CYBERSPORTS WHAT ELSE IS SALT LAKE HOLDING OUT ON US?

Byline: - Tom Hoffarth

Some of the best seats for next February's Winter Olympics will go up on eBay auction starting May 21 - and the Salt Lake Organizing Committee is not only endorsing it but stands to benefit from the charade.

Hoping to sell off 100 tickets for several times more than their face value of between $90 and $450, the organizers admit they held back about 1,000 seats - SLOC president Mitt Romney calls them the ``super-prime, Jack Nicholson seats'' - in hopes of auctioning them off to raise as much as $1 million.

On paper, Salt Lake already has raised enough money to stage the $1.3 billion Games. But organizers are trying to raise another $54 million to avoid reducing their budget's contingency fund, which now stands at $117 million and is meant to cover unexpected expenses.

SLOC has raised $165 million so far from ticket sales, $15 million short of its goal. Romney said he expects to reach the target.

--MVP.com, the sporting-goods retail outlet once headed by Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and John Elway that recently came to a crashing halt, has come back to life at SportsLine.com's site (www.sportsline.com/mvp/index.html). Jordan, whose site is maintained by SportsLine, is back as the main endorsing sports figure.

--According to Lycos.com, Anna Kournikova is the most searched-for athlete nearly week after week.

It should be noted that Lycos also now runs Kournikova's official Web site (http://sports.lycos.com/anna/) that includes 95 pictures of her. The company also uses the tennis maven in a ``Win Anna's Stuff'' promotion.

According to the latest (May 8) most-searched list, Kournikova is followed by: 2. Allen Iverson; 3. Kobe Bryant; 4. Vince Carter; 5. Tiger Woods; 6. Dale Earnhardt Jr.; 7. Tony Hawk; 8. Martina Hingis; 9. Jason Williams; 10. Derek Jeter.