appeared at hearings before the Senate Commerce Committee in 2014, The Associated Press reported that he did such a good job of casting himself as a powe

LOS ANGELES -- A victory might have escaped the Dodgers on Tuesday, but their efforts to bury the hatchet with the San Francisco Giants was a rousing success. Justin Williams .A day after the Dodgers Yasiel Puig and the Giants Madison Bumgarner feuded on the field, a tongue-in-cheek gift from Puig to Bumgarner yielded laughs from both clubhouses.Credit Dodgers infielder Charlie Culberson as the go-between for the two camps. The former San Francisco draft pick, who came up in the Giants system with Bumgarner starting in 2007, had Puig sign a T-shirt bearing the inscription #DONTLOOKATME across the front in block letters.The hashtag was in reference to what Bumgarner yelled at Puig after the seventh inning of Monday nights game. The interaction led to the benches clearing, but the incident went no further.Puig, who has embraced social media hashtags this year, especially #PuigYourFriend, wrote several messages for Bumgarner on the shirt, including I LIKE YOU, Dont look at me and his signature with his number, 66.Culberson had a Dodgers clubhouse attendant deliver the shirt to the Giants side, and when Bumgarner was not there to receive it, amused Giants players hung it at Bumgarners locker.After communicating with San Franciscos Brandon Belt, Culberson said the gift was a hit in the Giants clubhouse, just as it was in the Dodgers clubhouse.Dodgers players had taken pictures of themselves in shirts of their own earlier in the day, with their hands over their eyes.It was all in good fun, Culberson said after the Dodgers 2-0 loss to the Giants on Tuesday. There was no animosity about it.Bumgarner and Culberson were both first-round picks of the Giants in 2007, with Bumgarner going 10th overall and Culberson a sandwich pick at 51st overall. They have remained friends throughout their baseball careers. Culberson said he assured Bumgarner that Puig does have a good heart, while telling Puig that Bumgarner really would appreciate the gesture of a signed shirt.Bumgarner addressed the Puig rift with San Francisco reporters before Tuesdays game and said he had no issue with how the Dodgers handled things on Tuesday.That dont make a difference to me, really, Bumgarner told reporters after hearing about the shirt but before receiving it. If it were turned around, Im sure wed do the same.Bumgarner had left the clubhouse immediately after Tuesdays game, but his gift from Puig still was hanging in his locker.Information from ESPNs Marly Rivera was used in this report. Kolten Wong .Y. -- Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo had little trouble picking up his first shutout of the season against a Buffalo Sabres team thats having trouble scoring goals. Stan Musial . He says so-called TRT is only one problem and he wants to go even further than the ban. "Its about time," St-Pierre told reporters at a promotional event in Montreal on Friday. "I think its a good thing. http://www.custommlbcardinalsjersey.com/...arge-1311q.html . Nine days before the opening ceremony, organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said Wednesday that Sochi is "fully ready" and will deliver safe, friendly and well-run games that defy the grim reports that have overshadowed preparations. The buzz from the just-concluded Rio Olympics had barely begun to fade when NCAA president Mark Emmert made headlines at a think-tank appearance in early September by suggesting that everyone in the NCAA was talking about revisiting -- perhaps even rolling back -- the decision to allow college athletes to collect Olympic performance bonuses for medal wins or outstanding results.But why did Emmert revisit a rule now thats been on the books for American NCAA athletes since 2001 but was amended just last year to finally include non-American NCAA athletes? And why did he specifically cite University of Texas swimmer Joseph Schooling, a native of Singapore who received a $740,000 bonus from his government after beating American legend Michael Phelps for the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly in Rio?To be perfectly honest, its caused everybody to say, Oh, well, that [high an amount] is not really what we were thinking about, Emmert said during a Q&A session at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 8. So I dont know where the members will go on that. Thats a little different than 15 grand for the silver medal for swimming for the US of A. So I think its going to stimulate a very interesting conversation.Emmert declined last week through a spokesperson to be interviewed for this column to elaborate on his remarks. The contentious issue of if -- or how much -- college athletes should be paid at all took another twist Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments about whether the NCAA is violating federal antitrust laws by restricting what college athletes can earn. Last year, the federal appeals court in California issued a decision that ruled against the NCAA, saying its amateurism rule violated antitrust laws. But the court went on to say that the association may restrict colleges from compensating athletes beyond offering scholarships and a few thousand dollars for the cost of attendance.The case was brought by Ed OBannon, a former UCLA basketball star, and other current and former college football and basketball players who are seeking compensation for the commercial use of their names, images and likenesses.Olympic performance bonuses, which are usually paid out by national Olympic committees, sometimes with supplements from each sports national governing body, are one of the few ways college athletes can get paid while retaining their eligibility.Emmerts decision to spotlight Schooling -- and ignore, say, the reported $355,000 that American-born swimming sensation Katie Ledecky banked before heading to swim collegiately for Cal, or the $250,000 that wrestler Kyle Sanders pocketed though he still competes for Ohio State -- was one of those arbitrary lines in the sand that rightfully drives people crazy about the NCAAs labyrinthine policies on athlete compensation.If the NCAA is fine with the bonuses in principle, then the amount shouldnt matter. And the amount shouldnt be capped.The NCAA gets a lot of mileage out of constantly referring to its athletes as student-athletes, no matter how loosely the term fits. But why take aim now at patriot student athletes who compete for their countries, not just the glory of State U.?As it turns out, conversations with other sports officials in the past two weeks reveal that no rollback movement on Olympic bonuses is actually going on in the NCAA -- contrary to Emmerts characterization. Nor does such an effort seem imminent. Hopefully the Supreme Courts decision to pass on the OBannon matter wont embolden Emmert to give it a shot.For now, NCAA spokesperson Meghan Durham confirmed to ESPN.com via email that there hasnt been a single proposal made to put Olympic performance bonuses on the agenda for the January NCAA convention, let alone vote on it.Tom McMillen, the former basketball star and U.S. congressman who is now executive director of the NCAA Division 1A Athletic Directors Association, said in a phone interview last week that his group just held its annual meeting and the performance bonus issue was barely discussed -- and even then only informally among maybe a few people.McMillen added that he doesnt see Olympic bonuses being an agenda item until 2018, if then.Similarly, Chris Plonsky, president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics as well as the womens athletic director at Texas, where Schooling still competes, echoed McMillens assessment. Plonsky said she isnt sure why Emmert questioned the performance bonus system.Do you really think Mark Emmert wants to roll back Olympic bonuses for collegians, or was he just semantically responding to the optics? Plonsky asked. Because his everybody and your and my everybody may be different things. I dont think were seriously talking about rolling it back at all.I know we havent had a single media call here questioning Schoolings situation, and I know the student-athletes arent questioning the bonuses. They think its great. The athletic directors arent questioning it, Plonsky continued. Theyre not opposed to nations paying to reward greeat Olympic performances of their athletes or seeing athletes get help to defray things like training costs. Mike Shannon. So [Emmerts] everybody might be the optics for the public and everyone thats relating to sport and the related question of, How can someone thats awarded $750,000 for a great athletic performance at the Olympics still be considered an amateur?Plonsky laughed a little and added that what constitutes amateurism is a 50-year-old question in college sports, and the nuances of that will probably be debated another 50 years.Plonsky is right. But its precisely the existence of that long-running debate that gets to one of the flaws about Emmerts leadership approach as NCAA president.There are inequities and injustices everywhere you look in college sports. There is no denying Emmert has a thankless, maybe impossible job wrangling all the intricacies. Head-scratching contradictions from sport to sport are unavoidable in some cases. Adding to the difficulty is that NCAA member institutions differ wildly on remedies.But Emmerts habit of clinging to some hackneyed, unsustainable view of what constitutes amateurism rather than progressively attacking the modern realities of his job and todays sports world dates back years. The same goes for his insistence of painting doomsday scenarios if the status quo is changed.Thats not effective leadership.And its not going to work.The NCAAs challenge where college sports intersect with the Olympics is a perfect example.The International Olympic Committee truly did create complications for the NCAA when it decided to dump its own pure amateurism model first and allow pro and amateur athletes to compete side by side. But Emmert and the NCAA are mistaken if they refuse to accept that the IOCs model is the one that will prevail.That genie cant be put back in the bottle.American-born NCAA athletes have been free to take Olympic performance bonuses since 2001. But contrary to Emmerts warnings, college sports havent fallen asunder by that half-step dilution of amateurism. And the size of Schoolings bonus wont make it happen, either. The presence of world-class athletes at the college level like Schooling, Missy Franklin or, now, Ledecky and Sanders and two-sport Oregon star Devon Allen has lifted college sports and campus life. Someone just calculated that the Pac-12 alone had more than 400 college athletes competing at the Rio Games from 47 different nations, and if the conference had entered the Games as a country, it would have ranked fourth in the overall medal count and fifth in gold medals. Thats extraordinary.So rather than talk about arbitrarily capping or rolling back the NCAAs tolerance of such programs, Emmert would be smarter to examine how the Olympic bonus model could be expanded or applied to other areas where the NCAA might elect or even be forced to pay athletes in the future.He needs to be more progressive, not regressive.McMillen, a former Rhodes scholar who was a member of the 1972 Olympic mens basketball team that famously refused its silver medals after a controversial ending to the gold-medal game against Russia, says he favors keeping Olympic performance bonuses but is willing to examine whether more standards are needed. He also supports getting creative and perhaps expanding on the idea.I have to give the specifics more thought, McMillen says, but instead of, say, paying athletes for on-field performances alone, why dont we look at paying student-athletes bonuses for great classroom performances, too?The NCAA has already increased cost-of-attendance stipends for athletes to help cover their costs beyond what their scholarships provide for books, meals and housing, though critics say the amounts arent nearly enough. Refusing to share broadcast revenues with athletes remains contentious, especially since the superconferences split off and started their own lucrative TV networks.Congress has already hauled in Emmert in the past to discuss topics such as athlete rights and whether the NCAAs student-athlete policies violate antitrust regulations. But when Emmert appeared at hearings before the Senate Commerce Committee in 2014, The Associated Press reported that he did such a good job of casting himself as a powerless figurehead, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri finally, and sharply, told him: I cant tell whether youre in charge or whether youre a minion.The Olympic bonus system should not be scuttled. If anything, its a model that NCAA schools should look at in the future to grapple with player compensation issues.Going forward, athletes and colleges are going to have to work more closely together on pay-for-play scenarios. Thats an inescapable reality. And Emmert is likely to find that an NCAA president who sits on high -- arbitrarily talking about rollbacks, bonus caps and reform movements that dont exist -- risks being lampooned more and listened to far less than he already is. ' ' '