The indispensable Pro Football Talk offered an item about new Lions running back Rudi Johnson — and the man he displaced.

It seems Johnson set his luggage outside the office of team GM Matt Millen, then went inside to signing with the team. When he left the office, the luggage was gone.

PFT picks up the story:

The team checked the videotapes generated by the team’s in-house surveillance system, and they quickly identified the culprit.

So who might it have been?  None other than Tatum Bell, who lost his gig with the Lions after Rudi arrived.

Per the source, Bell took the bags to the house of a female acquaintance.  When confronted on the matter, Bell offered up some cockamamie story that he thought the bags belonged to someone he knew.  The girl, however, said that she hadn’t seen Bell in several months and he showed up out of the blue and asked her to keep the bags for a while.

Johnson has retrieved the bags, and it’s our understanding that charges won’t be pressed.

Tatum apparently didn’t know that he was being monitored.

Fortunately, the displaced running back wasn’t Najeh Davenport.

(Rim shot). If you didn’t get the reference, go here for the explanation.

WAITING FOR THE RAIN

Tipsheet will spend the next few days at the BMW Championship, assisting the Bogeyman in his Post-Dispatch coverage and annoying real golf reporters. We just hope the shuttle arks get all our colleagues to and front the media parking island in one piece this week.

(We’re all going to learn more about the science of “course drainage” than we care to.)

There are a lot of other great stories out on the course, including Our Town’s Jay Williamson. On Tuesday, he talked about the struggle to remain viable in a highly competitive sport.

“I don’t have a goalie out there making saves,” he told reporters. “I don’t have a coach telling me what to do. The manager is not in the dugout glaring at me. I’ve got a wife at home that wishes me well, but playing golf for a living, it’s all you. You’ve got to be self-reliant.”

And if he wasn’t?

“I don’t know that anybody is going to be hiring a 41-year-old golfer to do anything for a while,” he said.

EVEN VIJAY SINGH CAN MISS THE GREEN

When his swing gets out of whack during a tourney. Watch and learn!