Rather than give the cover to Lance Armstrong or surprise British Open winner Ben Curtis, this week Sports Illustrated went with Kobe Bryant's mug shot.

Is an NBA star in legal trouble even really news anymore?

I know, Kobe is supposed to be nice one as opposed to Iverson being the thug one, Shaq the tall one, and Vince Carter the overrated one. Still, I think it would be more noteworthy if SI waited and did a cover celebrating a week where nary a member of the NBA is in court for something.

There are certainly other nuances here, from the positive versus negative news aspect to drawing parallels between this cover and the Time magazine cover of OJ Simpson's mug shot (same corporate family... hmm...).

In other sporting news, you'd be forgiven if you didn't know the Greater Hartford Open was going on this weekend - it's one of the smaller PGA stops, even if it is Jon Couture's favorite - but there was a time when this weekend was going to loom far larger than it is now.

That was when Suzy Whaley, a club pro, won a sectional tournament and played her way into the GHO, making her the first woman to qualify for a PGA event in 58 years. She got a fair amount of press at the time she qualified.

And then, later, Annika Sorenstam got invited to play at the Colonial. We don't need to go down that road again, do we?

I suppose Whaley may not mind that thunder-grabbing. Sorenstam is more used to the attention, and it's not like Whaley's gone unnoticed.

It's unlikely Whaley will do well, not so much due to gender as the unfortunate record of Connecticut sectional qualifiers at the GHO. Of the four, the last two missed the cut.

Then again, Whaley won't have to contend with Ben Curtis. He decided he'd take the week off, and isn't playing the GHO.

Perhaps he's mad he didn't get the SI cover.