‘Little General’ Would Have Won at Soldier Field

George Young, general manager of the New York Giants, is a student of military history, but, unlike Woody Hayes, he doesn’t try to apply battlefield strategy to the football field.

“There’s a great deal of difference between a football team running around end and a Napoleon running around end,” Young told Ken Denlinger of the Washington Post.

“When a Napoleon runs around end, a whole lotta people don’t get back up.”

Add Giants: Safety Kenny Hill, the Yale graduate who played in the Super Bowl with the Raiders, says of the New York defense: “For a while, people did things to avoid agitating or confronting Lawrence Taylor. They ran away from him, which meant they’d have to run into Carl Banks. They found that not to be a very fruitful undertaking, so they started running up the middle, which they had abandoned for a long time because Harry Carson is in the middle.

“It’s an established fact that teams aren’t going to run well against us. As of yet, we don’t have three All-Pros in the secondary. If you were an offensive coordinator, what would you do, try to run the ball 60 times or throw the ball 60 times?”

Said Cedric Maxwell of his trade from the Clippers to the Houston Rockets: “My biggest reaction was that I had to call my accountant.”

Why?

“I figured I was going to make more money because I knew we were going to the playoffs,” he said.

It-had-to-happen dept.: Said Chick Hearn as Adrian Branch launched a baseline jumper at the Capital Centre: “He can bury that baby.”

Air ball.

Trivia Time: What do the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, the athletic director at the University of Florida and the coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have in common? (Answer below.)

After Terry Donahue turned down the Atlanta Falcons, the New York Times said: “According to a source familiar with the negotiations, the deal fell apart when the Falcons refused to match an annuity Donahue has with UCLA that will bring him $150,000 a year from the year 2000 to 2025.”

Ouch: Wrote Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post after the Nuggets lost to the Seattle SuperSonics, 134-100:

“Garbage time lasted 48 minutes for the Denver Nuggets Friday night.”

Wrote Paul Finebaum of the Birmingham (Ala.) Post-Herald after Bill Curry accepted the job as football coach at Alabama: “After being introduced as the new coach, Curry wasted little time in thanking his wife, Carolyn.

“ ‘My wife and I have had 12 wonderful years of marriage,’ Curry said. ‘And we feel 12 of 24 is pretty good.’

“Incredibly, in only four seconds, Curry had displayed more personality than Ray Perkins had in four years.”

Would-you-believe-it dept.: Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees confesses: “Honestly, at one time I thought Babe Ruth was a cartoon character. I really did. I mean, I wasn’t born until 1961, and I grew up in Indiana.”

Trivia Answer: All three--John McVay, Bill Arnsparger and Ray Perkins--are former coaches of the New York Giants.

Quotebook

Mike Gminski of the cellar-dwelling New Jersey Nets, on the world’s toughest job: “Being a ticket scalper at the Meadowlands.”