It Is by No Means Last Laugh, but Bruins Get a Good Start

Coaches Larry Smith of USC and Terry Donahue of UCLA were guests at Friday’s Downtown Rotary luncheon, held each year the day before their schools’ football game.

Both were asked questions by the audience. If the battle of the quips is an omen of today’s game, Donahue and the Bruins already have opened a sizable lead over Smith and the Trojans. Some samples:

Question: “Terry, why don’t coaches ever smile on the sidelines?”

Donahue: “You sound like my mother.”

Question: “Terry, in your pregame chalk talk tomorrow, what special strategy will you have, what will you tell your team?”

Donahue: “I’ll tell them to stay out of the way of that damn horse.”

Trivia time: Which two Pacific 10 football rivals have played the most games against one another?

“I am Spartacus”: With a strike deadline less than 24 hours away, San Francisco Chronicle staff writers showed their solidarity with the Northern California Newspaper Guild by forgoing their bylines in Friday morning’s editions.

You knew they meant business when columnist Herb Caen and The Sporting Green’s Lowell (First Person) Cohn went anonymous for the day.

Beneath the headline, “A Sigh for Venerable (Dave) Stewart,” and the designation, “Chronicle Staff Writer,” Cohn could not totally conceal his identity, although he did limit himself to four I’s , three me ‘ s and one my .

Add Chronicle: Cohn’s near-starvation diet might have been more rigorous. But, with the end of his column in sight, he backslid:

“While I had Stewart on the phone, I brought up an old subject. In the World Series, he had said Jose Canseco is not a superstar. He told me this with Canseco standing no more than three feet away.”

Now the picture unfolds: Oregon State’s 56-7 trouncing at the hands of USC last week might have been worse. The Beavers might have been without quarterback Fred Schweer.

Scheduled to start in place of Matt Booher, who had been suspended for violating a team rule, Schweer nearly was benched after the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported that he had been caught shoplifting a copy of Penthouse magazine from the OSU bookstore.

Add Schweer: The bookstore incident occurred Tuesday and wasn’t reported until Saturday morning. Schweer was allowed to play only after a meeting among Oregon State Coach Dave Kragthorpe and his assistants.

According to Neil Cawood of the Eugene Register-Guard, Schweer was apprehended by one of several plainclothes student security employees hired to help curb rampant shoplifting at the bookstore in recent months.

Schweer was arraigned Thursday in Benton County district court and will appear at a hearing on Nov. 29.

Trivia answer: Oregon and Oregon State. Today’s game at Corvallis will be the 93rd time the schools have met.

Quotebook: Two advertising slogans for the University of Maryland basketball program, which has been banned from television appearances and postseason play during the 1990-91 season: “No lights, no cameras, just action,” and “Come inside and feel the pride because you won’t see it live.”