"Ced Benson sits in NFL purgatory, sort-of suspended, sort-of not. He's living the cliché, because for now he has no choice. Benson really is taking it one game at a time. "Definitely,'' he said Wednesday, when asked if he were playing Sunday. Beyond that, no one knows.

The legal tangle will continue. Benson has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, against the NFL Players Association. The details are numbing to everyone, even Benson, who said Wednesday he wasn't exactly astute on the whys and wherefores. He knows this, though:

His union leader sold him down the river."