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Maybe it’s me, but when I read this news release about the assistant coach of the Oklahoma Cavalry basketball team opening up a can of multi-level marketing on his players, an alarm went off in my head that screamed “conflict of interest.”

Read the release as it landed in my e-mail box and see if you reach the same conclusion:

SALT LAKE CITY — (BUSINESS WIRE) — USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: USNA), a worldwide leader in science-based nutritional supplements, today announced it will be the supplement supplier of the Continental Basketball Association champion Lawton-Fort Sill Cavalry.

The Oklahoma-based Cavalry recently completed their championship season, finishing 34-18 and becoming the first expansion team since 2001-02 to win a CBA title.

Former NBA player Greg Minor and his wife, Stephanie, who started a USANA business eight months ago, introduced USANA products to the team in February, not long after Greg was named the Cavalry’s assistant coach.

“I introduced the products to the players at a shoot-around one day and they fell in love with them,” said Minor, who provided his players with USANA’s HealthPak 100™ nutritional supplements, as well as Oatmeal Raisin Nutrition Bars and Iced Lemon Fibergy Bars™. “My vision as a coach is to have a lifelong partnership with USANA. I know from experience that professional basketball players need these supplements not only during their playing careers but also in retirement.”
Minor, a former first-round NBA Draft pick out of the University of Louisville, spent five seasons with the Boston Celtics before a hip injury ended his playing career.

“I wish I had the opportunity to take USANA supplements when I played for the Celtics,” Minor said. “I retired from the NBA in 2001 and began looking for different supplements to take. By far, USANA offers the best nutritional supplements I’ve come across.”

Jim Stafford

Business News Reporter

It’s been a rough month for motorists watching pump prices for gasoline climb during the past month.

On Wednesday, gas cost nearly 3.48 a gallon in Oklahoma, up from about $3.40 a gallon a week ago.

Gasoline not only is costing motorists more now, but I’m curious if it is making them think about changing their traditional travel plans for the Memorial Day holiday.

So, I’m asking you? Are you doing anything different for Memorial Day because of high gas prices?

E-mail me at jmoney@oklahoman.com to let me know.

What do you do with $100 million worth of new cars that have been tilted sideways for two weeks? Mazda decided to destroy them.

AP Photo

Wired magazine published a long, fascinating and tragic tale about how the cars were rescued from the ship mishap that stranded them on the ocean.

For more than a year, the 4,703 Cougar Ace Mazdas sit in a huge parking lot in Portland, Oregon. Then, in February 2008, the cars are loaded one by one onto an 8-foot-wide conveyor belt. It lifts them 40 feet and drops them inside a Texas Shredder, a 50-foot-tall, hulking blue-and-yellow machine that sits on a 2.5-acre concrete pad. Inside the machine, 26 hammers — weighing 1,000 pounds each — smash each car into fist-sized pieces in two seconds. The chunks are then spit out the back side. Though most of the cars appeared to be unharmed, they had spent two weeks at a 60-degree angle. Mazda can’t be sure that something isn’t wrong with them. Will the air bags function properly? Will the engines work flawlessly throughout the warranty period? Rather than risk lawsuits down the line, Mazda has decided to scrap the entire shipment.

You can watch video of the destructive process. 

Don Mecoy
Business Writer

If you’ve ever wondered why Oklahoma seems to have more than its fair share of astronauts, perhaps its our expertise with duct tape. Any good Okie knows you don’t pull out of the driveway without it.

But who knew that NASA was onboard with the duct tape thing? Check out this conversation between astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt as they discuss how to fix a broken fender on their lunar rover while on the surface of the moon

When Cernan and Schmitt woke up the next morning, mission control explained how they should tape four laminated maps together in the shape of the missing fender. “Just call me the little old fender maker,” said Cernan as he tore off pieces of gray tape. This time the taping was done inside the relatively dust-free confines of the lunar lander, so the duct tape retained its usual stickiness. Clamped to the moonbuggy, the new fender held for the rest of the mission, which included another 15 hours of EVAs.

The NASA web page notes that the agency is planning to return to the moon, and duct tape will be among the supplies traveling with our astronauts.

More on duct tape from a non-Oklahoman super-user, Red Green.

Don Mecoy
Business Writer

In case you are keeping score at home, the Democratic National Convention has declared Microsoft to be the official “software and high definition Web content provider” for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 

I don’t know what this means, except perhaps, that the Republicans can lay no claim to the Blue Screen of Death during their convention.

Would the Republicans claim Apple as their official software or hardware provider?  I can’t see that.  

How about an open source software provider? Nah,  don’t see the Republican cozying up to the open source crowd, either. 

Meanwhile, the Democrats held a teleconference last week where they touted all the steps the party is taking to ensure that its convention this year will be “green” in myriad ways.  The Republicans claim some “green” on their convention Web site, as well.

 And you thought the election was a battle of red states vs. blue states.

Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter

It might make some Seattle SuperSonics fans’ heads explode, but folks are already positioning themselves to own the Internet domain for whatever name the NBA franchise adopts when it arrives in Oklahoma City. In late March and early April, someone or several someones began buying up Internet domain names related to new names for the franchise currently called the SuperSonics. A quick search finds all of the following have been purchased:

okctbirds.com
okcenergy.com
okcoutlaws.com
okctwisters.com
okcbarons.com
okcstallions.com

okcthunder.com actually got snapped up more than two years ago. I’m sure many other domains representing potential franchise names also have been purchased. Still available, however, are okcscissorstails.com and okcflamingchilipeppers.com.

Most of the purchasers have obscured their identities, so we can’t tell which are domain squatters and which might actually be agents of the team’s ownership group.

None of these are going to produce the bonanza of pizza.com, which a fellow bought more than a decade ago and recently auctioned off for $2.6 million. The most lucrative sales of domain names belong to sex.com, sold for $12 million in cash and stock, and fund.com, which sold for $10 million.

Don Mecoy
Business Writer

The door to the Bricktown Special Events center was flanked by a pair of solid white statues last night as I entered to attend the 2008 Donald  W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup College Business Plan awards ceremony.

Or were they statues?  Somehow, I knew they were real people, but I hurried past the motionless, expressionless statues because I feared they might move or look me in the eye.

I’m frightened by living statues and mimes the way some children are scared of clowns and Santa Claus.

When I got inside the Special Events center, I saw there were two more of them standing on the stage.

Later, I found out that the four “living statues” were from a drama troupe called Fox Moon Productions and hired by i2E, which manages the Governor’s Cup competition, for the event. 

I dared to approach them at the conclusion of the banquet just to see if they might come out of character for an interview.  They did. 

 The quartet included from left in the above photo, Angela Mullens, Valerie Hames, Lynn Simon and Robert Mullens.  Robert and Angela are a husband-and-wife team, and Angela is coordinator of the company.

Fox Moon Productions has been in existence for nine years and produce characters from historical to fantasy, said Angela Mullens.
 
The group loves to watch reactions of its audience when a member of the troupe moves or turns a head. People often are startled to find life in what they thought was a lifeless statue. 

“That’s the joy of it,” one of the statues told me before I hurried out the door. “I love it.”

Jim Stafford

Business News Writer

We’re unveiling our second “Know It” effort in Sunday’s editions of The Oklahoman. So pick up a copy of the paper, and then head over to NewsOK.com for a whole lot more. In fact, I just taped a video segment on retirement to accompany the online package. I thought I did pretty well, but Steve Carell has revealed the secret techniques of television interviewing.

Appear to Listen
I’ve learned to appear scintillatingly intellectual by asking people questions (”Do you like pizza?”). Then I just look at them, nodding and saying “Hmmm” and “Um hmmm” every few seconds. Try and keep one or two things in your head to regurgitate later. After all, what is knowledge, really, but high-resolution regurgitation? 

Speaking of personal finance, CNN has pretty good story about working with kids to teach them how to handle their money. The point being that parents need to talk to their children about saving and spending in the same way that they teach them how and why to brush their teeth. For some reason, we dread the topic of money as much as “the talk.” Perhaps it’s because many parents don’t know much about handling their finances.

In that same vein, I’ll have a story in Sunday’s Business News section about Oklahoma students poor showing on a national financial literacy test. However, they didn’t do any worse that the rest of the nation.

Don Mecoy
Business Writer

Natural gas users had better hunker down.

A early forecast for the 2008 hurricane season put out by AccuWeather.com predicts chances are up for hurricanes making landfall within the United States.

They say that’s because waters near North America will be warmer — and warm water is the fuel hurricanes search for as they work their way across the oceans of the world.

Hurricane Ivan disrupted oil and natural gas supplies for months in 2004, and in 2005, Hurricane Katrina disrupted more than a quarter of Gulf of Mexico production the following year when it came through.

Tony Say, a natural gas marketer who is president of Clearwater Enterprises, told me earlier this week that any disruptions caused by hurricanes might impare the nation’s ability to rebuild its natural gas supplies before winter arrives.

Such a scenario could have a dramatic impact on prices paid for the gas by traders, and consequently, prices we pay for using it in our homes.

Jack Money

Business Writer

Business Week magazine identified the world’s 25 most innovative companies for us in its most recent edition, and the top two are no surprise.  Apple Inc. and Google came in first and second.

In fact, almost all of the companies are household names except for Tata Group. That’s the Mumbai, India-based company that is creating a $2,500 “car for the masses.”

Tata came in at No. 6, just behind Microsoft and ahead of Nintendo.

Here’s the top 10 and a link to the rest of the list that goes 50 deep online.

1. Apple
2. Google
3. Toyota Motor
4. General Electric
5. Microsoft
6. Tata Group
7. Nintendo
8. Proctor & Gamble
9. Sony
10. Nokia

Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter