Florida St. Deserved to be No. 1

Judging strictly by what I’ve seen on the TV the last week or so--after all, the bowl season is completely separate from the regular season--my irrevocable, chiseled in stone final football rankings read as follows: 1. Florida State, 2. Notre Dame, 3. Miami, 4. Colorado, 5. Southern Cal, 6. Clemson, 7. Nebraska, 8. Alabama, 9. Texas Tech, 10. Los Angeles Rams.

It must be some sort of joke, the Indianapolis Colts nominating linebacker Chip Banks as its man for the Ed Block Courage Award come the annual banquet March 6. Some of the charges currently pending against this doozie include drug possession, sodomy and false imprisonment.

For the first time since 1972, Jimmy Connors isn’t among the world’s top 10 tennis players, according to the Tennis magazine poll. Bull!

After going 8-1-3 at the start of the season and convinced they were a juggernaut, the New York Rangers are 0-8-3 the past month. Just 5,700 showed up New Year’s Day to watch the Broadways get wiped out by touring Soviets, 3-1.

Somebody ought to teach James Worthy how to barter, or something. The Lakers star purchased a jazzy little abode in Los Angeles listed at $2,699,000 for $2,675,000.

The six-team Major Indoor Lacrosse League starts its fourth season this weekend and, as Baltimore Thunder General Manager Darrell Russell points out, “It says something for our league we’ve been here this long considering the city once had a pro basketball team that lasted just a month.” The Thunder opens up at home against the Detroit Turbos Jan. 13 with a squad of “young, hustling, hungry guys,” according to Coach John Stewart.

The problem with handing a weakish team a plum schedule, as is the case in the National Parity League, is a club like the Pittsburgh Steelers can win its last five games against non-playoff teams and sneak in. Then it can advance by winning a wild-card game against a team with a caricature for a coach (Jerry Glanville).

Give me Jackie Joyner-Kersee as woman athlete of the ‘80s over Martina Navratilova. While Jackie was beating the world’s best in the Olympics and World Championships, Martina had only Chris Evert and Steffi Graf to worry about while banking a million per annum.

Obviously, some basketball coaches have been hanging around their players too much lately. No sooner did Charley Rosen of the Rockford Lightning in the CBA get hauled off to the hoosegow for assaulting a fellow mentor, when college coach Tom Folliard spent a night in the clink following a brawl in a hotel lounge. Maybe this was the guys’ tribute to the life and times of Billy Martin.

It was just a couple of years ago the New England Patriots were in the Super Bowl and, since then, they have had one playoff visit and went 5-11 this season. Good luck with their incomparable player development genius Dick Steinberg, woeful Jets.

In each of the last three decades, Southern Cal has been the Pac-10 representative in the Rose Bowl half the time. And you want these guys to be enthusiastic about a playoff system when TV pays each Pasadena participant $5.5 million? Get real.

There were in the vicinity of 200,000 no shows to NFL games the last weekend of the regular season, with the Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons drawing 7,092 in Atlanta. Still, speculation has expansion franchises going for at least $125 million if and when the time comes. Rozellanomics?

Syracuse football coach Dick MacPherson says, “In today’s world of selfishness and lack of discipline, football is the only remaining sport that is truly unselfish and disciplined. That says it all.” Uh, Dick, take in a hockey game sometime.