Phillips Would Have Run Mile for a Campbell

In his NFL career, Earl Campbell trampled would-be tacklers like a runaway bull, but Bum Phillips, his longtime coach, remembers when Campbell started slowing a bit.

Campbell, who will be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in July along with John Hannah, Tex Schramm, Jan Stenerud and Stan Jones, was near the end of his career when he rejoined his former Houston Oiler coach, Phillips, in New Orleans.

On the first day of the Saints’ training camp, each player had to run one mile, but Campbell couldn’t make it. He ran only three-quarters of a mile and then stopped. Reporters quickly surrounded Phillips and asked what he would do.

“I said, ‘Well, hell, we just won’t give him the ball if it’s more than three-quarters of a mile,’ ” Phillips said. “That was simple. It didn’t take a smart head coach to figure that one out.”

Hmmm: San Diego Padre pitcher Larry Andersen offered this one: “How do you know when you have run out of invisible ink?”

Trivia time: What NBA coach has been assessed the fewest technical fouls this season?

Class act: Phil Mickelson is still a junior at Arizona State, but he is also the reigning U.S. amateur golf champion, winner of the Tucson Open, scored the lowest round by an amateur in last year’s U.S. Open and did the same thing in last week’s Masters.

There is speculation that Mickelson will leave Arizona State early for the PGA Tour, but veteran Tom Purtzer hopes not: “For the sake of our pocketbooks.”

Not the end zone?: Former Cowboy and Bronco running back Tony Dorsett is scheduled to receive second star billing behind actor David Carradine in a Vietnam War adventure film called “Kill Zone.” The producer is Roger Corman, whose previous film credits include such B movie fare as “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and “Teen-Age Caveman.”

Since Dorsett’s character is named Sheriff, it is doubtless hoped that he will give an arresting performance.

Old story: How old is 43-year-old Chicago White Sox pitcher Charlie Hough really ? “When I broke in, we didn’t have bats,” Hough said. “We just grabbed a branch off a tree.”

A debt resurfaces: Because the Flames lost to Edmonton in the NHL playoffs, Calgary Mayor Al Duerr also lost his bet with the mayor of Edmonton, so Duerr will be paraded around Edmonton’s Northlands Coliseum on the Zamboni before Game 3 of the Kings-Oilers second-round series.

Trouble: The computer network at the Alberta Research office in Calgary picked the Flames to win their first-round playoff series against Edmonton. The Flames lost. The computer picked Chicago to defeat Minnesota. The Blackhawks lost. The computer also picked New York to defeat Washington. The Rangers lost.

Be warned that the computer is now picking the Kings to win the Stanley Cup.

Oh, Canada!: For everyone who thinks that Canada is hockey-crazy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. will show the final episode of “Dallas” May 3 and preempt the first half of a Stanley Cup semifinal game in the Eastern time zone of Canada.

Trivia answer: Boston’s Chris Ford, none.

Quotebook: From Philadelphia Phillie reliever Mitch Williams, who traded two cases of beer to outfielder John Kruk for uniform No. 28, the number he wore with the Cubs: “I knew it would be beer or Ding Dongs, I just wasn’t sure which.”