BRIEFLY : INJURED FITTIPALDI MIGHT NEVER RACE AGAIN.

Brazilian-born racing star Emerson Fittipaldi, recovering from a neck injury suffered in a spectacular crash last weekend, said Thursday he might never race again.

``I had a message from the Lord,'' the two-time Indianapolis 500 champion said after being released from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. ``It looks like I'm not going to race again.

``I'm not 100 percent sure because I need some reflection,'' he added during a news conference at the hospital, where he was joined by his wife, Teresa.

The decision is up to Fittipaldi, said Dr. Stephen Olvey, director of medical affairs for IndyCar.

The 49-year-old driver will lose 15 percent-18 percent of flexibility in his neck, but otherwise should recover completely, Olvey said.

Fittipaldi fractured the seventh cervical vertebrae in his neck after crashing into a wall at 230 mph during Michigan's Marlboro 500.

During one of the final qualifying runs for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Jeff Gordon smashed his own track record with a lap at 176.419 mph, securing the pole for Saturday's race.

Dale Earnhardt, who walked away from a frightening 11-car crash in the DieHard 500 on Sunday at Talladega with a fractured left collar bone and sternum, qualified his Chevrolet at 174.910 mph despite continued pain.

FOOTBALL

AT&T has become the latest corporate sponsor of Texas Stadium, setting up another potential fight between the NFL and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Jones' deal with the telephone giant comes soon after NFL made Sprint the official telecommunications sponsor of the league and its 30 teams.

All-Pro cornerback Dale Carter agreed to a 3-year contract with the Kansas City Chiefs.

TENNIS

Top-seeded Marcelo Rios of Chile was beaten 6-0, 7-5 by Romanian Adrian Voinea, one of many seeds ousted from the Grolsch Open clay-court tournament in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

GOLF

Howard R. Gill Jr., who subsidized the early operation of Golf Digest magazine by working as a chicken farmer then served as the magazine's publisher for 35 years, died in Fairfield, Conn., after a long battle with cancer. He was 73.

Thomas Bjorn, a Dane in his first year on the European Tour, and Santiago Luna of Spain, shot 5-under-par 67s to take the first-round lead in the Scandinavian Masters in Goteborg, Sweden.

BASKETBALL

Frank Brickowski fell for the Boston Celtics mystique when he was a teen-age counselor at Red Auerbach's basketball camp. At 37, the journeyman center-forward signed a one-year deal reportedly worth $1.7 million.

Marcus Camby, who reportedly took gifts from agents while at the University of Massachusetts, is cooperating with campus investigators checking for NCAA violations, his agent said.

``Marcus is being completely open in telling everything he knows about everything,'' said James Sears Bryant of Pro Serv, his agent. ``Marcus has dealt with it, he's told the truth, and he's trying to put it behind him.''

BOXING

Sugar Ray Leonard, 40 years old and five years removed from his last fight, said he might come out of retirement to fight Hector ``Macho'' Camacho.