Deion Sanders' revelation that God hangs around carburetors and carefully inspects the workmanship down at the local auto shop opens up a whole new field of possibilities, up to and including the sports team coming soon to your greater metropolitan area. The devil may be in the details, but that's God over there taking notes at practice and looking over the books.

	Deion Sanders didn't need divine intervention to skip out on his auto repair bill, a Dallas judge ruled Monday.

In case you've missed it, according to a lawyer trying to collect on behalf of a Texas repair shop, Sanders recently paid only $1,500 of a $4,265 auto bill on the grounds that Jesus had informed him it was all he needed to pay.

Quoting from the Book of Lawsuits, specifically, Sanders was said to have refused to pay the invoice amount, written shop owner Phil Compton a check for $1,500 instead, and said, "Praise Jesus ... I follow what in my heart I'm told to pay."

Sanders' attorneys denied the charge and a Dallas judge ruled that the former two-sport star paid for the work he had authorized. But let's just think this one through from a sporting perspective.

If God has enough time on his hands to follow the repair work on Sanders' 1961 Lincoln Continental Convertible -- and isn't that a car that just screams, "Hey, Reverend!" every time it wheels by? -- then He's surely got a minute or two to value a few of the contracts I'm thinking of just now.

I'm not sure what the Holy One would've made of a team like the Detroit Pistons sacking their coach, Rick Carlisle, after back-to-back good seasons in favor of a career "challenge-seeker" like Larry Brown. And for multi-multi-millions? Don't look now, but that could be a Divine Adjustment coming on.

Not sure whether the Portland Trail Blazers really would've been permitted to draft an Outlaw in the same time span as Damon Stoudamire's classic arrest for trying to sneak some marijuana through airport security via aluminum foil. (It turns out they check for stuff like that at the airports now.)

Not sure whether Chris Webber gets the rest of his $123 million NBA contract after he acknowledged lying to a federal grand jury in the Ed Martin case. Not sure, now that we mention it, that the Devils ever get to win anything again. (The Angels already are taken care of, in life and in Hollywood. But I digress.)

Those are the obvious angles, of course. If you've followed sports for any length of time, after all, you've no doubt heard that God takes a rooting interest in most every Big game or match played anywhere, seeing as how there's almost always someone on hand afterward to thank Him for making the championship/trophy/MVP award possible.

What is far more interesting here is this notion that God has the free time to go scurrying up tail pipes and through timing switches and exhaust manifolds to figure out the true market value of the deal. Who knows what other practical applications this discovery may have?

If you're a Dallas Mavericks fan, for instance, I think you can see the upside to having a holy spirit checking for incentive clauses in the contract of, say, Raef LaFrenz, a fine human being but lately an underproductive player relative to salary. I mean, Mark Cuban can't be everywhere -- but this guy in the flowing robes and the Nike Air Corinthians, this guy's all over!

And there is a distinct advantage to the proceedings in any sort of broad valuation: It's God. It's not like the spirit is going to hammer out an unfair settlement among Mike Price and all the entities Price is suing in the wake of his dismissal from Alabama, but let's face it: One look across the negotiating table, and Price may be forced to reckon with some of the unpleasant realities of his, ah, situation.

For years, athletes in several sports have been taking some time to say howdy to their Gods while still technically standing (or kneeling) on their fields of competition, be it at the 50-yard line or midcourt or what have you. You hear "God" a lot in winning locker rooms, not so much in the stalls of members of the losing team. From a distance, one might be tempted to regard Him as a front-runner.

But it feels closer to the real thing to suggest that the spirit moves in mysterious ways in and around sports. There is even the latitude, apparently, for a fairly close auto invoice evaluation on behalf of a former football player/baseball player turned announcer.

Maybe, then, Deion Sanders has it right, and it's never too late for a divine economic reconsideration. That shudder you just felt came from every wildly overpaid pro athlete or coach on the block -- hoping, no doubt, that the spirit doesn't move someone close to them anytime soon.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com