You Can Take Him 1-On-1
Charles Barkley has retired after a long and notable NBA career. Now he has more time to play golf - though he might not have many playing partners.
He was paired with Tom Watson in the pro-am before the recent Bruno’s Memorial senior tournament in Birmingham, Ala.
“I tried everything mental and physical I could to help him out,” Watson told Golf World. “After three or four holes, there was nothing I could do. I ran out of ideas.
“I just told him. `I feel for you.”’
Don’t spoil a good thing
One of the stipulations for Bob Knight retaining his job as Indiana’s basketball coach is that he has to be civil to the media. There are, however, some members of the media who hope that part of him doesn’t change.
“He’s much more interesting when he’s glaring at you, daring you to ask a question that he might not want to answer,” said Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN the Magazine. “I don’t want him to go away. He’s too good of a quote.”
Just call him Cable Guy
After it was reported that a Michigan couple, Chad and Alisha Blondeel, named their newborn son Espen because Chad is a fanatic for ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” Greg Cote of the Miami Herald wrote:
“Someday, the boy will thank God his dad didn’t prefer watching CNN/SI.”
Leg up on competition
Dallas McNeil, a University of Montana punter, reasoned that he would need a gimmick to get an NFL scout to come to Missoula to check him out.
His gimmick worked. Scouts from Washington and Atlanta came, and the Falcons signed him.
The gimmick: He mailed a three-page letter to the three NFL teams he wanted to play for - including St. Louis - along with the left leg from a mannequin.
Each letter said: “I would give my left leg to play for your team.”
Not worth paper it’s printed on
The playbooks of some college football coaches are being auctioned on the Internet. Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times says the Tampa Bay Buccaneers playbook of fired offensive coordinator Mike Shula “was going to be auctioned off too, but someone lost the napkin.”
A foul start to the day
Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel, on Portland’s repeated fouling of Shaquille O’Neal in Game 1 of their playoff series: “From what I hear, by the time Shaq got back inside after picking up his morning paper from the lawn, the Blazers had fouled him six times.”
The last word …
“The danger in sentencing Tonya Harding to highway cleanup is that she could be mistaken for trash.”
- San Jose sportswriter Bud Geracie