Finch avoids buff stuff
UCLA athletes have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated 100 times. Now a former UCLA athlete, high jumper Amy Acuff, has made the cover of Playboy.
She’s featured in the September issue that includes “The Women of the Olympics.”
Playboy struck out when it tried to get Olympic softball pitcher Jennie Finch to join Acuff in posing nude.
“For me, it’s not tempting at all,” Finch told Access Hollywood. “It’s an easy no for me.”
•A few years ago, track and field promoter Al Franken, trying to generate interest in his L.A. Invitational, featured Acuff in one of his zany promotional ideas.
Franken invited photographers to shoot a contest between Acuff and a Frisbee-catching dog to determine who could jump higher.
“The problem was, the dog kept jumping under the bar,” Franken said.
But where are the pucks?
Colorful hockey commentator Bill Clement, working the Olympic badminton coverage on Bravo, has brought his unique style to the sport.
In explaining that players must serve from below the waist, Clement said, “They use the elbow as the indicator. They can’t use the waistline of the shorts or players would come in with their shorts wrapped up around their neck like Steve Urkel or Pee-wee Herman.”
By the way, Clement was a two-time high school badminton champion in Quebec.
Guilty on this charge
Michael Ventre on MSNBC: “The prosecutors in the Kobe Bryant case are the ‘62 Mets of jurisprudence.”
Touche’
When asked by Playboy magazine about rumors that former San Francisco 49er teammate Jeff Garcia is gay, Terrell Owens, now with the Philadelphia Eagles, said, “Like my boy tells me: If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, by golly, it is a rat.”
That prompted this from San Francisco Chronicle reader Mike Endsley of Aptos, Calif.: “If it walks like a whining, pass-dropping, selfish hot-dog and it smells like a whining, pass-dropping, selfish hot-dog, then by golly…”
Man with a plan
According to the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Texas A&M, which lost six fumbles on punt returns last season, may go with two punt returners this season.
“One to try and catch the punt, and one to recover it when we don’t,” coach Dennis Franchione said.
A new diet
After Mike Tyson’s loss to Danny Williams, Randy Hill of foxsports.com wrote, “This convincing setback suggests that instead of eating your children, Mike now hopes he just defeats one of your children on points.”
Temperatures were rising
Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, offering one reason why Nomar Garciaparra was traded: “In the Red Sox clubhouse, he was as happy as Michael Moore at a Bush family reunion.”