backhand winner. “No, that I cannot believe,” said Nadal, who struggled to express his feelings when he was interviewed in English. “I can’t see nothing, no?”

When it came to the next match point, advantage Nadal, the dwindling light almost demanded a conclusion. Federer sent his fateful forehand into the net, and “that was the irony of it,” Collins said. “Here’s Federer with the best forehand the sport has ever seen, and he puts a routine ball into the net. But then, that’s the story of Nadal. He always makes you hit one more shot than you want to.”

So it’s on to the retractable-roof era, a development tinged with regret. There’s nothing in sports like a compelling Centre Court match in the fresh air of southeast England, whether it’s still, blustery or damp. Recent years, though, have brought a succession of maddening rainouts and delays, softening a traditionalist’s heart. What I heard, from a tiny elf in the catacombs, is that once the roof becomes available, it will never rain again. In the wake of tennis’ greatest match, all things are possible.

Briefly: The Bryan brothers, the twins from Stanford, were on opposite sides of the net for Sunday’s mixed doubles championship match. Bob Bryan teamed with Samantha Stosur of Australia to beat top-seeded Mike Bryan and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia 7-5, 6-4. It was the second time the brothers, who are ranked No. 1 in men’s doubles and have won five Grand Slam titles together, have faced each other in a major final. Six years ago, Mike paired with Lisa Raymond to defeat Bob and Srebotnik for the U.S. Open title.

It has been an emotional week for Allen, whose 17-month-old child was just diagnosed with diabetes. The veteran guard talked about his family situation shortly after scoring 26 points to lead the Celtics to their 17th NBA title with a 131-92 rout of the Lakers last night.

On Saturday, Tiger put on a display of golf dramatics unmatched in championship history. In the span of six holes he made a hundred feet of eagle putts, pitched in from greenside rough, and hit several of the crookest drives this side of Phil Mickelson. He did all this on a gimpy left leg that has garnered only slightly less attention than Barack Obama. Using his club as a cane, pain evident on his face, he somehow charged from five strokes back into a one-shot lead. If Saturday were Sunday, the 2008 U.S. Open would be on the short list of greatest sporting events ever.

But Saturday isn’t Sunday.

When Willis Reed limped out to the Madison Square Garden floor to lead the New York Knicks in the 1970 NBA Finals, he knew it was the last game of the season. When Kirk Gibson dragged his body off the trainer’s table and hobbled to home plate before hitting his game-winning home run in 1987, it was his only at-bat of that World Series. When Michael Jordan scored 38 points against the Utah Jazz while fighting nausea and dehydration from the flu, he knew he’d have a day off before the 1997 Finals continued.

Tiger Woods knew, as he iced his post-operative knee on Saturday night, that he’d have to do it all over again, walking four-plus miles, using that sore leg to brace himself against the force of his 125-mph swing.

The round unfolded like a horror film whose director puts his most gruesome imagery in the first few moments, so the audience would be filled with dread and anticipation at every turn thereafter. Tiger opened with a drive wildly left, his discomfort obvious as he walked off the tee. His second shot from a birds-nest lie stayed in the long grass amidst the gallery, his third hit a tree and came down in the rough, his fourth failed to reach the green – was this really Tiger Woods? We’ve seen him escape from so many impossible positions through the years. Had arthroscopic kryptonite turned Tiger Woods into one of us?

His double-bogey on 1 was followed by a drive into the right rough on 2, after which he doubled over in pain. His subsequent bogey was bad, and his body language was worse. On the tees, he seemed to be looking for some shot he could hit without wincing. An anguished cry followed one effort. If it were a boxing match, and you were his trainer, you’d have thought about throwing in the towel for his own protection.

What do you do when you’re Tiger Woods on a day when you’re not Tiger Woods?

Yes, it’s golf, not mortal combat. The word “courage” should be saved for those who face peril in the real world, not in the shadow play of sports. Even in the golfing realm, this was not quite Ben Hogan at Merion in 1950, playing 36 holes in a single day with a body almost completely shattered by a car crash a year earlier. Nonetheless, anyone watching had to feel a bit of sickness in the pit of his stomach.

As the round progressed, Tiger remained unreliable off the tee, but found enough of his game to hit the kind of recovery shots we’re used to seeing. (Asked about the apparent improvement through the day, he said, “Did it get better? No. I took some things to relieve that, so I feel better now.”) He birdied 9 and 11 to take the lead, but gave back those strokes with a shockingly bad second shot into the hazard on 13 and a dreadful drive on 15. Meanwhile, Rocco Mediate was cruising along in the group ahead, chatting with the galleries, smiling, laughing, loving the moment and never veering more than one shot from par for the day.

On the 18th tee, Tiger knew he needed a birdie to tie and an eagle to win. We knew, and he knew, that putting a drive in the fairway would be challenge enough on this day. He pulled it left into a bunker, squirted his second shot into the right rough, and hit a 60-degree wedge to 14 feet. The U.S. Open title would come down to one final stroke: miss it and it’s over, make it and he’s in an 18-hole playoff on Monday when he’ll have to drag that sore knee around the course one more time.

Of course he made it. He’s Tiger Woods.