It’s Too Late, but He Can See Clearly Now

After Minnesota Viking kicker Rich Karlis ended his holdout last week, he recalled a trip the team’s players and management took last spring.

The retreat, held in New Mexico by a private consulting firm, was designed to instill trust and cooperation between the team and the front office.

Karlis remembered a drill in which he helped General Manager Mike Lynn, who was blindfolded, walk along a steep path.

Karlis told Frank Cooney of the San Francisco Examiner: “I had my chance to unhook his safety line and I didn’t.”

Add Vikings: Minnesota center Kirk Lowdermilk told the Associated Press why he ended his holdout Wednesday:

“What made me decide to come in? It was probably my wife. She stopped going to the grocery store about three weeks ago, stopped cooking about two weeks ago. She said she wanted me to know what it was like living on Skid Row.”

Trivia time: In 1949, which West Coast college football team went 11-0-0, outscored its opponents, 575-66, finished 10th in the Associated Press poll and was not invited to a bowl game?

Unbelievable torture: Ultra-marathoner Zoltan (Nick) Kraynik plans to run 487 miles from the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco to the bank’s offices in Los Angeles between Sept. 15-29.

Kraynik recalled a 24-hour track run he won in 1987, covering 120 miles: “That was excruciating. I had blisters, aching muscles and hallucinations about playing with my two children.”

The important thing: Oklahoma State lost, 50-7, at Florida Saturday, but what’s an early-season mismatch all about, anyway? When the Cowboys returned to Stillwater, Coach Pat Jones put the game in perspective when asked if his team came away with anything of value:

“A check for about $300,000.”

Next question, please: After reading in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing that the artificial surface in the Hoosier Dome is held down by Velcro, reader Mickey Shain asked: “OK, so what holds down the Velcro?”

The unabridged version: Former Raider tight end Todd Christensen, never one to use plain language when a chance to parade his intellect is there for the taking, threw in his 50 cents’ worth when asked to comment on the Raiders’ staying in Los Angeles.

Said Christensen: “People as a rule need to understand that this is the business side of the game. You can talk all you want about the definite symbiosis between that community (Oakland) and the people who wore the silver and black.”

Add Christensen: His scholar-preacher pose sometimes backfires. He once introduced a commentary for HBO’s “Inside the NFL” with: “As George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ ”

Shaw didn’t say it. George Santayana did. Ironically, the Encyclopedia Britannica called Santayana, the humanist philosopher, “devoid of pedantry.”

In other words, Santayana and Christensen might not be symbiotic.

For the record: Jack Buck’s wake-up greeting to American troops in Saudi Arabia Monday night originated from the Superdome in New Orleans, where Buck was broadcasting the game.

Trivia answer: College of the Pacific.

Quotebook: New York Giant publicist Ed Croke, commenting on linebacker Lawrence Taylor’s three-sack performance during the Giants’ victory over Philadelphia Sunday after only three days of practice: “Taylor has done so well, we may have our training camp at Winged Foot Golf Course next year.”