Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Akili Smith is perceptive enough to recognize his faults and yet not above repeating them. He has been embarrassed. He has been hailed. He has been embarrassed again.

To wit: Smith capped his junior season at the University of Oregon by getting charged with participating in a bar fight and being pulled over for a suspected DUI. Both incidents were media stains, although he was acquitted of the former and, in the latter, was found to be driving within the legal blood-alcohol level of the state of Oregon.

	Bengals quarterback Akili Smith had a sophomore season to forget in 2000.

Smith was a platoon starter, a junior college transfer, far from his San Diego home. It was sink or swim in Eugene, Ore., for the rest of 1998. Smith went out and paddled his way to one of the best single seasons in Pac-10 history, throwing for 32 touchdowns his senior year with just eight interceptions. The former pro baseball player became one of the top college quarterbacks available in the '99 NFL draft.

So Smith returned to Paul Brown Stadium last week knowing he had seen worse. The 25-year-old came back to Cincinnati a man who had lost his starting job to journeyman Scott Mitchell, who faced competition from a new quarterback who already knows much of the playbook, who had the specter of another DUI arrest hanging over his head.

He is perceptive enough to know that he has dug his own ditch. And confident enough to believe he will climb out of it.

"It definitely feels like a parallel (to 1998 in Oregon)," Smith said last week in his first group interview since last November. "I'm in the depths of (heck) right now. I have to find my way to get out of there. I went through this at Oregon and responded with a phenomenal senior year. I'm going to have to do that this year."

Smith officially buried the 2000 season long ago, and wisely. Handed the reins of the offense in the spring, the second-year quarterback bombed: three touchdowns, six interceptions, 36 sacks, 14 fumbles and a passer rating of 52.8, lowest among qualified passers in the NFL. He was benched Nov. 13 and closed off the media from that point forward.

In February, he was arrested in San Diego on suspicion of DUI after allegedly driving the wrong way up a one-way street. Smith wouldn't talk about the San Diego arrest -- a hearing is scheduled for March 29.

But the quarterback addressed a myriad of other topics: