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Parking zone

Joe Hawk of the Las Vegas Review-Journal believes the punishment for the players involved in UCLA’s handicapped-parking scandal should be to have them wear the “wheelchair accessible” symbol on the backs of their football helmets.

“Maybe then, as they demonstrated their physical talents on the field, attention would have been drawn to where these individuals were actually disabled.

“In the head.”

Cooking up publicity

Carroll H. “Beano” Cook’s broadcasting career has been reduced from ESPN television to ESPN radio, he had a toe amputated last fall because of diabetes and he had triple-bypass heart surgery in April, but at 70 he’s still kicking.

“When I started, most people gave me an over and under of five weeks,” said Cook, who is in his 19th year.

Cook first made a name for himself as Pitt’s sports information director from 1956-66. He once tried to get Dr. Jonas Salk to pose with a Pitt star basketball player for a poster proclaiming, “America’s Great Shotmakers.”

Among his stories is one about the time a young woman phoned to get a roster of the football team because, she said, she wanted to, uh, date every player. Said Cook: “The first one is Cook, Carroll H.”

Radical, dude

Surfers surf because, well, the waves are there, right. Think again.

According to Surfer magazine, top American surfers are raking it in. Kelly Slater has an annual salary of $1 million to $2 million, the magazine said. Shane Dorian nets $450,000 to $500,000. Rob Machado gets about the same. And wearing a wetsuit to work beats a pinstripe any day.

Dennis Rodman of the MSL

If there’s one athlete who can give anyone a run for the money when it comes to weirdness, it’s Serbian midfielder Sasha Curcic if the MSL’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars, who arrived in New York a couple of weeks ago with these words for his new MLS employers: “Here I am. I am your Dennis Rodman.”

He wasn’t kidding. Curcic sports a shaved head and a strip of blond beard down his chin that ends in a scraggly knot held together with an elastic band. And, of course, there are tattoos. Curcic’s left arm and shoulder are emblazoned with an angel, the names of his parents and sister and a few words about the Dalai Lama. His multicolored right shoulder features a devil, flames, a peace sign, the words “who is my self,” a strand of barbed wire and something Tim Leonard of the Bergen Record described as “a lime-green alien head.”

“All my life I’ve been having fun,” he told Leonard. “The day I was born - the next day I was having fun.”

The last word …

“Wade Boggs reaching the 3,000-hit plateau with a home run is like Shaquille O’Neal winning the NBA scoring title with a free throw.” - Michael Ventre, MSNBC