Words From a Well-Read Man Called Red

The Red Smith collection was dedicated this week at the library at Notre Dame. Here are a few one-liners from the columnist, who graduated from the university in 1927:

--On the 1963 NFL championship game between the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants: “It was a perfect day for football--too cold for the spectators and too cold for the players.”

--On Green Bay’s 1-10-1 record the year before Vince Lombardi took over: “The Packers were the most soft-bitten team in the league; they overwhelmed 1, underwhelmed 10 and whelmed 1.”

--On Primo Carnera: “The world’s most beautiful, most ferocious and most talented heavyweight champion in the era between Jack Sharkey and Max Baer.”

--On Walter O’Malley and Bowie Kuhn: “When O’Malley sends out for coffee, Bowie asks, ‘One lump or two?’ ”

--On Howard Cosell: “I have tried very hard to like Howard. And I have failed.”

Add Smith: Of horseplayers, he wrote: “Horseplayers love to suffer. They are never truly happy unless they are miserable--freezing or sweltering or drenched by rain, shiny in the seat and tissue-thin in the sole, elbowed and trampled and bruised in cramped space where the air they breathe has already been breathed several times, unable to find a slat to sit on or a winner to back, stone broke and sinking hopelessly deeper into debt.”

Trivia Time: What college teammates went on to coach teams that won NCAA basketball titles? (Answer to follow.)

For What It’s Worth: When North Carolina beat Loyola Marymount, 123-97, it was the second-highest winning score in NCAA tournament history, and Paul Westhead has been involved in both of those games.

In the 1960-61 third-place game, he played on a St. Joseph’s (Pa.) team that beat Utah, 127-120, in four overtimes. Johnny Egan led St. Joseph’s with 42 points, and Jim Lynam, current coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, had 31. For Utah, former Jefferson High School star Bill (the Hill) McGill had 32. The St. Joseph’s coach was Jack Ramsay, current coach of the Indiana Pacers.

Robin Givens told Wallace Matthews of Newsday that she wasn’t ready for new husband Mike Tyson’s routine the morning of the Tony Tubbs fight.

“He got up around 7:30 and he didn’t speak to me at all,” she said. “I felt like I hardly knew him. He was throwing newspapers all over the room and storming around. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I called my mom. She had no advice for me, either.”

By fight time, which was shortly after noon in Tokyo, Tyson had mellowed.

“About a half-hour before the fight, he started hugging me and kissing me and acting lovey-dovey,” she said. “I said, ‘Stop. Go be mean. Don’t prove the press right about marriage softening you up.’ ”

Sadly for Tubbs, Tyson took her advice.

Trivia Answer: Pete Newell and Phil Woolpert of Loyola. They were seniors in 1938-39. Woolpert coached San Francisco to titles in 1954-55 and 1955-56. Newell coached California to the title in 1958-59.

Quotebook

Charles Barkley of the Philadelphia 76ers, informed that Washington’s Moses Malone has taken a vow of silence until the Bullets reach .500: “I guess he won’t be talking for a few years.”