Headline on ESPN.com: “Huggins Pulling 12 Hour Days, 3 Weeks After Heart Attack.” Keep it up, Bobby Boy and you’ll be pushing up daisies 6 feet under, 24/7.

— Got a call from the marketing guys who are handling the Ryder Cup hospitality tents at Oakland Hills. My company can get a table for 10 with passes for all 3 days of the 2004 Ryder Cup for the modest sum of $66,000. Hell, for that price, I’ll take 2!

— Trust me, I would find a reason to be in southern Ohio on Wednesday, November 13th for the scrimmage and open house at the Arena, but I’m scheduled to be in New York, NY (“the city so great, they named it twice”) for meetings that day.

— My airfare to NYC is $160 round trip, the cheapest it’s been in years. You have to fly directly over Pittsburgh to get to the Big Apple, but the same trip to the ‘Burgh costs $380. How does that work?

— If you enjoy weird headlines and even goofier stories like I do, then http://www.obscurestore.com is the website for you. Here’s a sample: “California town considers changing its name to Got Milk.” You can thank me later.

— My retirement plan is in such bad shape, it’s now a 200 ½(k)!

— “With the personnel the Flyers will put on the floor and the loyal backing of their followers, another post-season berth seems certain and a return to the NCAAs realistic.” Blue Ribbon Basketball Yearbook.

— You can tell the season is rapidly approaching because every day the volume of posts increases on the UDPride.com and FlyerHoops.com Message Boards. Speaking of Message Boards, what happened to the one on UDHoops.com, Jason?

— Any debate on the Message Boards about the greatest moment in Flyer basketball history has to start with the Donnie May-led squad that made it all the way to the NCAA Finals in 1967 as #1 and goes down from there. Face it: that’s the ultimate goal and it’s the only time we’ve been there…end of discussion.

— Gee, what a surprise, they’ve started yet another Xavier Message Board: http://www.hostboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=3057. None of ’em can touch the MBs found on UDPride.com or FlyerHoops.com, tho.

— If the team plays basketball like their fans run Message Boards, we should have no trouble handling X this year.

— I played some of my best pickup basketball during my freshman year in the hangar out next to University Hall on the West Side. Anybody else remember hooping out there?

— They used to station athletes from the main campus out there in the hangar at UH to maintain the peace and run things. My favorite was UD and future NFL player Mike Wilson. He couldn’t recall my name, so he just called me “Boston.”

— Big Mike was in my brother’s speech class at UD and one of his oratories was a demonstration of “How to Iron a Shirt.” Really!

— What’s the over/under on how many slams Frank Iguadola has in the opening exhibition vs. Wittenberg? I say it’s three.

— Whatever happened to Mike Lee?

— Tom Archdeacon did it again with a splendid piece on the Chuck Grigsby lovefest that served as a kickoff for the Former Flyer Fund. As Coach Donoher aptly stated “Only in Dayton.”

— Sorry to hear that Donald Smith is in need of a kidney transplant. I still shoot a fall away jumper from the left baseline that I learned purely from watching Smitty nail ’em time after time…of course, I don’t shoot it left-handed like he did.

— Speaking of shooters from that era, remember how Johnny Davis used to launch his jumper at the very top of his (extremely high) jump?

I played one-on-one with a guy years ago at a playground in Detroit who had a jump shot just like that and he even looked like JD facially.

When I mentioned how his shot reminded me of Johnny’s, he said “He’s my brother.”

— My company just announced that our Sales Meeting will be held in Las Vegas in January. I don’t drink or gamble, but the people watching alone should be worth the trip, kinda like the cantina scene in “Star Wars”– every life form in the universe will be there.

— Finally, I’m both pleased and bummed that ESPN.com’s “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons is moving to LA to write for the new Jimmy Kimmel late night show on ABC. If you missed it here’s the link: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/021101.html.

The fact that a fellow sports freak from Boston is getting a shot at the big time is really cool; that he will no longer be writing as many columns anymore isn’t. You see, I’ve been reading Bill’s stuff since he was “The Boston Sports Guy” and it wasn’t on a website, he sent his stuff out to an email list. Back then, if you wrote to Bill about a topic he touched on in his column, he would actually email back to you. If you sent him something funny, he’d use it. He was torn when he graduated from “BSG” to ESPN.com’s “SG” much as he is now, but he’d still try and keep in touch with the old list, sending out notes from TAFKABSG or ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Boston Sports Guy.’ I’ve never met Bill or talked to him, only emailed him, but I have always enjoyed his writing and I look forward to hearing it on the Kimmel show. Break a leg, BSG.

That’s it “From the Swamp.”