DETROIT – The masochists among us were actually, incredibly, held up trying to get into (not out of) Comerica Park.

The dutiful security guards were searching bags in all post-9/11 diligence, even if the idea that an international terrorist would target arguably the most obscure baseball game of the year, featuring arguably the worst team of all time, was a bit suspect.

Blue Jays-Tigers, Comerica Park, Thursday, Sept. 18. Detroit would lose its 114th game of the season; pitcher Mike Maroth would lose his 21st, and officially a crowd of 9,951 showed up.

When that number was announced 1,000 or so of us still there officially laughed at the miscount of Gary-Busey-in-a-DUI-stop proportions – just a couple beers, officer, really.

The game was a MCI Night – friends and family only. Or something close to that, maybe 3,000 total, meaning the stadium was about 93 percent empty.

Now, you could harp on such a disappointing number, or you could look at the glass as seven percent full, as in how

The biggest controversy Dick Vermeil has had to deal with this season is whether he is resting Priest Holmes enough during blowout victories.

Which, for a NFL coach, is about as good as it gets.

This should surprise no one, of course. This is what Vermeil does. This is how Vermeil delivers. Three weeks and three victories into his third season with his third NFL club, Vermeil's Chiefs are the hottest team in the league.

"I think we're a pretty good football team," Vermeil said after a 42-14 dismantling of Houston in Week 3. "Are we ready to win a championship? No, we've only won three games."

They've only played three.

Coaches are anointed as geniuses too quickly and too often in the NFL. But what else can you say about the 66-year-old Vermeil?

The man delivers with little fanfare and little ego. He's the polar opposite of Mike Martz, his former offensive coordinator and successor in St. Louis, who always took too much credit for the Rams' 2000 Super Bowl.

St. Louis, perhaps not

Whether or not Maurice Clarett is ready to be a NFL football player is for the league's front office suits and critical coaches to decide on draft day and in training camp.

It is not for an un-American rule that currently prohibits the Ohio State sophomore and every other player less than three years removed from high school from declaring for the NFL entry draft.

If Clarett isn't good enough then so be it. Let him find employment elsewhere. But he has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The law of land will speak later as teams of lawyers battle in what will certainly be an avalanche of legal briefs and appeals. But the law of fair play is on one side here: Clarett's.

News that the 19-year-old from Warren, Ohio is suing the league broke on Tuesday a day both the NFL and NCAA had hoped would never arrive, but long ago knew it would.

What a convenient marriage these two have had, the league able to force young players into a farm system that has made

The good glorious news for the Mid American Conference came in threes Saturday – Marshall shocking Kansas State out on the plains, Northern Illinois upsetting Alabama down South, Toledo knocking off Pittsburgh in front of a delirious home crowd.

Three victories over nationally ranked teams on top of an already brilliant month for the league.

It was also the kind of day that shows the gentle leveling of the playing field in college football, and makes a mockery out of the efforts of the six BCS conferences to continue to exclude less famed leagues from competing for a national title.

The BCS leagues will tell you the division between the haves and have-nots is clear.

Then things like Saturday keep happening.

What the MAC did is the reality of today and, increasingly, tomorrow. It's the BCS that wants to pretend it didn't happen.

With each season of scholarship reductions, early defections to the NFL, renewed commitments by mid-majors to football and too-frequent NCAA sanctions on the