College Mascots Are Fun, but There’s Also a Serious Side

There was contrasting news on the college mascot front Friday.

First, Coors announced it will donate $5,000 toward the travel expenses of Ralphie III, the University of Colorado’s buffalo, for her trip to the Orange Bowl in Miami. The undefeated, top-ranked Buffaloes will play Notre Dame on New Year’s Night.

On a more somber note, Black Jack, one of the U.S. Military Academy’s three mascot mules, won’t be traveling to Giants Stadium for today’s Army-Navy football game. Academy officials said Black Jack, 10, died Thursday of stomach cancer.

Trivia time: Who set the NFL record of at least one touchdown in eight consecutive playoff games?

Don’t call him Pee-Wee: Ronald (Popeye) Jones, a sophomore center for Murray State, stands 6-feet-8 and weighs about 280 pounds. Not surprisingly, he was also a defensive tackle for his high school football team. It would seem he was less suited for his prep baseball career, in which he pitched and played short stop.

Add centers: Florida’s 7-2 Dwayne Schintzius says he was ashamed of his height until last season. “I was always scared,” he says. “I didn’t want people gawking at me like I was some sideshow.”

Norm Sloan, then coach of the Gators, noticed the change: “For the first time, Dwayne is having fun playing ball. Before, it was always a source of potential embarrassment. Now he’s enjoying dominating people.”

Souls on ice: Gary Olson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, on the fact that evangelist Jim Bakker and the Detroit Red Wings’ Bob Probert are inmates at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn.: “Doesn’t that mean the center is operating on a wing and a prayer?”

It’s contagious: CBS football commentator John Madden, on coaches such as Jim Mora of the New Orleans Saints who contend that the media don’t understand the game well enough to criticize a losing coach: “When coaches don’t want to talk, they say you don’t understand. It’s funny how fans and the media understand wins. But everyone gets stupid with losses. Losing breeds stupidity.”

Universal language: Frank Craighill, a managing partner of the Washington-based sports marketing and management firm Advantage International, on the impact of increased Western access to the Eastern Bloc: “Sports is the classic way of introducing a product and gaining market awareness because sports transcend language and it is easy to identify excellence.”

Strangers in the night: Kevin McHale of the Boston Celtics, on the club’s recent lopsided victory over the injury-riddled Cleveland Cavaliers: “Everyone got kind of embarrassed, to tell you the truth. Guys we hardly knew were taking the ball and just driving to the hole on us.”

Trivia answer: The Pittsburgh Steelers’ John Stallworth, from 1978 to 1983.

Quotebook: Wayne Fontes, coach of the Detroit Lions, on the inability of defensive end Keith Ferguson to recover from a severe ankle sprain: “It probably would have been better if he had broken it. He would have been back by now.”