Cheap Seats

It’s over when it’s over

Ron Rapoport in the Chicago Sun-Times on the demise of the ABL: “As Yogi Berra once said, if people don’t want to go to the games, you can’t stop them.”

Hear the one about Kerr?

Arizona fan favorite and star mid-1980s guard Steve Kerr became the second Wildcats basketball player to have his number (25) retired.

So let’s just get to the Kerr punch lines.

“If you would’ve told me my jersey would be hanging up here when I first came, I would’ve been a little afraid,” Kerr said in a ceremony at McKale Center in Tucson. “I would’ve thought the only way my jersey would be hanging from the rafters was if I was still in it.”

That’s Kerr, a guy remembered as much for rejuvenating the program to a 1988 Final Four trip as he is for cracking that the team was concerned about coach Lute Olson’s heroin problem at a Final Four press teleconference.

Olson gave the unrecruited kid his last scholarship in 1983.

Said Kerr: “I wasn’t a very good basketball player… . Please everybody don’t disagree at once.”

Flagging his peers

Ben Dreith worked as an NFL official for 29 seasons before retiring in 1990 and now is blowing the whistle on the poor work he says his peers are doing now.

Dreith blames NFL director of officials Jerry Seeman for not providing enough training.

“He’s putting referees in there who couldn’t take an old woman and lead her across the street,” Dreith said.

Among the mistakes Dreith cited was one in the Buffalo-New England game of Nov. 29. Drew Bledsoe of the Patriots lofted a desperation pass into the end zone with 6 seconds remaining.

As players from both teams went for the ball, they bumped into one another and Buffalo’s Henry Jones was called for pass interference.

The penalty gave the Patriots a final play from the 1-yard line with no time remaining. Bledsoe passed to Ben Coates for a touchdown and Buffalo lost 25-21.

“The only way that interference call on the Hail Mary should have been called is if some defender had pushed the receiver so hard, some little girl up in the stands could say, `Daddy, that guy pushed that other guy out of the way,”’ Dreith said.

Ah, what might have been

Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “One thought on the NBA settlement. It’s hard to imagine Kinder Bologna without Michael Olowokandi, isn’t it?”

Nagging the Bears

Blackie Sherrod in the Dallas Morning News: “When Cowboys fanatics finally emerge from their decompression chamber, they may accept the obvious conclusion.

“This could be a roster afflicted by age, attitude, atrophy, apathy, arrogance. But most likely, Your Heroes have become an assemblage of average players with a few above-average players, not unlike 15 other NFL outfits.”

The last word …

“What are they going to do during the week and off-season? Take eye exams?”

- Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell on hiring full-time officials.