BRIEFLY : FORMER PATS OWNER SULLIVAN DIES AT 82.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Billy Sullivan, who brought the NFL to Boston and then watched the league outgrow him, died in Florida on Monday of cancer. He was 82.

``Billy Sullivan was the father of professional football in New England,'' current Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. ``Everyone connected with the Patriots, and every football fan in New England, owes him a debt of gratitude for his success.''

Sullivan was the president of a fuel delivery company when he was granted the rights to an original franchise in the AFL. He and his fellow AFL owners were dubbed the ``Foolish Club'' for taking on the NFL.

``They were able to make that a badge of honor as time went on,'' said Gino Cappelletti, a member of the original Patriots team in 1960. ``They were able to overcome major odds.''

Then called the Boston Patriots, the team played in local university stadiums before settling in at its current home in Foxboro in 1971.

Sullivan served as an AFL president from 1961-64, helping negotiate a TV contract that kept the league afloat before it merged with the NFL in 1970.

Sullivan sued the NFL for $116 million in 1991, claiming its refusal to allow him to sell stock to the public forced him to sell the team for what he considered less than it was worth. In 1996, he was awarded $11.5 million.

John Elway, one month removed from his first Super Bowl victory, had minor surgery on his right shoulder and should recover within six weeks.

Detroit's Barry Sanders, who became only the third player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in one season, was chosen winner of the Jim Thorpe Trophy, presented since 1955 to the NFL's most valuable player.

HOCKEY: With interest in women's ice hockey at an all-time high after the U.S.'s gold-medal win in the Olympics, the four-team Women's Professional Hockey League Inc. plans to give women a chance to play hockey after college.

The new women's hockey league, scheduled to start its first season this fall, will be unlike the American Basketball League or Women's National Basketball Association, which were created after the Summer Games of 1996 when the U.S. women's basketball team won the gold medal.

The WPHL's operating budget will be $2.5 million a year and its front-line players won't make more than $21,000 a season, said league founder Ed Saunders. The teams will be league-owned to prevent bidding wars for players.

TENNIS: Andre Agassi was named to the U.S. Davis Cup team for its first-round match against Russia in April at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, captain Tom Gullikson said.

BOXING: Ed Mahone (16-0-1, with 16 knockouts) stopped Cody Koch (24-1, 20) at 2:35 of 10th round to pull out a scheduled 12-round heavyweight fight he had been losing at the Forum.