AROUND THE USA: PHELPS' IMAGE HARD TO REPAIR

Barney Fife -- or at least someone who acts suspiciously like him -- is on
the prowl in South Carolina, searching for the bong that Michael Phelps
made famous. The marijuana pipe must be what the Richland County sheriff
is after, because the evidence inside it has long since gone up in smoke.

The good sheriff believes Phelps should pay for his crime of smoking from
a pot pipe during a college visit, as the photo of him in a British
tabloid would suggest. Apparently eight gold medals don't carry a lot of
weight in some parts, nor do apologies carefully crafted by public
relations people.

The idea of Phelps in handcuffs is silly, of course. There aren't enough
jails to hold the millions of Americans who believe smoking pot is no
worse than drinking alcohol and who imbibe on occasion themselves.

Besides, there's nothing the authorities in Richland County can do to
Phelps that can compare to the damage already done.

A few months ago he was hosting "Saturday Night Live" and being fawned
over by Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes."' Companies were lining up to make
him their pitchman, and his agent suggested that Phelps could end up
earning $100 million in endorsements.

He was so big that he blew off the front of a Wheaties box to sign with
Frosted Flakes instead.

Now he'll be lucky to be on the cover of High Times magazine, which,
coincidentally, is promising to display the "most mind-blowing glass bongs
and pipes on earth" in its March issue.

Sure, his advertisers dutifully lined up behind him this week with
carefully prepared statements of support. They promised not to drop
Phelps, and said they hoped he learned his lesson and will become a model
citizen.

But images are everything, and the image of Phelps with a bong pressed up
against his face will live in people's minds long after they've forgotten
the image of him with eight gold medals around his neck. Mention his name,
and he'll be the Olympian who likes to party, not the swimmer who won the
most medals ever.

Phelps himself said Wednesday that he knows he will have to live with what
he did, but hopes he can grow from it.

"By no means is it fun for me. By no means is it easy," he told The
Associated Press after a swim in Baltimore.

Unfortunately for Phelps, becoming a celebrity sometimes means paying a
price. He should have already figured that out, after getting busted on a
drunken driving charge at the age of 19, just months after winning six
golds in Athens.

You can't get millions from sponsors like Visa, Kellogg and watchmaker
Omega, have your face plastered all over national television every day,
and then expect no one to pay attention to what you do in your personal
life. And if you're going to do things in your personal life that you
shouldn't be doing, make sure you do when in a place where nobody's got a
camera.

Phelps can certainly be forgiven for blowing off some steam after years of
doing almost nothing except train in the pool. What's troubling, though,
is that the people around him did nothing to rein him in while knowing
what happened after his last Olympics.

He's basically a 23-year-old who, for all his world travel, has led a
cloistered life that has been centered, almost entirely since grade
school, on trying to go as fast as he could in a pool. Other than his
freakish ability to swim fast, there's not much terribly interesting about
him, as anyone who watched the painful "60 Minutes" piece now knows.

That didn't stop him from becoming a national hero, thanks to his amazing
races in Beijing and the relentless cheerleading of NBC. But the window of
opportunity for cashing in was always going to be narrow, even before the
photo was snapped. The American public doesn't care much about swimmers
for the most part, and the glow from Beijing has been fading.

Sponsors say they remain on board, but my guess is it will be a long time
before another Phelps commercial airs, if ever.

There's not a legitimate company in America that would even consider using
him now as a pitchman.

His decision to light up has cost him terribly, damaging his reputation
and pretty much killing his potential future earnings.

There's not much more the sheriff in Richland County can do to make it worse.