BRIEFLY : SALT LAKE VOWS OLYMPIC PROBE.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Salt Lake City's Olympic organizers pledged Friday to confront a burgeoning bribery scandal with an independent investigation into whether the 2002 Winter Games were bought and sold.

``I'm glad this has now happened,'' Frank Joklik, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said after board members emerged from a 5-1/2-hour emergency meeting called to deal with the scandal.

The committee turned the investigation over to a five-member ethics panel that would, according to a written resolution, be ``free from any direction or control'' by organizers.

The panel's report, to be made public, will be due no later than Feb. 11.

As the organizers met behind closed doors, the man who brought the Olympics to Utah said the high ideals expected of athletes should not apply to the bidding cities.

Tom Welch, who ran Salt Lake's bid, defended a scholarship program that the SLOC is alleged to have used as a possible front to secure International Olympic Committee votes.

``What I hope happens from this is that there is a better recognition and understanding of what goes into the process'' of winning an Olympic bid, Welch said.

``You have to know what it is and what it isn't. And it isn't the Olympic competition. It's the business side of it,'' he said.

And that, said Welch, involves wooing members of the International Olympic Committee, giving them gifts and ``letting them know who their friends are.''

Welch's comments were lent stark credence by a prominent Salt Lake plastic surgeon, who said Welch pleaded with him to perform free cosmetic surgery on an IOC member in the months before Salt Lake won the bid in 1995.

``Tom told me it was the way in the past and the way in the future that places got these kinds of things,'' Dr. Rick Anderson told the Associated Press.

FOOTBALL: Two former Northwestern football players pleaded innocent to charges they lied to federal grand juries investigating sports betting. Dennis Lundy and Gregory Gill are two of four former Wildcats players indicted Dec. 3 on federal perjury charges for allegedly lying about their gambling activities.

Carolina Panthers assistant coach Kevin Steele, attacked on the sidelines last week by linebacker Kevin Greene, officially was named head coach at Baylor.

Randy Ball, the nation's winningest NCAA Division I-AA coach over the past three seasons (at Western Illinois), is the new head coach at Southwest Missouri State University.

Larry Smith, who guided the dramatic turnaround of the Missouri football program, was rewarded with a new five-year contract. The former USC coach is 25-31-1 in five seasons at Missouri. But he took a team that had not had a winning season since 1983 to 7-4 regular-season records in both 1997 and 1998.

WINTER SPORTS: Olympic slalom champion Hilde Gerg of Germany proved she is just as skilled in the speed events as the technical, winning her first career World Cup downhill in Veysonnaz, Switzerland.

In Val Gardena, Italy, Norway's Lasse Kjus beat the powerful Austrians at their favorite discipline of Alpine skiing, the downhill, winning a World Cup race for the second time in seven days.

HOCKEY: Washington Capitals left wing Chris Simon will have surgery next week on his dislocated right shoulder that could keep him out of action for six months, the team said.

Colorado Avalanche center Joe Sakic will be out at least seven to 10 days after spraining his right shoulder during Thursday night's 2-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, the team said.

ETC.: Golfer Jim Colbert and actor Kevin Costner teamed to shoot a tournament-record, 14-under-par 58 for the first-round lead in the Lexus Senior Challenge at La Quinta. . . . Five-time Olympic gold medalist Jenny Thompson of Stanford set a U.S. record (51.07 seconds) in the 100-yard butterfly competition at the Kerr-McGee Elite Pro-Am Swim Meet in Oklahoma City. . . . Top-ranked tennis star Pete Sampras confirmed to The New York Times that he will not play for the U.S. Davis Cup team in 1999.