A Year of Playgirls, Playboys and Boy Plays Girl

Lowlights, dark nights and weird sights of football, 1990, as culled from the Dead Season Scrolls:

HIGH SCHOOLS

A 5-foot-8 member of the girls’ cheerleading team at Coronado High (Colo.), whose “great legs” drew admiring comments from one player on the football team, turned out to be a 26-year-old man.

THE COLLEGES

Hofstra quarterback Rhory Moss admitted he used steroids but only because he was going to spend “spring break in the Bahamas last April and I wanted to put on a few pounds to look good.”

Spike Dykes, Texas Tech football coach, who suffered his worst season this year at 4-7, was given a 10-year contract extension.

Ready for a Naked Reverse: Arizona defensive back McCann Utu posed nude in Playgirl magazine.

Planning a Naked Reverse: An Oregon State player was accused of shoplifting Penthouse magazine.

All the University of Maine had to show for a 10,340 mile trip was a 3-44 loss to Hawaii.

Miami fans enraged by the upset loss to Brigham Young pelted the Hurricane players’ dorms with bottles.

Passages: Bo Schembechler began the year by coaching Michigan to a Rose Bowl loss against USC and ended the year, as Detroit Tiger president, by firing Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell.

Colorado led the nation in fifth-down efficiency.

Winner of the annual Most-Outrageous-Lou-Holtz-Statement-of-the-Year competition: “(Coach) Frank Leahy was here three years and went to war. I think sometimes that would be a welcome relief to get away from the pressure.”

Does Playgirl magazine know about this?: Trudi Marinovich, mother of USC quarterback/art major Todd Marinovich, laughingly told the Orange County media that her son had fashioned drawings of the Trojan coaches during the season, “some of them . . . R-rated.”

THE PROS

Denver receiver Vance Johnson claimed he was injured when his tongue was grabbed by Seattle’s Melvin Jenkins.

Minnesota held a preseason camp in New Mexico to foster togetherness, then lost six of its first seven games. General Manager Mike Lynn announced he was leaving to join the new international football league to foster togetherness there.

After the uproar over admitting female reporters to the locker rooms, the NFL took immediate action, announcing it would market officially licensed bathrobes and wraparound towels.

Two male disc jockeys from a Milwaukee radio station stripped to their athletic supporters and socks to interview players after a Green Bay-Chicago game.

Minnesota defensive players squirted water on the ball against Green Bay, causing it to slip from the grasp of quarterback Anthony Dilweg on the next play as he rolled out.

Angered by comments Washington quarterback Gary Hogeboom had made about Phoenix, Cardinal Coach Joe Bugel offered to fight him on the 50-yard-line before one game.

During a 7-30 loss to Buffalo, New York Jet Coach Bruce Coslet motioned for a heckler in the stands to come down on the field to fight. It wasn’t Gary Hogeboom.

After eating a huge pregame meal of eggs and spaghetti, Brent Fullwood, then a Green Bay Packer, claimed he was sick at halftime of a game against the Bears and insisted on remaining in the locker room. He was spotted that night dancing in a nightclub.

Against New Orleans, 300-pound San Francisco tackle Bubba Paris was observed off-sides, holding and grabbing a face mask--all on the same play.