04/13/2001

An NBA world championship ring. An Olympic gold medal. A college championship ring.

Quinn Buckner won them all. The mementos of his past glory aren't hung from the family room wall. They're stuffed in drawers and closets. Buckner, the former Mavericks coach, is not the sentimental type.

But he couldn't envision ever surrendering just one of those mementos, either.

"No,'' the basketball lifer said without hesitation. "Never.''

You would think most athletes who've won awards so treasured by their peers, as well as the rest of us, would cherish those awards just like Buckner. They would want to keep them as close to their bosom as we do the MVP trophies we won as kids playing Little League baseball or CYO basketball.

After all, they trained long and hard to be the absolute best. So much so that we've watched them collapse from emotion and exhaustion upon reaching the pinnacle.

The enduring image of sprinter Michael Johnson's career for me isn't his crossing the Olympic finish line in world record time or posing next to the clock indicating his feat. It is the tear trickling down his cheek as he stood on the award platform, while the national anthem played, after he was awarded his first individual Olympic gold medal.

I can't imagine Johnson ever giving up his gold. I couldn't imagine anyone so fortunate ever doing so, even though I, too, was led by Muhammad Ali to believe that he tossed his Olympic medal into a river in protest.

But this week, up popped one of those stories that made me shake my head: Tommie Smith, the most infamous, if not the most famous, Olympic 200-meter gold medalist, put his medal up for auction. How could he?

"It's not to make money,'' The Associated Press quoted Smith as saying.

That, of course, has been the driving force in the few instances before when highly decorated athletes have decided to part with their awards.

"It happens because it's a last option a guy has,'' said one-time Cowboys architect Gil Brandt, who always sports one of his three Super Bowl title rings.

Last December, it was Oklahoma Heisman-winning running back Billy Sims, who, down on his luck, tried once again to sell his Heisman. A rumor even erupted in Norman that Sims cost Sooners quarterback Josh Heupel the Heisman last season because Heisman voters questioned whether Sooners valued the most prestigious individual honor in college football.

O.J. Simpson sold his Heisman to pay off his court-ordered debt to his slain wife's family. Another old USC Heisman winner, Charles White, sold his Heisman to pay the IRS.

From time to time, we've heard of Super Bowl rings popping up in pawn shops.

But if it's not about the money, what else could it be?

"I thought someone might want it more than me,'' explained Smith, who was immortalized at the '68 Olympics for punching the Mexico City air in protest with a black-gloved fist. "I thought it might be nice for someone to hold it who didn't win it.''

A museum would seem a better place to achieve that goal than the auction block. For there is more than one person who would like to see the medal that was nearly stripped from Smith because of his protest, along with that of fellow U.S. sprinter John Carlos.

Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Joe Horrigan more than once has made that argument to great football players with memorabilia they for some reason no longer want. He has pled with them to donate their wares to the Hall, where they can be seen by hundreds of thousands of fans and cared for by staff.

"But there's definitely a market out there,'' Horrigan said.

Smith put his gold medal, along with some other items, up for sale on his Web site. He was asking half a million bucks for it.

Smith said he thought the price would prove prohibitive, which further raised the question of why he would attempt to sell part of what made him the subject of so many front-page stories and historical documentaries.

He then mentioned something about wanting to raise money for a youth foundation, but that shouldn't require that he sell part of his soul. It's a sad day when anyone would.

Kevin B. Blackistone can be reached at 214-97-8780 or at