Cheap Seats

This seems rather familiar

In “Buffalo ‘66” a movie by writer-director Vincent Gallo starring Gallo and Christina Ricci, an ex-convict is obsessed with a former kicker for the Buffalo team.

The character went to prison, in a roundabout way, after betting on Buffalo in a game that was lost on a missed field goal.

Not just any missed field goal.

A big field goal in the championship game.

A 47-yarder, to be exact.

Wide right.

The kicker, “Scott Wood,” later is portrayed as the fat proprietor of a topless bar and the subject of the ex-con’s fantasies of a murderous attack.

Before you go looking for Scott Norwood, remember his infamous Super Bowl miss didn’t affect the point spread, it just kept Buffalo on track for all those Super Bowl losses.

Who wants this loser hanging around?

Former USC/L.A. Rams/USC football coach John Robinson was back on a football field the other day, wearing a gray Washington Redskins T-shirt and burgundy shorts at the Redskins’ training camp in Frostburg, Md.

Robinson reiterated that he isn’t looking at any job with the Redskins.

“I came back here just to see him (Redskins coach Norv Turner) and root for him,” Robinson said. “Even as a pimply faced kid, he had a feel for football.”

And as a balding, gray-haired old man, Robinson has a feel for losing.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon doesn’t believe NBA players will be willing to miss much, if any, of the season.

“A great number of the NBA’s high-profile players are committed to one thing and one thing only: getting paid,” he writes.

“They’re in it to be famous, to have commercial endorsements, to live large. Players such as Buck Williams, Charles Barkley, Charles Oakley and Michael Jordan are just about extinct. And I don’t see any Curt Floods coming up behind them. Solidarity through thick and thin? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Playing for pay

A college professor is putting his money where others have only talked a good game: paying college students to play basketball.

Paul McMann and his management team hope to launch the Collegiate Professional Basketball League as soon as next year.

Students playing in the league would get a $5,000 signing bonus and a $9,000 annual stipend, plus tuition, room and board. At a minimum, they would be required to attend an annual eight-week accelerated program at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

It’ll never work. Who could afford the pay cut?

That’s what you call progress

NBA commissioner David Stern appeared at the recent bargaining session between the league and the players union with something new: a beard in progress.

Afterward, during a telephone conference call, Stern was asked about the beard. Did it have some significance, perhaps relating to the negotiations?

“The betting,” he said, “is whether I should shave before we make a deal. But frankly I only want it to be a summertime thing, and it might have to go to winter if that was the case and I don’t want to do that.”

Watching Stern’s beard grow would be more productive than any “bargaining” session all summer.

The last word …

“You think I paid $80 to watch you hit?”

- A fan in Milwaukee, yelling at John Mabry when it was announced he would take Mark McGwire’s spot in the lineup one day last week.