Bradshaw Has Seen the Best

The best quarterback of all time? Terry Bradshaw has four Super Bowl rings, so he would rate consideration, except he defers to the man who carved up his old team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, at the Orange Bowl Sunday.

“Dan Marino is the best,” said Bradshaw after Miami defeated Pittsburgh, 45-28. “And I’m not only talking about what he did today. I honestly thought Pittsburgh was going to win. But with Marino out there, they never had much of a chance. He’s the best quarterback I ever saw.”

Wasn’t Bradshaw getting a little carried away?

“I’ve never meant anything more in my life,” he said. “Marino is better than Joe Montana, better than Joe Namath, better than anyone you can name.”

How about Terry Bradshaw?

“He passed me a long time ago,” Bradshaw laughed.

Couldn’t he compare anyone to Marino?

“Secretariat,” said Bradshaw.

Add Marino: When he was growing up in Pittsburgh, he used to watch the Steelers in Three Rivers Stadium and he remembers meeting Bradshaw for the first time when he was in college.

“He challenged me to a 40-yard dash,” Marino said. “We never ran it . . . but to this day I still think I could have beaten him.”

Pittsburgh tried a variety of blitzes to sabotage the Miami passing attack, but receiver Jimmy Cefalo said the Dolphins were ready with a number of adjustments.

How many?

“We had so many adjustments I would imagine it would take a Harvard law summa cum laude weeks to memorize all of them,” Cefalo said.

Add Forgettable Quotes: Said Chicago Coach Mike Ditka Saturday, sneering at the odds favoring San Francisco by 9 1/2: “I guess there are still some fools left in the world.”

How tough was Bronko Nagurski? John McGrath of the Denver Post says the Hall of Fame fullback, during a 22-day period in 1937, reportedly played in five football games and wrestled in eight heavyweight matches between Philadelphia and Vancouver.

It was Nagurski who once fell out of a second-floor window after goofing around with a teammate. A crowd appeared. “What happened?” asked a policeman, happening upon the scene. “I don’t know,” replied Nagurski. “I just got here myself.”

From Earl Weaver, revealing that one of the reasons he got out of managing was team pictures: “They drove me absolutely crazy. One year for picture day we were supposed to wear our orange shirts and white pants. Eddie Murray came up and said he couldn’t do that because he always wore his black shirt to warm up and if he wore orange it would ruin his whole season.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I told my players they could wear any top they wanted. So, when Murray came out, naturally he was wearing his orange shirt.”

Quotebook

SMU basketball Coach Dave Bliss, after Arkansas Coach Eddie Sutton called the officiating the worst he’d ever seen following Saturday’s 63-60 loss to the Mustangs in Dallas: “If Eddie thinks he got homered he ought to go to Hawaii and play Chaminade.”