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Bruins nightmare

Dan Lebatard of the Miami Herald in an interview with University of Miami running back Edgerrin James, who rushed for a 299 yards in a final regular-season game against UCLA:

Q: “Describe the look you saw on the faces of UCLA defenders?”

A: “Shocked.”

Q: “Can you elaborate?”

A: “Real shocked.”

A Super job … away from Philly

Bill Lyon in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “This comes under the category of let’s-be-a-man-about-this-and-just-admit-I-was-wrong.

“Randall Cunningham has become everything I, and most of Philadelphia, thought he never would, or could. It’s our usual luck, of course, that he has gone and done this someplace else.

“For all of us who ever said that Randall Cunningham would never, ever take the Eagles to the Super Bowl … it is looking more and more as if we were half-right.”

Can a Jack really be a Jill?

Lori Shontz of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that a growing number of women’s college teams are taking unladylike nicknames. Some examples:

“The University of Alaska’s mascot is the Nanook. Translated literally from an Eskimo language, nanook means ‘male polar bear.’ “Which means that the women’s teams, when called the Lady Nanooks, are actually Lady Male Polar Bears.

“At Northland College in Wisconsin, there are Lumberjacks and Lumberjills. (Another school with the same nickname, Stephen F. Austin, calls its women’s teams Ladyjacks.)

“At Augustana College in Illinois, there are Vikings and Vi Queens.”

Oh, gee, that does make a difference

Dallas Mavericks forward Kurt Thomas told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the lockout isn’t hurting him financially because even though he makes $1 million a year, “I live my life as if I only make $120,000.”

Get it right

Major league baseball paid for a full-page ad in Sports Illustrated to thank Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa - the magazine’s sportsmen of the year - for their accomplishments.

Only one problem, according to Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News: “The ad shows the right-handed Sosa swinging left-handed.

“Guess that is what they mean by the term ‘left-handed compliment.”’

Belle epitomizes spirit of the season

Joe Knowles in the Chicago Tribune: “(Albert Belle) is on the cover of Baseball Weekly wearing an Orioles jersey and a Santa Claus cap. The headline? ‘Jingle Belle.’ “Yep, nothing says Christmas like a greedy, surly, carpet-bagging mercenary.”

Now that’s a scary thought

Denver Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe, in ESPN the Magazine, on his controversial teammate, linebacker Bill Romanowski:

“… There’s that trance he goes into before the games. His skin goes chalky. His eyes get as big as silver dollars. Now that’s scary.

“At first, I thought he was crazy. No. I still think he’s crazy.”

The last word …

“We’re so young, we’ve decided to dress only seven players on the road. We’re pretty confident the other five can dress themselves.”

- Charlie Just, men’s basketball coach at Bellarmine College, on his young team