Champs and chumps News-Chronicle Champs Doesn't matter if you're for or against our current military action: Our servicemen in Iraq and elsewhere deserve our wholehearted support, and we hope all come back alive to their families and friends when it's over. 'Nuff said. The University of Connecticut men's basketball team saved the NCAA from major embarrassment by defeating Brigham Young University in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The NCAA placed BYU in a tournament bracket that would have played its third round on a Sunday, which the Mormon school cannot do. So had BYU advanced that far, it would have been shuffled to a different bracket, causing great logistical headaches for all - not to mention the millions of basketball fans in in the tournament office pool. Chumps U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was accepting a "Citadel of Free Speech" award Wednesday night from the City Club, a Cleveland civic group. Unfortunately, no video or audio of the awards ceremony exists, because the so-called citadel of free speech barred all broadcast media from it. No word yet if other Supreme Court members will allow a recount for the award, because we're asking... As if the questions about what happened to Salt Lake City kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart during her time in the hands of drifter Brian Mitchell aren't sensational enough, visitors on Wednesday to the CNN-run news site on Netscape's home page, www.cnn.netscape.cnn.com, were treated to this headline: "Mormon religion made Smart vulnerable." OK, the actual story came from a supposed expert in cults and pointed out that Mitchell and Smart's shared Mormon upbringings might have made it easier for him to get inside her head. Still, nothing like a little religious jingoism in headline writing to inflame passions about an already widely misunderstood group. How to Succeed in Business Dept.: Doug McCorkindale, CEO of Gannett, awarded himself a $2.3 million bonus for 2002, plus exercising stock options for another $9.5 million, according to www.pacifichistory.net. That's in addition to his salary of $1.6 million, by the way. McCorkindale said he deserved the bonus because of his extraordinary efforts to make a profit for Gannett - such as the company laying off 500 people, 20 percent of the staff, at the San Francisco Chronicle (now that the rival newspaper San Francisco Examiner is out of business) and substantially increasing advertising rates for its Honolulu Advertiser. Boy, we sure hope our bosses haven't planned $2.3 million bonuses for themselves next year...