Cheap Seats

Dead men don’t wear pads

Some people say the Canadian Football League is dying. Apparently, the league is looking for players to match. For the second time in a year, a CFL club has drafted a dead man.

The Montreal Alouettes selected defensive end James Eggink of Northern Illinois in the fifth round of the Canadian college draft Thursday, only to learn later that the player had died of cancer last December. Last April in the Las Vegas Posse dispersal draft, Ottawa selected defensive end Derrell Robertson - who had died in a car crash five months earlier.

“Unfortunately neither we nor any other club knew what had happened,” said CFL spokesman Jim Neish. “Even the school wasn’t aware of it.”

Alouettes owner Jim Speros said he had called the Eggink family to apologize.

“I’m a little upset and embarrassed as an owner, no doubt,” Speros said. “What happened last year with the Las Vegas situation, that’s inexcusable. If that happens again, then yes, the media should rip us. But there were a lot more names on this list.”

And maybe a coffin-corner kicker or two.

Hi, neighbor!

Sacramento Kings guard Bobby Hurley receives quite a bit of verbal abuse from fans on local radio talk shows, so you’d think he’d get some comfort from his neighbors.

But driving home after a recent game, Hurley and his wife, Leslie, happened to be listening to a Kings postgame show.

“We were just about to get out of the car when I heard this voice,” Hurley said. “I could tell by the way he was talking, and when he said ‘Pete,’ that it was my next-door neighbor. He was talking about how the Kings needed a new point guard.”

Hurley said he generally talks to his neighbor a couple of times a week.

“I’ve even given him tickets,” he said.

“It hurt a little bit, but then Leslie and I started laughing about it. I try to be as nice as I can to everybody, but Leslie said she might say something to the guy. It was pretty funny after I thought about it.”

What’s channel 24 divided by 5?

Killing time on a road trip, Arizona State basketball coach Bill Frieder wandered into sports information director Doug Tammaro’s hotel room. Trying to change the TV channel, Frieder fumbled with what he thought was the remote.

“Why doesn’t this thing work?” the exasperated Frieder said, flinging it across the room.

“Because,” Tammaro said, “that’s my calculator.”

Is Robin Fricker a golf fan, too?

During the second round of last week’s Honda Classic golf tournament, a heckler harshly reminded Curtis Strange of his Ryder Cup collapse against Nick Faldo by saying, “Bogey, bogey, bogey. Ryder Cup choker.”

Strange did his best to ignore the man, but one of his playing partners didn’t. None other than Faldo himself pointed out the heckler, who was removed from the course by tournament marshals.

“It was the worst thing I’ve seen in almost 20 years of playing professional golf,” Faldo said.

Next to Strange’s performance in the Ryder Cup.

The last word …

“What a great all-pro he was, for dozens of years.”

- ESPN’s Clark Kellogg, upon spotting Jerry West at ClemsonWake Forest game during ACC tournament

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo