Measured against his past transgressions, this seemed relatively harmless.

When it comes to Mike Tyson, there is a list of slapped parking attendants and groped night-club patrons. The latest outburst in Maryland seemed just another in a long line of incidents to be handled. Taken care of. Bought off.

	Mike Tyson is taken to jail after being sentenced to one year in prison on Friday.

Tyson's soft side, and more importantly his ability to generate huge amounts of money, has always attracted people to "handle" things like this. From Jim Jacobs to Don King to Shelley Finkel, being a part of Team Tyson meant having to say you're sorry ... with an open checkbook ready for out-of-court settlements.

The two men he allegedly attacked in Maryland were in court as "character witnesses" on Friday. They already had their sense of justice satiated by Tyson's money. An out-of-court deal was made with the victims and with the district attorney.

At this point, Tyson's no-contest plea ranks up there with other incredible miscalculations in his legal history. In 1991, Tyson took the advice of then-manager Don King and retained counsel that had never before defended a man accused of rape.

According to his former trainer, Kevin Rooney, Tyson cashed in an insurance policy in order to pay for his defense team in the rape trial. On Saturday, Rooney told a radio station the policy set up by former managers Jacobs and Bill Cayton would have paid Tyson several hundred thousand dollars per year for the rest of his life.

With this high-priced advice, Tyson was put on the stand in front of the grand jury. Legal experts cite this as only the start of the defense blunders that led to Tyson's conviction.

In the current case, the boxer's legal experts struck a deal with Montgomery County state attorney Robert Dean, entering a no-contest plea in exchange for the prosecution's pledge not to seek jail time. This was while Dean was in office. Guess who lost in the primary? Dean.

BOTHA: PUNISHMENT TOO HARSH

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- The man Mike Tyson knocked out in his would-be comeback last month decried the former heavyweight champion's one-year jail sentence. "What he did was wrong, maybe, but I think the punishment he is receiving is really too hard," Francois Botha told the Orange County Register on Friday. Tyson, 32, was sentenced Friday in Maryland for assaulting two motorists after a traffic accident last summer. He pleaded no contest to the charges in December. Botha said he sympathizes with the man who knocked him out on Jan. 16 in Las Vegas. "People really think that Mike is an animal. They say, 'Look at the way he acts, look at he way he talks.' But I think if you get to really know him, he's really not that bad. He's got a lot of wrong people around him," Botha said.

The new man in charge, Douglas Gansler, wasn't up for any type of deal. Neither was the judge. Tyson received a two-year sentence with one year suspended.

Next comes Indiana. Think officials there will view an assault conviction as a violation of his probation?

Equal to the crime?
Two middle-aged men get punched and kicked following a fender bender. For this, a full year in prison? If you see Tyson as a wronged man, it seems extreme. If you see him as a convicted felon who fits in professional fights between fits of road rage, it makes sense.

When Tyson was involved in that car accident on Aug. 31, he was under pressure. He claimed he was wronged of millions by Don King, he was facing enormous debt and he had yet to regain his boxing license. His wife, Monica, said the IRS had threatened to take their home, and Tyson felt he could no longer provide for his family.

A family man who is in debt, feels he has been robbed and has an uncertain earning power is a man under enormous pressure. But let's examine each cause of strain case by case:

Don King: Tyson didn't need King. Having already won the heavyweight title, it was Tyson who controlled the division that controls the money in boxing. Not King.

Many fighters have signed with King to get the fights they need to better their careers, getting bouts with fighters already controlled by King.

Tyson had sound management and a proven trainer he had grown up with. It was Tyson who stood by while King viciously attacked Bill Cayton. It was Tyson who dismissed Rooney by informing the New York Post.

That's right, after a seven-year relationship with Tyson, Rooney got to read he was fired in the newspaper. Tyson has yet to utter a word to Rooney in the decade which has followed.

He also has no right to be shocked his contract with King wasn't written with his best interests in mind. The late Cus D'Amato warned Tyson about King and Bob Arum in his formative years. Tyson's failure to heed those warnings cost him over $100 million, in Tyson's estimation.

Debt: There are guys who have won world titles who have never had the privilege of a six-figure payday. Tyson scoffs at a mere seven figures. He had the chance to make over $20 million a fight for four fights this year and he can always collect millions with his friends at the WWF.

How about a real job? Tyson has never had one.

House for sale: Monica Tyson's plea is compelling. The threat of losing one's home would unsettle any of us. But which home was she talking about? The one in Las Vegas? Connecticut? Cleveland?

The going rate for all three estates is approximately $20 million. This isn't a working man who works two jobs to fend off the evil IRS. This is someone with little sense of reality living in opulence.

Road rage: It's easy to lose one's temper after a traffic accident. Did I mention the profiles for Tyson's opponents in this case? According to the New York Daily News, Richard Hardick, 50, works with the National Labor Relations Board. He is 5-foot-6 and weighs in at 154 pounds. Abimelic Saucedo hasn't weighed in for us, but he is a less-than-springy 62 and works as a male nurse.

According to all accounts, neither man put up a fight. The man who was once the best fighter on Earth punched Hardick in the face then kicked Saucedo in the groin.

Unless he or his wife is in danger, a felon on probation has one choice when faced with a street fight: Walk away.

Fighting words
The gangster image Tyson has continued to cultivate worked against him in Maryland. The dark, violent words which became a Team Tyson staple during the King years did not leave with the estranged promoter.

The real-life Tyson rushed to pick up a fallen Francois Botha after knocking him out. Tyson, the man, whispered in Botha's ear that he was sorry he engaged in racist trash talk before and during the fight. He told Botha he respected him, and that he hoped the South African had no hard feelings.

Yet in the weeks prior to the fight, he had already recreated the menacing image a convicted felon does not need. In one news conference, he said, "You know what I do. I put people in body bags."

Later, when asked what he expected Botha to do, he replied, "Die." At some point, he also mentioned something about Botha "bathing in his own blood." Somebody needed to tell Tyson he wasn't an actor in an action flick. Or perhaps he needed to know that himself.

It didn't get better under the lights. His taped interview with a New Jersey TV anchor was just another stop on a satelite media tour. His unprovoked obscenity-filled verbal attack made national news as it was played over and over on otherwise disinterested news programs.

In a lengthy interview with ESPN's Roy Firestone, Tyson opened up and said he was "fragile," lashing out because he felt hurt. Fair enough.

What he didn't need, was the "I know I'm going to blow one day" comment in Playboy. By the way, the Maryland prosecutor got himself a copy of this particular men's magazine. He submitted lengthy quotes of the interview in his lengthy memorandum to the judge.

In that document, Gansler went well beyond the rape conviction in 1991. He cited the cursing TV interview, the Holyfield ear-biting, the first-round arm bar on Botha, and a teenaged Tyson taking food from some kid at Cus D'Amato's dinner table.

That image seemed to be a major factor in the mind of Judge Stephen Johnson. Upon sending him to a year in prison, the judge said Tyson "repeatedly acts and speaks compulsively and violently."

Like many of us, Johnson said it was difficult to offset the "bad" Tyson and the "good" one.

"Unfortunately, when faced with two conflicting looks at Mike Tyson, this court cannot look into Mike Tyson's soul," he said.

In the end, he was judged by his actions and his words. As it was in Indiana, all deals were off. Only Tyson can save himself, and he repeatedly chooses not to do it.

Heavyweights are fine
I've been asked non-stop for the past two days what boxing will do if Mike Tyson is gone. Here's something that must have been missed outside the boxing community: After losing four of five rounds to Botha, Tyson was no longer a top-10 heavyweight. A top attraction, but no longer even among the elite.

For the first time, I even believe a return to Rooney wouldn't be enough to vault Tyson to another title. His phenomenal physical skills are no longer enough to overcome a distracted, muddled mind.

Not that anyone gets this. Evander Holyfield had to field questions Friday night about Tyson as if his career was over, too.

Holyfield had to remind the interviewer that he was the heavyweight champion, and it was Tyson that needed him, not the other way around. And that's the guy at the top.

The next wave of talent -- Michael Grant, Ike Ibeabuchi, David Tua, and Hasim Rahman -- has yet to permeate the mainstream media, so few are aware that there is a division beyond Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Tyson, and George Foreman.

There is a heavyweight unification March 13 at Madison Square Garden. Mike Tyson wasn't part of it even before Judge Johnson took out the former champ for good.