How desperate were the folks at Rogers Centre to fill seats for tonight’s Buffalo Bills exhibition game? Mike Zeisberger of the TORONTO SUN reports free tickets to tonight’s game “have been handed out to organizations such as The Hospital for Sick Children and The United Way, an act the naysayers claim is a desperate effort to make the 53,000-seat stadium appear full.”

Rogers Media Senior Director of Marketing Anthony Antonelli denied the claim, saying “We have sponsorship agreements or relationships with Sick Kids and The United Way.”

But Zeisberger then asked, “at one point, it was alleged that there were 180,000 names on the waiting list … If that is the case, why can fans suddenly buy single-game tickets for tonight?”

Garth Woolsey of the TORONTO STAR takes a wild guess: “No doubt there are NFL fans in our midst. Plenty of them. But it is still worth noting that only the cheapest seats are sold out (for tonight’s game, and) at $70 a pop ‘cheapest’ is relative.”

The average ticket price for the game was reportedly into the triple digits. If those tickets could’ve be sold, do you think all those sick kids would’ve been gifted?

*Note to self: don’t hire Vincent Askew as a lifeguard*

Paul Farhi of the WASHINGTON POST reports Tony Kornheiser’s talk radio contract will not be renewed by DC’s WWWT-AM “after his program’s ratings declined substantially this spring.”

That leaves Kornheiser as a free agent in the DC radio marketplace, and causes Mike Stern of MEDIAWEEK to speculate that Kornheiser’s talk host services “may be very appealing” to Redskins Owner Daniel Snyder.

(Will Tony K. saddle up Snyder’s Red Zebra?)

Why Snyder? Well the NFL’s very own Napoleon also runs something called Red Zebra Broadcasting, which recently acquired DC sports talker WTEM-AM and owns a “portfolio of [DC] area stations.”

That would be rather interesting, Snyder signing Tony K.’s checks - especially with Kornheiser’s on-air role on “Monday Night Football.” Though it could be considered a conflict of interest, Kornheiser would surely bend over backwards to call off viewer thoughts of impropriety.

STUFF in New Zealand reports on Rachel Hunter’s latest shining knight. Make that (Los Angeles) King. 26-year-old Jarrett Stoll is engaged to the 38-year-old Hunter, who calls him “my first love since Rod.”

(She looks great! And so does Rachel)

I assume she means her former husband, Stewart.

Mary Schmitt Boyer of the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER has my favorite story of the day (see buried lead). NBAer Damon Jones guested on ESPN’s “First Take” this morning and talked about the Cleveland Cavaliers’ lack of offseason player moves with co-host Skip Bayless.

Jones was a member of the Cavaliers at the time of the discussion. Moments later, he was being chaffeured to the airport when his limo driver informed him he’d been traded to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Boyer’s note end there, but it turns out the limo driver was the father of an ESPN producer, who called his dad to inform him of the deal.

As a Laker fan, I’d like to lodge a personal request that someone in Bristol fly in Vlad Rad for some astute offseason Lakers analysis.

Sad news about ESPN’s once-mainstay Bill Pidto.

SPORTSONTHEAIR reports this week that an ESPN spokesperson confirmed that Pidto “no longer works for us.” Pidto was at the net for 15 years.

Brett Favre Jets jerseys are going nuts in NYC, and Chris Mortensen reports on ESPN-TV that the NFL is printing “60,000″ more of the unis to fulfill demand. Mort also reports that NFL players get 6% from each sale of their jerseys.

Favre jersey’s are being sold on average from $70-200 on the NFLShop.com website. So at an average sale of $135, 60,000 sold would bring Favre $486,000.

I can’t believe that would be the case. Probably too high a number, but who knows.

On the two-minute, NBC-borne delay suffered by U.S. gymnast Alicia Sacramone before her catastrophic performance yesterday: Has anyone considered that if it wasn’t for NBC, no one would give a damn about Sacramone, gymnastics and the Olympics for that matter?

Yes, an oversimplification, but give the TV guys a break. Hundreds of thousands of hours of coverage and they have a minor glitch - and that lost the gold for the U.S. gymnastics team? Right.

Like most of the media, I’ve hammered NBC’s slanted, over-positive coverage of The Games, but this time, they deserve no blame for Sacramone’s performance and China’s triumph.

LOTS of excitement about Arizona State football in Phoenix. So much so that ASU’s marketing department is pulling out all the stops this preseason. (Yeah, I know, the two don’t really jibe.)

The PHOENIX BUSINESS JOURNAL notes that “20,000 dry-cleaning bags depicting ASU jerseys,” are being circulated, with A-State’s season ticket price also advertised.

The only way the Sun Devils could get me to buy season tix would to re-hire Frank Kush as coach. Now that would be worth the price of admission. And heavy starch.

NEWSDAY’s Ken Davidoff lists the top and bottom five MLB owners in baseball. John Henry of the Bosox is #1. Baltimore’s Peter Angelos is dead last.

You would think Henry’s mini-me, Frank McCourt, might escape a swipe.

And you would be wrong, as he clocks in at #26:

There have to be days when Joe Torre thinks to himself, “I miss the Steinbrenners. Shoot, I even miss Randy Levine.” Yes, Joe must be happier now with Manny Ramirez aboard, but that spoke largely to dumb luck, rather than any vision on the Dodgers’ parts. McCourt has exhibited an itchy trigger finger on GMs and managers, and while he has spent money (poorly, on GM Ned Colletti’s bad recommendations) over the past few winters, he refused to take on salary during the season. Very odd.

McCourt has finally overcome the gigantic PR gaffes that plagued his early stewardship of the club here in L.A. The team does seem to be reconnecting with the local citizenry, and finally caught a break with the Manny deal. But McCourt’s two ill-advised GM hires, Paul DePodesta and Colletti, have set the team back five years at the MLB level.

Unless the Dodgers make a miracle playoff run, expect the hair-pieced-one to get gassed after the season and replaced by player personnel prodigy Logan White.

Speaking of McCourt, there’s been a rumor floating around that Larry Lucchino may leave the Red Sox for the Dodgers. Makes sense, considering that Bostonian McCourt has Red Sox-envy, and has grabbed all he can from the The Bean’s now-model franchise (Grady!).

Peter Gammons to the BOSTON GLOBE: “I do know that [Dodger Owner] Frank McCourt would love to bring Lucchino to the Dodgers to straighten out the archaic mess in LA. But I was also told by someone close to Larry and with the Red Sox that there is no way that John Henry and Tom Werner would let Larry go.”

McCourt has been here five years, isn’t that enough time for him to straighten out the club’s “archaic mess” himself?

Kellen Winslow, Sr., has been named AD at Central State University in Ohio. The school will begin competing as a full-fledged Division II school this fall.

Winslow has a reputation for a prickly personality. With that, I wonder how long he’ll last as an athletic director, which requires plenty of glad-handing and fund raising.

MSNBC’s Bill Clement fingered Bill Gates at the Oly table tennis venue in Beijing today, saying “(Gates is a) huge table tennis fan, player and aficionado.”

Perhaps Gates can break the tie between Joe Posnanski of the KANSAS CITY STAR, who claims this week that the Chinese are still “crazy about table tennis.” While Maureen Fan of the WASHINGTON POST reports today that table tennis is no longer a dominant sport in China.

I wonder who dug deeper on the subject?

New photo of SbB Girl Stephanie in Culver City, CA: