I've never understood all the claims of parity in the NFL. Fundamentally, the so-called parity is a function of small sample size. If each baseball team played only 16 games, anything could happen. I'd rather see them distinguish themselves over the ups and downs of 162 games.

Melody, there's a kernel of truth there but you vastly overstate your case. Yes, there's some noise in an NFL team's 16-game record, but not as much as there would be in 16 baseball games.

Good baseball teams win 60 percent of their games (97 wins), great ones about 65 percent (105 wins), very rarely approaching 70 percent (113 wins). Good football teams win almost 70 percent of their games (11-5 = .688) and great ones closer to or even over 90 percent (14-2 = .875, 15-1 = .938).

So yeah, small sample size can alter the standings a little from a team's true quality, if there were a way to figure out what such a thing was, but it's not like lousy teams go 11-5 or good ones go 5-11.

Also, baseball results are much less consistent because every team is really five different teams. A team with its ace starter going is much better than they are when the No. 5 guy takes the ball. Even championship teams are often sub-.500 clubs when that last guy is starting, and even bad teams are sometimes winning teams when their best guy is. So in a 16-game stretch, a bad team with one good starter can go 4-0 in his starts, and then play over their heads a bit to go 7-5 in the other games, and viola, they're 11-5 and in the NFL playoffs.

That's not how teams actually make the NFL playoffs. If you looked at the baseball standings every year after 16 games, you'd have a great idea immediately which teams in playoff position were frauds, with no chance of being there late in the season. The NFL might have the odd crummy team sneak into the playoffs because of a combination of easy schedule, lucky breaks and weak conference (see both Seattle and St. Louis last year), but it's not like you can look at the playoffs every year and spot a bunch of frauds.

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Ergos, you seem to be saying Jamal Lewis is a steroid case and that's why he's declined. Maybe, I suppose. But there are certainly a lot of other perfectly reasonable explanations: Age, injury, a lousy offensive line and no passing game, though of course they've never had a passing game.

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Re studio shows: What Max said.

Most studio shows are lame frat parties. "Inside the NBA" is loose and fun, but it's fun like hanging out with your buddies -- your grown-up, smart buddies. Not your dorm-mates.

Watching the show last night, I found myself thinking of Fox's unbeliebably crap baseball studio show, with Jeannie Zelasko's scripted, cliched inanities and Kevin Kennedy's insight-free analysis, and thinking what a far cry this show is from that one. "Baseball Tonight" is better, closer. Part of the TNT show's luck is that there's only one sir Charles, and Kenny Smith is a great foil, so other shows won't have that. But they can do a lot better than the lowest-common-denominator yuckfests that dominate.

As for the Hornets: Sorry, y'all. Don't take it personally. I'm pretty equal-opportunity when it comes to making fun of losing teams, and a team doesn't have to have a track record of losing to get razzed. What have you lost for me lately.

And while I of course feel terrible about what happened during and after Hurricane Katrina, I think it would be pandering to not call it as I see it about the Hornets, Saints, etc. They're only sports teams, folks.

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Would a company like Nike, or whatever big companies are using athletes as spokespeople, really, in this day and age, drop a spokesman because he came out as gay? Worst case scenario, they quietly don't renew his contract however many years down the road.

By that time, he's the most famous athlete in the world.

And if Esera Tuaolo, who nobody ever heard of, started getting endorsements after he came out, and some high school football player did, I think our NBA/MLB/NFL player would get a few too.

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You can still e-mail me. king at salon dot com. I no longer make an effort to reply to every single e-mail I get from readers, but I do promise I read every one.