Morning Briefing : When You Are the Man in Charge, You Can Be Anybody You Want to

Grambling Coach Eddie Robinson told Mark Blaudschun of the Dallas Morning News the story about the football player who died and went to heaven.

The player was met at the gate by St. Peter, who took him to a locker room. The player looked around and saw stalls labeled RG, RT and LHB.

“I know what those mean,” said the player, starting to feel more comfortable. “Right guard, right tackle and left halfback.

“But what’s that one?” he asked, pointing to a stall with the letters TL above it.

“Oh,” said St. Peter, “that’s The Lord. He thinks he’s Tom Landry.”

Add Robinson: Before he was hired at Grambling in 1941, he was interviewed for two hours by the president of the school, Dr. Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones.

“Actually, we spent most of time arguing about which of us was the better pitcher in baseball,” Robinson said.

Jim McMahon, Chicago Bear quarterback, is a New Jersey-born Catholic who attended Mormon-run Brigham Young in Utah.

During one off-season, he was disciplined for having an open can of beer in his golf cart on the BYU course.

“From then on, I was considered a hell raiser,” he told J.D. Schulz of the Dallas Times Herald. “I was a five-year man--on probation all five years.”

Add McMahon: Says ex-NFL quarterback Jim Hart, now a Chicago broadcaster: “McMahon is a Billy Kilmer type. He’s brash like Billy. He’s got guts like Billy. And he throws a better spiral.”

Trivia Time: What keystone combination played in the World Series for two different franchises? (Answer below.)

The difference between people in New York and North Carolina?

Jim Valvano, New York-born North Carolina State basketball coach, told Cathy Harasta of the Dallas Morning News: “If you break your watch in North Carolina and ask someone the time, they say, ‘Oh, your watch is broken. That’s too bad. Come one over to my house.’

“Then they take you in, make you something to eat, send your watch out to be fixed, and so on.

“In New York, you ask someone the time, they say, ‘Whudda I look like, Big Ben?’ That’s the difference.”

Add Valvano: On the egotism of coaches, he says: “Ask a coach to name the top three coaches, and the first two guys he mentions are usually dead. The third is himself.”

In the hierarchy of the Atlanta Falcons, Vice President Rankin Smith Jr. and corporate secretary Taylor Smith are sons of owner Rankin Smith.

Said Smith, of the rumor he would sell the team to his sons: “I don’t pay them enough money for them to buy it. They’re gonna inherit it anyway. What’s in it for them? We’d just be swapping dollars. I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got a plot to murder me.”

The lament of Oklahoma City basketball Coach Abe Lemons after learning he would be the last speaker of the night at a clinic in Fort Worth: “I’m always on just as they’re taking down all the signs and packing things up.

Trivia Answer: Shortstop Alvin Dark and second baseman Eddie Stanky. In the World Series, they played for the Boston Braves in 1948 and the New York Giants in 1951.

Quotebook

Eddie Robinson, football coach at Grambling: “My players can wear their hair as long as they want and dress the way they want. That is, if they can afford to pay their own tuition, room and board.”