Spring training games will begin within a week, and conference tournaments will soon lead to the NCAA Tournament.

Somehow, these two facts bring us to one word: Forgiveness.

Despite everything we know about baseball and college basketball, we always come back. The worst part of the sports year (February) gives way to the best, and our annual willingness to ignore reality and be carried away is consistent enough to be a scientific formula.

We know baseball is controlled by dolts and charlatans, and often played by cretins. We know college basketball is a sham, with money and shoe contracts and coaches’ reputations becoming far more important than either the product or the participants.

Baseball is greed. It’s rich guys jacking up prices, cooking their books and wringing their hands.

College basketball is coaches who sell promises to 17-year-olds, leeches who leverage the system and sycophantic hangers-on who fight over the scraps.

We know all this, and we always come back.

We might be part of the problem, but we can’t help ourselves. We care only about the games, and sometimes that’s enough.

What’s a little forgive-and-forget among friends?

This Week’s List:

In the interest of all concerned, this must happen by 2006: Kevin Harlan announcing Olympic ice dancing.

If you’re capable of thinking the way Al Davis thinks, you’ll see the transcendent beauty of the situation: The Bucs took a coach he was thinking about firing anyway, and they gave him two No. 1 picks, two No. 2 picks and enough money ($8 million) to pay a coach -- at least the way Al pays a coach -- for the next decade.

In Al’s world, that’s not just a good deal: That’s heaven, my friend -- heaven.

Just for the heck of it (managerial compensation division): Manny Sanguillen for Chuck Tanner.

Early reports indicate the killer does not discriminate on the basis of color, creed or ethnic background: John Rocker is making his film debut as a homicidal greenskeeper in the cleverly titled The Greenskeeper.

Two other items of interest regarding The Greenskeeper: 1) straight-to-video, and; 2) the slogan is "It’s par for the corpse."

Over here on the corner of Flag-Waver and Jingoism, we had only one response to the news that Russia and South Korea are thinking about taking their skates and going home: More medals for us!

No offense to anybody, but there’s a nagging question that always pops up around Winter Olympic time: In the grand scheme of athletic competition, what does it really mean to be the best at an event such as skeleton or women’s bobsled?

Poor judging/officiating decisions that deserve to be overturned, now that the new world of Sale/Pelletier means losing doesn’t have to mean forever: 1) Roy Jones Jr., in the Seoul Olympics; 2) 1985 St. Louis Cardinals (Denkinger); 3) 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team.

If I hear this particular piece of trite blather one more time ...: "It’s not the destination, it’s the journey."

And, in a related topic: When did Jimmy Roberts take over for Jack Whitaker as America’s Most Cloying?

One way to tell when you’re watching a sport that you won’t bother to watch for another four years: When the people who know the sport say, "He might not be well-known in the United States, but they love him in Europe."

Best description of a Winter Games moment: Calling a ski crash a "yard sale."

Next thing you know, Joe Montana is going to come out and say something interesting: Previously unquotable Wayne Gretzky, going all Jim Mora before the international media.

And you just watch: If the Canadians win gold, it’ll be the Great One’s tirade that turned it all around.

There were countless magnetometer passes and incessant searches, but there was just one moment when my patience with the security measures in Salt Lake City was lost forever: When I had to show my credential in order to use the restroom at the press center.

Because it’s one thing to volunteer for duty and country, but: There’s got to be some sort of short-straw (or short-bus) principle at work for those who draw restroom-security detail.

When you look at the convoluted, makes-no-sense-either-way deal between the Nuggets and Mavs, there’s only one possible explanation: Don Nelson went back to being weird again, and took Mark Cuban with him.

Yo! Here we are! We’re over here! Leave us alone! Hey, over here!: Jamie Sale and David Pelletier would appreciate it if everybody would concentrate on the other athletes in the Olympic Games, and their next press conference will begin in 30 minutes.

Let’s give a rousing welcome to the basketball team that looks more lost than Lester Holt without his teleprompter: The Warriors played hardball with Marc Jackson, and in the end they traded him for an inactive Dean Garrett and a second-round pick in 2007.

Which raises a frightening question: What if they’d gone easy on him?

Every once in a while, something happens that makes you realize it’s not at all clear which team is the biggest threat to the Lakers: Spurs 115, Kings 92.

And, finally: If we all agree to chip in, is there a chance we could buy enough ribs to keep *NSYNC on that island and out of our televisions, like, forever?

Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tim.keown@espnmag.com.