Cheap Seats

A red latter day

Talk about your moral dilemma. Sports Illustrated has been in Provo, Utah, gathering material and shooting pictures of BYU basketball coach Roger Reid and his sons Randy and Robbie. Great pub for a good Mormon family, right?

Just hold your subscription. Publication is scheduled for Feb. 20 - in SI’s annual swimsuit issue.

“Either a lot of Mormons won’t read it or it’ll give them an excuse to buy it,” said Reid, who didn’t call the story good, uh, exposure - perhaps because he knows many “readers” will miss the story.

“When,” asked a writer on Reid’s weekly conference call, “did they start putting articles in the swimsuit issue?”

Publishers clearing house

You think Tom Osborne got a monkey off his back by guiding Nebraska to the national championship? Lila Kremer feels 5,000 pounds lighter.

It was in 1985 that Osborne’s autobiography, “More Than Winning,” was published - and shortly thereafter Kremer took out a loan to buy 10,000 copies, which she planned to sell to grocery stores through her book supply business, Family Resources.

The books moved pretty well for a few years. But demand took a downturn that mirrored Nebraska’s bowl fortunes, and Kremer wound up stashing 5,000 copies with the tractors and equipment in a shed at her Aurora, Neb., farm.

Then the Cornhuskers won it all - and Kremer had no trouble unloading her surplus to Nebraska Bookstore. Now all she has to do is get rid of more than 30,000 other books in her basement.

Some of the titles: “Art Schlichter’s Guide to PariMutuel Wagering,” “Commissioner for a Day” by Dennis Rodman and “Detox, Darryl Walks: The Darryl Strawberry Story.”

Tell your statistics to shut up

Here’s what Shawn Kemp of the SuperSonics had to say about the fans voting him to start ahead of Utah’s Karl Malone in Sunday’s NBA All-Star game: “Karl’s a great player, but he had his time. Now it’s my time.”

Malone has outscored and outrebounded Kemp the last 10 times the Sonics and Jazz have met.

Call ‘em as you see ‘em

When Louie Brewster, sports editor of the Ontario Daily Bulletin in California, applied for a National Hot Rod Association press credential, it came back reading “Louie Brewster, Daily Bull.”

The last word …

“Our league will never get the recognition it deserves because the demographics will never change. Look, we have ranchers out there who are probably still looking at games on 6-inch black-and-white TVs. Half of our league doesn’t have access to a touchtone phone.”

- Utah coach Rick Majerus on WAC basketball