Morning briefing

It comes down to NFL trivia

Presidential candidate John McCain apparently isn’t one for trivial pursuit.

On Friday, Morning Briefing reported that McCain told a Pittsburgh television station that he had named members of the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive line in 1967 when he was a POW in Vietnam and captors asked for the names of his squadron mates.

However, in McCain’s autobiography, he wrote that it was members of the Green Bay Packers that he named.

A campaign spokesperson called it a memory lapse.

Trivia time

McCain would have to have been quite a Steelers fan to name their 1967 defensive line. They were 4-9-1, and it isn’t that easy to name even the coach of that team. Can you?

Wins are brewing

A Scottish rugby team has proposed various incentives -- including free beer -- for top performers next season.

Team president Mark Brown told the Scotsman that he hoped the incentives would help the team move up to a more competitive league.

“All options are open at this stage regarding incentives but there is an outline plan to further encourage players to attend training on wet and dark December evenings in the hope that this will improve our standing in the leagues,” he said.

“If, say, there are more than 20 players at training for a specific period then we could reward those players with beer vouchers.”

Free beer? John Daly wants to know where he signs up.

Manny being Manny

Manny Ramirez recently came into $10,000 courtesy of the state of Massachusetts.

An agent for the Boston Red Sox slugger has completed the process with the state Treasury to claim the money, which had languished as unclaimed property.

Hey, when you’re making $20 million it’s easy to forget $10,000 here or $10,000 there.

Slow play

PGA Tour rules official Mickey Bradley approached the group of Robert Allenby, J.J. Henry and John Rollins during the AT&T; National last week, urging the group to pick up their pace of play.

Allenby protested that the group had fallen behind because it needed a ruling on the previous hole.

“I know,” Bradley replied. “I’m the one who gave it.”

This stopped Allenby in his tracks but only briefly.

“Then you should give a quicker ruling,” he said.

Crumbling empire

Rising British tennis star Laura Robson won the Wimbledon girls’ singles title last week, which was big news in England.

Jeff Powell of the Daily Mail reported that “Front pages, back pages, news pages, feature pages, even some financial pages were full of” the story, which lauded it as a “great British triumph” in the aftermath of England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 as well as losses in rugby and cricket.

“How embarrassing,” Powell wrote. “This was the girls’ singles, for heaven’s sake. . . . This frenzy over the winner of a junior tennis tournament reveals what sad losers we are these days.”

Trivia answer

Bill Austin. Chuck Noll replaced Austin in 1969 and went on to coach the Steelers to four Super Bowl victories.

And finally

The LPGA Tour has 10 members with the last name Kim and six with the last name Park -- both common Korean names. But even countryman K.J. Choi, a seven-time PGA Tour winner, is sometimes confused when trying to follow the LPGA.

“Hard to keep track,” he said. “Too many Kims and Parks.”

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peter.yoon@latimes.com