Mark my words: McGwire still delusional

I'm glad Mark McGwire finally admitted what most of us have known for years - that he used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career. But I'm disappointed to hear him say the juice had no bearing on him producing other-worldly numbers.

Come on, Mark.

If you are going to come clean, come completely clean.

We're not stupid. You never hit more than 49 home runs before in a season and all of a sudden you dial long distance 70 times and hit balls 30, 40, 50 feet farther than you ever hit them before, and we're supposed to believe that it was just your superior hand-eye coordination, some extra bench presses and your Wheaties.

As far as I'm concerned, your mea culpa only made it to second base. If you want us to forgive you, you're going to have to stop deluding yourself that you would have put up those numbers regardless if you were juicing or not.

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Now that McGwire has sort of confessed, will we hear from the other major frauds of the Steroids Era - Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa? Methinks not.

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Hey, at least temporarily, NBC has created some drama in its 10 p.m. time slot. I normally don't watch Leno, but I flipped it on last night just to listen to him diss his bosses.

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If you connect the dots, Buddy Nix probably is hoping for a Schottenheimer father-son coaching combo.

Nix sided with Marty Schottenheimer when the former San Diego head coach was on the outs with Chargers general manager A.J. Smith a few years ago. Nix would like to have Marty be the Bills head coach for the next year or two, then turn the reins over to Brian Schottenheimer, the Jets offensive coordinator, who will interview for the Buffalo head job in the near future. Interestingly, Brian's three NFL jobs before the Jets were with teams his dad coached.

If the Schottenheimer connection fails, Nix might lean to Ron Rivera, the Chargers defensive coordinator.

And I'm still wondering why Brian Billick hasn't been interviewed. I hope it isn't because the Bills aren't willing to pay for the top-flight staff of assistants Billick wants to bring with him.

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Brian Schottenheimer spent the 1999 season as Syracuse's quarterbacks coach under Paul Pasqualoni. Troy Nunes was the QB that season as the Orangemen went 7-5 with a 20-13 victory over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl in Nashville. Schottenheimer left SU after one year to take a similar position with USC, before returning to the NFL. I don't know what kind of relationship Schottenheimer had with Pasqualoni, but I wonder if he would consider his former boss as his defensive coordinator should he become the Bills head coach.

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Although Syracuse is ranked fifth again in the current college basketball poll, they haven't been playing like a Top-5 team lately. I still believe that when crunch time arrives later this Big East season, Wesley Johnson is going to need to become a little more selfish and take more shots. He's definitely capable of carrying a team.

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I don't have a vote, but if I did Kurt Warner would be a first-ballot selection for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He's a two-time league MVP and has a career passer rating of 93.7, which is better than all but a handful of quarterbacks in the Hall.

But the thing that seals it for me is his post-season play. He has a 9-3 record which includes a Super Bowl victory. In those 12 starts, Warner has thrown 31 touchdown passes, been intercepted 13 times and has an astounding 104.5 passer rating.

If that's not worthy of a bust in Canton, I don't know what is.