Dallas Isn’t Betting On Ted’s Lines

Former Southland sportscaster Ted Dawson, now working for Channel 4 in Dallas, already has made an impression on Frank Wooten of the Dallas Times Herald.

Wooten summed him up as follows: “Easy to hear, impossible to ignore and difficult to stomach.”

Wooten told of a program on which Dawson was giving his football picks, which he calls ‘Ted’s Touts.’ He called Denver, a 4 1/2-point favorite over Buffalo, “a dead-solid lock.”

“Bet the family farm and all the appliances,” he said. “It should be 14 1/2. No way Buffalo can stop John Elway.”

News anchor Steve Bosch, apparently victimized by earlier ‘Ted’s Touts’ that didn’t pan out, wasn’t buying this time. “I’ve already lost the farm,” Bosch said.

Note: Buffalo beat Denver, 21-14.

Would-you-believe-it dept.: After the Angels released Don Sutton, Tim Kurkjian of the Baltimore Sun wrote: “Get this: he is thinking about running for the Orange County Board of Supervisors. There’s speculation that Sutton dislikes former Dodger teammate Steve Garvey so much he wants to beat him into the political arena.”

Add Kurkjian: “Manager John McNamara said the Red Sox will not be allowed to take golf clubs on the road next year. The team was awful on the road this year. Said one Red Sox veteran of the new rule: ‘That will last until Jim Rice decides to bring his clubs along.’ ”

Trivia Time: What four defensive linemen made up the Purple People Eaters of the Minnesota Vikings in the late 1960s and 1970s. (Answer below.)

Said Miami linebacker George Mira Jr. of the only run from scrimmage by Notre Dame’s Tim Brown Saturday, a two-yard gain: “When it was me and him in the hole one-on-one and he had the ball, he just went to the ground. When he did that, I knew he just didn’t want to get hit.”

Former USC Coach Ted Tollner, now an assistant with the Buffalo Bills, was as stunned as everyone else when Earle Bruce was fired at Ohio State.

“The big change in coaching today is the money,” Tollner told Dan Hruby of the San Jose Mercury News. “I was going to the Citrus Bowl and we got $1 million. They wanted the Rose Bowl and $5 million. The squeeze for dollars is everything.”

Said former Stanford coach Paul Wiggin, now an assistant with the Minnesota Vikings: “I wouldn’t coach in college again--you must answer to too many elements. When I walked into that last Cal game, I was almost rejoicing. I knew I wouldn’t have to go through that feeling again, of not knowing who your friends were. You really get paranoid.”

St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog had this lament: “We’ve been in two World Series where we didn’t have Vince Coleman in one and Jack Clark and Terry Pendleton in another.

“But,” he added, “Milwaukee didn’t have Rollie Fingers in 1982, and they lost the seventh game to us. They probably would have beaten us with Fingers.”

Trivia Answer: Jim Marshall and Carl Eller at ends and Alan Page and Gary Larsen at tackles. Larsen later was replaced by Doug Sutherland.

Quotebook

Bobby Bowden, Florida State football coach, asked if discipline was the key to winning: “If it was, Army and Navy would be playing for the national championship every year.”