By GENE COLLIER, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

During what seemed like the fifth hour of Pittsburgh Steelers-Detroit Lions the other night, while practicing the low art of deadline columnizing, I somehow allowed some information from the press box intercom to puncture my concentration.

Figuratively speaking, there weren't a ton of people at Pittsburgh Steelers practice Tuesday afternoon, but along the interior of the team's first offensive line, there were, literally speaking, very nearly one ton of people.

"Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Peleus' son Achilles

The accursed rage, which brought pain to thousands of the Achaeans.''

Those are the first two lines of Homer's "The Iliad," apparently, and since no one ever accused Homer of being a homer, he was probably well within reason to be upset by the damage inflicted by Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan War.

Generally a three-game interleague series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Texas Rangers should be enough to drive even Bud Selig to the World Cup coverage, but what is going on in Arlington this week is actually pretty instructive.

Forty years ago this summer, the new head coach of our high school football team called a meeting.

Of the cheerleaders.

Football players, he told them, are born, not made. Football players, he told them, are special people.

WASHINGTON - Boiling excitement all along the Potomac could scarcely be contained even before rush hour had its legs. Something pretty urgent is going on when you're bumping into celebrities three hours before a June baseball game.

Ken Burns, Scott Boras, celebrated saxophonist Jaared, Sandra Bullock.

All right, not Sandra Bullock, but who would have been surprised?

As the Big Ten draws closer and closer to expansion, the whole idea gets a little oilier and a lot more pungent.

Why do I keep picturing the expansion announcement as a prime time Big Ten Network event, televised live from downtown Chicago, where all the self-suspecting candidates have gathered in a kind of "Let's-Make-A-Deal" audience of breathless contestants?

PITTSBURGH - Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby, who for the first time in his career talked a better postseason series than he played, spoke a monstrous, clairvoyant, eloquent truth the day before Game 7, the day before the last day in the life of the Mellon Arena.

"You see what your team is made of (in this situation); it's a big challenge," the captain said.

So now, mere hours from mini-camp and 12 weeks from maxi-camp, we have what they call in the NFL some measurables.

OTTAWA - Hockey players, hockey coaches and especially hockey analysts continent-wide have been falling all over each other this week explaining their own greater meaning of time and space -- how you've got to take it away from players such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin and anyone else who can reliably put a puck in a net.