He’d Star in the NFC Middle East

Earlier in the season the joke was: “You know the Rams are in trouble when Dieter Brock can’t even pass a kidney stone.”

Here’s the latest:

Question: “Why should we send Dieter Brock to Libya?”

Answer: “Because he’s the only one who can overthrow Kadafi.”

From former New England Patriot Coach Ron Meyer: “I don’t know who John Madden has on his All-Pro team, but Matt Millen’s on mine.”

Translation: Meyer, still bitter over being dumped by Patriot General Manager Patrick Sullivan, thinks Millen should be honored for putting the whap on Sullivan in the Coliseum tunnel.

Says Meyer: “What bothered me is that I wasn’t given a chance to finish what I started. If I had remained as coach, there is no doubt we would have made the playoffs.”

The Patriots were 5-3 when Meyer was fired at the midpoint of last season. They finished 4-4 under Raymond Berry.

Trivia Time: The winning quarterback in the highest-scoring NFL championship game since World War II also was the winning quarterback in the highest-scoring AFL championship game. Who was he? (Answer at right.)

Wait a Minute: Says Chicago Bear defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, insisting this isn’t the best defense he’s coached: “I’ve been with great defensive teams, better ones than this. It could have been the Jets in 1968, Minnesota in 1976 or our team in Chicago in 1979, the year we went to the playoffs.”

Note: In the 1968 AFL title game, Oakland’s Daryle Lamonica passed for 401 yards in a 27-23 loss to the Jets. The 1976 Vikings lost to the Raiders, 32-14, in Super Bowl XI. The 1979 Bears lost to Philadelphia, 27-17, in the first round of the playoffs.

From Chicago Bear guard Tom Thayer, who joined the team after playing a full season with the Arizona Outlaws of the USFL: “The Super Bowl will be my 46th game in one year and 16 days.”

Thayer, a Notre Dame product, played 23 games with the Outlaws, took 11 days off, then reported to the Bear training camp.

Hasn’t he had enough?

“I was beginning to wonder after the eighth or ninth game,” he said. “I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, I’m having a Super Bowl rejuvenation. I can see the light.”

Roger Kahn, author of “The Boys of Summer,” a book about the 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers, has signed a contract to do a book on Pete Rose.

Says Kahn: “The first question anyone asked me when they heard about the book was how were Pete and I splitting the proceeds. I said, ‘Fairly.’ Pete said, ‘Ron Fairly.’ ”

Trivia Answer: Tobin Rote. He quarterbacked the Detroit Lions to a 59-14 victory over the Cleveland Browns in 1957 and quarterbacked the San Diego Chargers to a 51-10 victory over the Boston Patriots in 1963.

Note: Rote and Bobby Layne were alternate quarterbacks for the Lions, but Rote took over exclusively when Layne broke his leg late in the season. Rote was signed by San Diego after the Chargers lost Jack Kemp because of a front-office clerical error that allowed the Buffalo Bills to pick up Kemp on waivers.

Quotebook

Wallace Matthews of Newsday, on Tim Witherspoon’s win over 244-pound Tony Tubbs: “It was like watching a man with a dull ax chopping down a large tree.”