Hello mysql 'ers

I am trying an ambitious project w/ 1.2 million records, but I am having a problem.

when requesting:

select title from directory where dir1 = 'Sports';

The column I select from keeps returning 'empty set' eventhough I know the record exists. I have verified it using a table w/ identical composition, which only has one line, but merily returns the data.

There are some confounding factors w/ the large table of 1.2 M records.

a) I have created an index on the colomn (dir1) which is a varchar(20).

b) If I use " select title from directory where dir1 like '%Sports%' "

I get the results, but if you use like with wildcards, mysql dosent use the index, so you have to wait a long time. Also that would be such an ugly kludge of a solution that I could not look at myself in the mirror anymore.

I am thinking that perhaps, there is a NULL field in the column that causes an error, or it has something to do with the default data type in the column. When I use 'describe table', it shows that dir1 has a key value of 'MUL' and a defaut value of nothing. I changed the default value to '0' and still the query against dir1 produces an empty set. The column is set to not null.

Has anyone had this kind problem before ?

I am all ears for any help.