Reincarnation By Extrapolation All sports talk-show hosts will be mud-caked cows in Botswana, plagued by gnats buzzing around their faces.

Pssst. Wanna see something? A guy I know in upper, upper, upper
management let me get a look at what we'll all be doing in the
next life.

Turns out your mom was right. What goes around, comes around.
Beggars will know feast, gluttons will know famine and Dick
Vitale will be a mime. Also....

Phil Knight will work 18-hour days in a sweatshop in Jakarta and
go through his entire life barefoot.

Mike Tyson will grow up with loving parents in a happy home, be
able to process his anger through quilting and become an
award-winning florist.

Mary Lou Retton will be Manute Bol and vice versa.

Spike Lee will have season tickets in the last row of the
Alamodome, behind a pole, right next to Crazy George.

Sports agents will continue to be parasites and leeches (and I'm
not speaking figuratively).

Albert Belle will be a frightened 98-pound baseball writer with a
speech impediment.

Wilt Chamberlain will be smaller than Simon Birch and score less
than Don Knotts.

Carmen Electra will be wed in a beautiful church, stay married
for 75 years and have a handsome, faithful husband who never once
asks to wear her teddies.

Nebraska will come back as Lincoln School of Lug Nut Technology,
everybody's favorite nonconference Twinkie, and set a national
record for most games lost 77-0.

The Lug Nut Tech coach will be Lou Holtz.

Dominique Moceanu will be a happy, carefree girl who's the first
in her class to reach puberty. Her best friend will be the happy,
carefree Se Ri Pak.

Marge Schott will be a chain-smoking Chihuahua.

Latrell Sprewell will return as an eyeless cave flatworm, owing
to the karmic law that dictates each soul to come back in a life
form equal to or greater than its last.

Magic Johnson gets to start over.

Don King's vocabularosity will not contain enough splenditudinous
verbiosage to keep his ass out of jail.

Renee Richards will come back as whatever she wanted to come back
as before she came back as what she is now.

Travis Roy will break the NHL record for games played.

Roy Firestone will be a superstar athlete with something to hide.

Rick Majerus will constantly get his comb stuck in his thick,
wavy hair and have a terrible time putting on weight.

Allen Iverson will be David Stern's parole officer.

Earl Woods will be the eldest son of a father who takes a
mulligan on his first three kids and then dedicates his life to
his fourth.

Fluff will be a slender, blue-eyed trust-fund baby who never has
to carry his own bag.

Richard Jewell will own The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Kerry Collins will be a 5'6", 135-pound high school quarterback
who never gets to play but has tons of heart.

Barry Switzer will run an outlaw high school program, completing
the outlaw coaching trifecta.

Deion Sanders will have such an unthinkable lack of rhythm and
soul that his first attempt at an end zone celebration will bring
a dozen paramedics rushing to his side.

Jeff Gordon will get the bumper car that's always stuck in
reverse.

Reggie White will be a gay Hispanic living with 22 cousins in
one house in Nogales, Ariz., who gets his Japanese wrist-TV
stolen by a Native American who constantly sneaks up on him from
behind.

O.J. Simpson won't get a next life but will have to keep on
living with himself in this one.

George Steinbrenner will grow up in the lice-infested public
housing that was built where Yankee Stadium used to be.

Tara Lipinski will be a dad who sees his daughter only on CBS
specials.

Bobby Cox will come back as a major league baseball manager.

All sports talk-show hosts will be bloated, mud-caked cows in
Botswana, constantly plagued by gnats buzzing around their faces.

David Wells will come back as triplets.

Shaquille O'Neal will be a starving but talented Hollywood actor
who keeps losing parts to wooden Lakers centers.

James Jordan will simply come back.

And, with any luck, Katarina Witt will come back as herself,
because some things are worth another look.

COLOR PHOTO: DANA FINEMAN/SYGMA [Rick Reilly]

All sports talk-show hosts will be bloated, mud-caked cows in
Botswana, constantly plagued by gnats buzzing around their faces.