I know, I know, I know; it’s football season.

And all anyone wants to hear about is cornerbacks looking like brats (or — I guess — not looking quite as bratty this week as they did last week) …

Or hometown teams looking at undefeated seasons (1-0, bitch!) …

Or top draft picks (‘lil Eli) looking like they’re 14 years old and aging superstars (CuMar and Marshall) looking like they’re 23 years old …

Or the Bears (shocker!) looking like they still suck …

Cuz it’s NFL season and nothing else matters.

But while Mike McKenzie is busy dragging his 17.1-million-dollar weave back up to the far north and the Pack is busy getting itself ready to try to survive another eight Brett Favre playoff interceptions and Bears fans are … well … busy coming to grips with the fact that they really are still from Chicago, there have been some amazing things happening away from the gridiron.

Here are some stories that you may not have given their due reading-time in the past couple weeks (while you — instead — were spending 20 hours a day getting ready for your fantasy football draft):

Grand Slams coming like (Swiss) clockwork for Federer: The last time that a men’s tennis player won three Grand Slams in a calendar year was in something like 1985. 1985!

Did Pete Sampras — the best tennis player ever not to be named Rod Laver — ever do it? Nope. He managed to break just about every other tennis record during his storied career, but never three Slams in one season.

Did Andre Agassi ever do it? Nope. He won every Slam, sure; but Dre never had the consistency to win more than two in a single season.

No one’s done it since Mats Wilander (pronounced with a “V” I’m told — I was six the last time he won anything).

Well, move aside, Mats.

Because Roger Federer, a grungy little Swiss kid, just destroyed Lleyton Hewitt — probably the second-best player in the world — in straight sets in the U.S. Open final for his third Slam in ’04.

Federer is one of the best stories in professional tennis in years. About 130 lbs. of spitfire, sweatbands and topspin, Federer’s got every shot imaginable in his bag. The way he hits the ball off of the baseline is somewhat reminiscent of Agassi’s fiery style; the way he serves and volleys conjures ghosts of Sampras in his prime (he was effective about 90 percent of the time when he approached the net and closed out his Hewitt beat down with three aces); and the watery way he whips around the court is a wonder entirely of his own creation.

But the best thing about the 23-year-old isn’t his play on the court — putting him ahead of someone like Sampras or Agassi this early in his career is a stretch by any standard — but his personality off it.

The days in which Boris Becker and Ivan Lendl showed up with entourages of 20 to 30 people aren’t gone. Hewitt and American teen-idol Andy Roddick are rumored to both show up with droves of masseuses, yoga instructors and yes-women; but Federer doesn’t fall in for that nonsense. He shows up to play with about four people, at least half of whom share his last name.

Barry Bonds securing his legacy: I’ve been playing MVP Baseball on my Xbox quite a bit of late and am putting together quite a season with Albert Pujols. He’s hitting upward of .390, has 66 home runs, 135 runs batted in and 150 runs scored … and it’s three games after the All-Star Break. Quite a year.

Thing is: the other day I checked out his OPS (on-base-percentage added to slugging-percentage) and was a little bit perturbed to find that he is currently falling short of Barry Bonds’ actual number in that category from this year. Virtual Pujols is at 1.432. Real Bonds is at 1.439.

That’s how sick Bonds is … it’s not often that actual means of measuring him come about.

Because Bonds is so much better than anyone else currently playing baseball, it’s a bit hard to put a finger on his accomplishments some times. We just don’t have anything in the same galaxy for a basis of comparison. I’ll try:

1) The only player, other than Bonds, to ever have an OPS higher than 1.35 was Babe Ruth. Ruth passed that mark once. Bonds is about to do it for the third time. No one has ever come close to 1.40, which Bonds looks like a lock for this season.

2) Hitting 700 home runs is equivalent to knocking out 35 in 20 seasons. Here are nine current or future Hall-of-Famers who, combined, didn’t have even half that number of 35-dong seasons:

Joe DiMaggio (had 2), Johnny Bench (2), Willie Stargell (2), Dave Winfield (1), Edgar Martinez (1), Yogi Berra (0), George Brett (0), Eddie Murray (0) and Cal Ripken (0).

That’s eight 35-home run seasons for nine Hall of Fame sluggers. Those same nine players won 12 MVP-awards and made 109 All-Star appearances.

Vijay Singh’s dominance: Just imagine the following sentence being printed 20 years ago: “With his win at the Open yesterday, Vijay Singh passed Tiger Woods in world golf rankings to earn the title of No. 1 player in the world.”

It would have been unimaginable. A Fijian and an African-American fighting for the role of the world’s top-golfer …

A couple weeks ago just that sentence was posted as the lead for the top story in newspapers across the globe.

We live right now in an era that has seen every stereotype in the consummate stereotypical-aristocratic sport shattered. Say what you want about Singh — and don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty bad to say about a man who wouldn’t have been allowed to play at half of the clubs on the tour 20 years ago but can’t see the hypocrisy in coming out against allowing women to play on his tour — but his dominance on the tour is an amazing statement about the changing face of a formerly white-aristocratic sport.