Here’s Why She Likes the Bengals

A doctor’s prognosis: Forget about the injuries, the coaches, the quarterbacks. The most crucial bit of information a handicapper needs to know about this Super Bowl is that the San Francisco 49ers and their wives are staying at different hotels.

That’s why Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who knows plenty about that kind of thing but next to nothing about football, is leaning toward the Cincinnati Bengals.

“I think in many cases, couples being apart will create more tension than good,” the sex therapist said.

“For one thing, maybe she is going to ask him, ‘Where were you last night?’ And then he’s going to ask her the same thing.”

Speaking of Super Bowls, it’s tough to forget Green Bay wide receiver Max McGee in Super Bowl I.

The night before the Packers were scheduled to play Kansas City, a team official told McGee after an initial bed check that there wouldn’t be another one.

“That was enough for me. I practically ran over him getting out of the room,” McGee was quoted as saying in the book “Lombardi,” written by Green Bay teammate Jerry Kramer.

“I met some blonde the night before and I was on my way to pay my respects. I didn’t feel I was letting the team down any, because I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d play.

“I waddled in about 7:30 in the morning, and I could barely stand up for the kickoff. On the bench, Paul (Hornung, his roommate) kept needling me, ‘What would you do if you had to play?’ And I said, ‘No way, there’s no way I could make it.’ ”

When McGee heard Coach Vince Lombardi call his name early in the game, he figured he’d been caught sneaking out and expected to get slapped with a $5,000 fine.

It turned out to be far worse.

Front-liner Boyd Dowler had injured his shoulder leading the Green Bay sweep.

“Get in the game,” Lombardi barked.

“I almost fainted,” McGee recalled.

He stayed up long enough to catch 7 passes for 137 yards and 2 touchdowns.

By walking out of last Saturday’s basketball game against Boston College, Georgetown Coach John Thompson has helped fuel a flurry of comment over a controversial proposal dealing with academic requirements.

The proposal to eliminate scholarships to students who do not meet National Collegiate Athletic Assn. criteria--a 2.0 grade-point average in a core curriculum and a score of 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or 15 on the American College Test--was passed by NCAA members at their convention last week.

Thompson said the proposal is discriminatory against students of a lower socioeconomic level. It remains a difficult issue for many.

Ron Rappoport of the Los Angeles Daily News writes:

“That score of 700 is so ridiculously low, so easy to achieve, that the term cultural bias loses all relevance.

“How do I know this? Because I took the test just for fun a few years ago and, although my math was a little rusty, I did pretty well. Not fair? Well, how about this, then? The sixth-grader living in my house took the test, too.

“How did she do? Not very well, of course. . . . But she did do well enough for an athletic scholarship if she had been old enough and if she had a hook shot.”

Does Peter Ueberroth know about this? Pepperdine’s men’s volleyball coach, Marv Dunphy, who just completed a 3-year term as the coach of the U.S. national team, tells of an hour-long conversation he had with Cuban President Fidel Castro after a tournament in Havana.

“We were talking about his economy, and he said his advisers said that he should send some of his boxers and baseball players up to the United States to bring back millions of dollars,” Dunphy said.

“Then, real matter-of-factly, he said that maybe when relations with the United States normalize, there will be a (major league baseball) franchise in Havana.”

On top instead of Down Under: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova played an exhibition match at Sydney, Nova Scotia, last December in a half-filled arena that holds 2,000 spectators.

When asked about the logic of two of tennis’ most prominent women playing in such an obscure setting, Evert said, “I hate to sound stupid, but when I accepted to play, I thought it was in Sydney, Australia.”

Quotebook

Minnesota Vikings Coach Jerry Burns, before the Buddy Ryan-Mike Ditka war of words leading up to the Chicago-Philadelphia playoff game Dec. 31: “There’s going to be more bull shed than blood.”