Sports Beat Edited by Kostya Kennedy and Mark Bechtel

Some events just sound fun--like, say, the Goldschlager Bar
Olympics, in which good-looking women travel from town to town
beating the locals at pool and darts. (Chugging the titular
cinnamon schnapps liqueur is not an event, at least not
officially.) The Goldschlager A Team's "captain" is Jenny
McCarthy--the former Playboy centerfold and star of Scary Movie
3--but the real competitors are Jennifer Barretta (below, left),
a professional pool player who took up the sport four years ago
because, she says, "I don't have to break any bones and I can be
good at it," and Christine Nguyen (right), a darts player and
model. Players who beat an A Team member during competition
(which began in New York City on Oct. 23 and will go to five
other cities) qualify to win a trip to the finals in Las Vegas
next summer.

The Chiefs' record-breaking return specialist Dante Hall was
funny and engaging in his appearance on the Late Show with David
Letterman last Thursday--at one point he said he felt selfish
appearing without his blockers. (Letterman tried to put him at
ease: "Coach Vermeil called today and said those guys are mostly
dead weight.") When asked if he considered himself an MVP
candidate, Hall said, "I don't think I play enough snaps.... I
would vote for Steve McNair." The show closed with Hall, 25,
deftly fielding a football shot high off the roof of the Ed
Sullivan Theater with a Jugs machine.

Wearing bib number 30,792 and an I [LOVE] NEW YORK breathe-right
strip, P. Diddy finished his much-celebrated New York City
Marathon run in 4:14:54, 11,337th out of 34,662 finishers. "Never
in my life have I ever experienced anything as crazy as this,"
said the 33-year-old hip-hop mogul. "I definitely wanted to stop.
This is a life-changing experience for me because I did not
stop." Celebs like Jennifer Lopez helped him raise about $2
million for charity.

ABC has hired Justin Timberlake to write music for the
network's NBA coverage and to work as a correspondent. TNT hired
him last summer, saying he would report on events ranging from
basketball to NASCAR--but he has rarely been seen.... Ben Affleck
has signed to play basketball coach Don Haskins in Glory Road, a
movie based on Haskins's 1966 Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso)
team. The Miners, who had an all-black starting lineup, beat
Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky team to win the national
championship. Haskins, who is white, said he was "flattered they
wanted to do a movie at all," let alone cast Affleck to play
him.... After the World Series, Marlins pitcher Carl Pavano was
spotted with Charmed and AT&T vixen Alyssa Milano in Suede, a New
York club owned by a pair of die-hard Yankees fans. Still, the
owners sent Pavano's party, which included Series MVP Josh
Beckett, a magnum of Cristal.... Former Sixers
president-cum-self-help guru Pat Croce is developing a syndicated
TV show in which he'll move in with families for a week (after
studying videotape of members interacting with each other) and
become a kind of on-site Dr. Phil. "I help them solve their
problems--overweight, injury, lack of motivation," Croce told The
Philadelphia Inquirer. "Everyone needs a friend. I'm a friend who
has connections." ... She's best known for interviewing girls in
bikinis, but Cindy Taylor is branching out to guys in chaps. The
host of E!'s Wild On series will be a chute reporter for OLN's
coverage of the Professional Bull Riding finals in Las Vegas this
weekend.

COLOR PHOTO: GOLDSCHLAGER (A TEAM) Studying for the bar

COLOR PHOTO: ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (FIENNES)

FIVE COLOR PHOTOS: PAUL HANDLEY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (MUSTACHES, 5) PICTURE THIS In what is considered the Super Bowl of not shaving, Germany's Karl Heinz-Hille (bottom left) won the sixth World Beard and Mustache Championships in Carson City, Nev. About 150 men--including 80 from the Association of German Beard Clubs--competed in the event, many of whom waxed poetic. Heinz-Hille beat an 83-year-old Englishman by a whisker to win the overall title.

THIS WEEK'S SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE
A Florida rabbi is delivering a public lecture, titled The Curses
of the Billygoat and the Bambino: Exploring the Talmudic View on
Curses.

THEY SAID IT

SIR RANULPH FIENNES
Fifty-nine-year-old cousin of actors Joseph and Ralph Fiennes,
whose New York City Marathon was his seventh marathon in seven
days on six continents: "This has been enjoyable throughout
except for the bits of running."