Football May Have a New Arena

Is America ready for an indoor football league?

Plans are on the drawing board for a league that would match eight-man teams on 50-yard fields, and a trial game may be played this summer at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena. If all goes well, the founders of Arena Football say, a league will be launched next May.

The field for Arena Football would be 50 yards long and 80 feet wide with eight-yard end zones.

In Arena Football, there would be no punts. Teams would be required to attempt field goals in normal punting situations. Goal posts would be only nine feet wide, and the crossbar would be 15 feet from the ground.

The ball on missed field goals would rebound off a net back onto the field and would be a live ball. Seven of the eight players on a side must play both ways. Teams, partly for economic reasons, would be limited to 18-player rosters.

Michael Andretti, son of Mario, talking about why he became a race-car driver, told David Remnick of the Washington Post: “Sometimes I stand in the pit and I watch the cars go so fast, and I can’t believe I’d ever climb into one of them. But that’s how I’m built. I guess it’s obvious why. It’s the family thing.

“See, it’s the world you’re brought up in. You live in it and eventually you learn to love it. I was raised on speed, it’s what I’ve known all my life. When I was a kid, we had a place in the Pocono Mountains, and every toy we had up there had something to do with speed: motorbikes, snowmobiles, speedboats, three-wheelers. The whole idea of fun was going fast.”

Boston’s Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd, after limiting the Texas Rangers to three hits in eight innings and winning his third straight start Friday night, said: “The last few games, I feel myself getting into The Can again. Slowly, things are starting to get right. And when they do, I’m a madman on the mound. When I get like that, I can’t be stopped.”

Akeem Olajuwon has been ejected from two playoff games, once for pushing referee Jack Madden in Houston’s series-clinching double overtime victory over Denver and once for tangling with Mitch Kupchak in the Rockets’ series-clinching victory over the Lakers.

Now, with the NBA championship series between Houston and the Boston Celtics beginning Monday, the question is: Will the Celtics try to entice Olajuwon into a fight?

According to Peter May of the Hartford Courant, Houston Coach Bill Fitch said that would be a mistake.

“He’s had his last fist fight,” Fitch said. “But the last fight (with Kupchak) I probably would have been in there myself.”

As for Olajuwon, he vows that he will call time out the next time he is tempted to fight, and seek Fitch’s advice.

Fitch isn’t expected to say: “Yeah, go back out there and swing away.”

Dept. of Incidental Information: The women’s sports teams at Worth Academy in Georgia are nicknamed “The Lady Stallions.”

Quotebook

Larry Bird, told that CBS didn’t want the NBA championship series to begin today because of a possible conflict with the Indy 500 on ABC: “I’m bigger in Indiana than the Indy 500. We should give CBS our playoff shares and tell them to stay out of it.”