Dear Mr. Simers:

It's been several weeks since readers have been treated to your wit and wisdom, and I feel obliged to add my comments. (Pay no attention to the voices saying, "His opinion is more of an eruption, akin perhaps to the noxious gases emitted by a volcano.")

I'm writing because I believe I've discovered what really motivates you. Call it a Eureka moment because I have come to realize that for many years you have forgotten to take your medicine on a consistent basis.

How else can one explain what seems to be a deliberate distortion of a journalist's role? For journalists who worked at metro dailies for many years, it must have been a shock to read this on Saturday:

"I've never thought reporters were just stenographers to ask questions and write everything down without offering some feedback. Often the feedback leads to better answers, a coach taken out of his automatic-pilot response to most questions."

Somehow while you were in journalism school sharpening your knives, Mr. Simers, you missed a fundamental truth. A reporter offers feedback to put someone's answers in a meaningful context. He or she does not confuse that kind of feedback with a presumption that making insinuations is part of a reporter's job.

That brings me back to the medical issue, Mr. Simers. So, in an effort to help, let me ask you these questions:

Do you find yourself unable to write a column that will interest even one reader without indulging in character assassination?

Do you find yourself unable to sustain a coherent series of thoughts?

Are your premises always weak and your conclusions always flawed?

These are symptoms, Mr. Simers. And help is available, but you must start by taking medicine when you are supposed to take it. If you are told, for instance, to take a pill that prevents you from holding half the human race in contempt, you must take it. And you must take it all the time. If you are told to take a pill that helps you see it is arrogant to imply that a coach who has turned a football program around would try to lose a game in order to play another team, you must take that pill, too.

And yet with all that said, let me conclude, Mr. Simers, by regretfully noting that you are not alone. One wonders why integrity and courage are missing from the administration of UCLA athletics. Why malcontents are allowed to vent their frustrations and grievances in the name of reporting when what they are really doing is something very different.

And with that wondering, comes another question: Are Dan Guerrero and Gene Block not taking their medications as well?