Big Question

The first NFL training camps for the 2000 season open this week, which makes it a fine time not to have a team in Los Angeles. No play-by-play of contract talks with third-round draft picks. No fretting over twisted ankles that will be healed by Week 1. No daily analysis of who's winning the battle for nickel back or fifth receiver. Instead, take the long view, and wait for the games to begin. Here are five questions for the season ahead: * 1.

Joe Torre, speaking about Albert Pujols, says, "He hits the ball a long way and they're going to say, 'Ah-ha, I wonder.' And it is unfair, there's no question it's unfair." No question it's unfair? I'm afraid, Joe, that is a big question. We baseball fans have been burned too many times to be accused of being unfair if we think that a particular player is juiced. I'm sure Torre also thought it unfair when a certain left fielder was the subject of such accusations. Andrew M. Weiss Playa del Rey :: Maybe the Dodgers are losing their edge because, after his drug suspension, this is the real Manny being Manny.

This is what Arizona knows: You can lead a nation from the middle of your own conference. You can win a title even if you go 0-2 against UCLA. You can also get tired of the Bruins badgering and jibing at you about it, tired enough for Arizona to not-so-subtlely set its 1997 national championship banner-raising ceremony for tonight, with the Bruins in the house and sweet Wildcat memories of March inducing thunder from the McKale Center crowd.

Now the fun starts. The first bowl championship series rankings are due out Monday, which means the preliminaries are nearly at an end and the weeks ahead feature only meaningful games. Which is to say, the fussin' and feudin' is about to begin in earnest. Oklahoma, Miami, Virginia Tech, Georgia and USC probably will make up the top five teams in the BCS rankings, just as they are in the Associated Press poll.

Move over, Gordon Gekko. The ruthless cinematic protagonist in "Wall Street" may have met his match in Nicholas William Leeson, a real-life trader in Singapore who appears to have brought down the venerable British investment house of Barings PLC. The 233-year-old firm filed for bankruptcy after Leeson, now reported missing, blew about $1 billion in volatile, Computer-Age financial instruments known as derivatives.

The list of questions the Assembly Insurance Committee needs to put to Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush at a hearing Thursday gets longer daily. But at bottom, there is only one great big question: Who does Quackenbush serve? At this point, the answer could hardly be voters or consumers. The first specific question remains why Quackenbush allowed three firms to donate $12.8 million to foundations rather than face fines of up to $2.

Even though she lost her quarterfinal match, Venus Williams continued to be a show-stopper in the State Farm Evert Cup tennis tournament. At least for the day Wednesday, with the big-name men players crumbling like a bunch of blueberry muffins, Williams was pretty much the talk of the place.

A year ago, Alanis Morissette was an unknown Canadian singer who hadn't released her U.S. debut album. Now that debut has sold more than 9 million copies. Who's going to be this year's Morissette? "I couldn't make a prediction like that," says KROQ-FM music director Lisa Worden. "If I had that crystal ball, I'd be in the record business," says Scott Becker, publisher of the alternative music magazine Option.

The San Francisco Bay Area earthquake--now being referred to as the Pretty Big One up there--has caused many Angelenos to ask a pretty big question: How safe are their homes? "Generally, homes in the San Fernando Valley are in pretty good shape for earthquakes," says David Grover, of Grover-Hollingsworth & Associates in Westlake Village, a firm of geotechnic consultants. "Most have wood frames, which do well in earthquake shaking.