Up North Trip

• In news that should be downright inspirational to reefer smokers all across the globe (but probably won't be because you're all lazy bastards who are incapable of being inspired), noted ganja afficionado and recreational pro football player Ricky Williams is planning to play for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League while serving his one-year suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. Ricky is allowed to do this because the CFL doesn't bar players who are suspended from the NFL. Which reminds us yet again of that age-old addage (as if we didn't know it all too well): If you're in trouble with the law in the U.S., flee to Canada. They're nicer there.

• Now seamlessly transitioning to another item from the sports police blotter, Washington Wizards' guard Gilbert Arenas was recently cited by Johnny Law for disobeying officers during an incident in which Arenas' teammate Awvee Storey (not a typo) was blocking traffic. Apparently Storey was causing trouble, and Arenas came up to stand alongside his teammate even though the officers told him to stay in the car. There's a lesson to be learned here, and I believe it is, don't hang out with the scrubby guy on the team no one's heard of, and if you are hanging out with him, don't go out of your way to get his back when he's acting like an idiot.

• Breaking news on the Barbaro front: Jockey Edgar Prado is going to visit the gimped equine on Tuesday for the first time since the injury. Is anyone else picturing the horse lying on his back in a hospital bed covered in bandages, wearing a blue gown with his injured leg done up in one of those harness/sling things? Didn't think so. But seriously, am I also the only one who finds the continuing coverage of this just completely ridiculous? I said it before and I'll say it one last time: The only development worth reporting on this front will be if the beast dies. Otherwise, I speak for anyone else with a shred of normalcy when I say that we just don't care. Don't even tell me anything about Tuesday's jockey-horse visit unless something crazy happens. An example of something crazy would be if Barbaro began verbally admonishing Prado for his role in the accident with just the slightest hint of a Spanish accent but otherwise speaking perfectly clear English. So to sum up one last time so we're clear -- unless the horse talks or dies, I don't want to hear about him.

• In the rare piece of news I will not attempt to make light of, former Falcon Craig "Ironhead" Heyward died over the weekend. I consider it a strange and rather cruel twist that the man with the iron head lost his life to a brain tumor. But nevertheless, here he'll forever be remembered in his vintage 1995 form, a hard-charging, no-nonsense bruiser who epitomized one simple philosophy: run hard. You want inspiration on the football field? Here it was, a man with the size and sheer will to run through anybody. R.I.P., Ironhead.