Miami ? Sports have been our comfort zone in part because they give us clear answers. You win or lose. There are ratings, statistics and standings to help separate good from bad.

It isn’t as simple when our sports veer off the field.

When right and wrong are in play, and it isn’t a game anymore.

When matters of ethics and even morality challenge, and nobody in a striped shirt is there to make the call for us.

Sports have been to this place a lot lately, visiting an arena in which one’s own internal compass is the only referee.

Isn’t it strange how the nebulous middle ground we call a “gray area” can inspire reactions so vivid and full of passion?

Baseball’s stance on steroids and ephedra …

Title IX …

The basketball player turning her back on the flag …

Whether college football players should be paid …

Women and Augusta National …

America’s most popular sport has become arguing about sports, and more and more the debate generates apart from the actual competition.

The arguments arising from the games themselves — who’s the best point guard in the NBA? — seem quaint and tame compared to the raging over things occurring outside the lines.

Baseball should be enjoying its grace period now. The opening of spring. This time of season is supposed to inspire poets; instead, it invites legislation.

The sport’s powerful and myopic players’ union continues to resist the banning of steroids and the controversial stimulant ephedra from the major leagues, putting its inflated home-run numbers (leading to inflated contracts) above the health of its players.

The shocking death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler last month was partly blamed on ephedra, an herb grown so notorious that the FDA, on Friday, proposed a warning label stating it can cause heart attacks, strokes, even death. Yet baseball balks.

Pitcher David Wells, in a new book, estimates 40 percent of big-leaguers use steroids and that amphetamines are readily available in clubhouses. Yet baseball balks, betrayed by a union either way too powerful or way too stupid.

Sides in the Title IX debate are less easily taken.

The landmark legislation is fundamentally a gem, an equal-opportunity boon to our American daughters. It is not without fault, however. It needs to be refashioned so that in the name of evening college athletic scholarships by gender, men’s teams are not eliminated or women’s teams added purely to satisfy numbers.

Today’s ultimate individual athlete might be that small-college basketball player, Toni Smith, who has gained national attention for what she does on a court. But it isn’t basketball.

She turns her back on the U.S. flag during the national anthem to protest pending military action in Iraq. She is a villainous traitor to most — including women’s coach Geno Auriemma of unbeaten Connecticut.

“To me,” he says, “it’s disrespectful, and as a coach I would have that right not to have that person on the team.”

To others, Smith is a valiant hero, a champion of conscience.

Talkin’ sports isn’t what it used to be.

Oh, you can still find two guys sitting elbow to elbow at a bar, arguing about sports.

Only now they’ve got their lawyers with them.