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No hometown pride for His Airness
Michael Jordan walked into the locker room and spotted assistant coach Tex Winter. “Hey, Tex, they say I’m going to buy the Bears,” Jordan said, referring to a report that he, Walter Payton and Oprah Winfrey were part of a celebrity group prepared to make Bears owner Michael McCaskey an offer.
“Where’d they get that?”
“I told ‘em,” Winter said. “I told ‘em.”
Which is as plausible an explanation as any.
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Jordan said. “I’ve never heard anything about me owning a team.
“I’ve always said I’d never own a team. I’m going to hold true to that,” he added, laughing, “because I can’t afford to pay that money to all those athletes.”
Then came a dramatic pause. “And certainly not to the Bears.”
Talk about burning your bridges
Keith Olbermann, the former ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor, trashed his previous employers in the December issue of Sport magazine.
“The fact is, people just don’t like working there,” said Olbermann, who now has the anchor job on “The Big Show” at MSNBC. “And when most of them get an opportunity to go someplace else, they do.
“What (ESPN is) left with is either people they’ve suckered into taking long-term contracts … or people who can’t get work anywhere else.”
Working for MSNBC must mean Olbermann fits into the latter category.
George, George, George of the bumble
At 48, George Foreman keeps on fighting. He’ll meet 26-year-old Shannon Briggs this month in Atlantic City, N.J.
Foreman says he’ll continue “until somebody knocks me down. Nobody’s knocked me down except (Muhammad) Ali.”
Someone reminded Foreman that he’s been decked by Jimmy Young and Ron Lyle, too.
“That’s the trouble with you guys,” Foreman told reporters. “You’ve been around as long as I have.”
Chess may be next
First ballroom dancing, then golf, then polo and now chess. Yes, chess is pushing for medal status in the Olympics.
President Kirsan Illumzhinov of the International Chess Federation has been lobbying for the activity to be included in the 2004 Games in Athens. He said last week that chess will be on the agenda for the next International Olympic Committee executive board meeting.
Handicapping the field for 2004, the United States would figure as the early prohibitive favorite - assuming enough IBM technicians could be flown into Greece to push Deep Blue, the world-champion computer, around the track during opening ceremonies.
Don’t get too comfortable
Outfielder F.P. Santangelo, on playing for the cash-poor Montreal Expos, who keep losing quality players: “It’s almost like going to school. You know the seniors are not going to be back next year.”
The last word …
“Teams are so interested in getting (guard Mitch Richmond) they’re calling and offering players who don’t even belong to them.”
- Geoff Petrie, general manager of Richmond’s team, the Sacramento Kings
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo