Race Car Goes a Little Off Course

A member of the U.S. Auto Club, who quite understandably prefers to remain unidentified, stopped for gas recently on his way home from a race in southern Indiana. When he got out, he noticed that the car trailer he was hauling was empty.

State and local authorities searched for nearly four hours before they found the missing race car about 30 yards from the highway in a cornfield, where it had apparently rolled after coming loose from the trailer as the driver sped along unknowingly.

Remember when? Who recalls when possession of the basketball went to the team that touched it first after the ball went out of bounds? That was before 1914. Players used to scramble madly in and among the spectators and, like an enforcer in hockey, a roughneck who could fight for the ball was well paid.

Trivia time: What Big Ten school was the first to play in the Rose Bowl? Beware, it’s a trick question.

Devilish idea: At Duke University there are no mandatory study halls. Chris Kennedy, an English professor and the school’s athletic academic counselor, explains why:

“Those things are football driven, idiot study halls where they put 25 freshmen football players in a big room and let them burp at each other after practice and a big meal.”

Quick change: Gary McCord played 18 years on the PGA Tour without a victory, so it was natural that his California license plates read: NO WINS. But then he won on the Hogan tour. McCord’s response was to update the plates with an asterisk.

Trivia answer: Illinois, which defeated UCLA, 45-14, in 1947. Michigan played in 1902 and Ohio State in 1921, but their games were at Tournament Park in Pasadena.

Par for the course: Jan Stephenson complained to Don Wade of Golf Digest about the inequities between the men’s and women’s golf tours: “It is unfair that if two guys go out for dinner or travel together, nobody says anything. But if I travel with another woman, what’s the first thing people think?”

Different strokes: Former New York Knick coach John McLeod, after 18 years in the NBA, took over the head coaching job at Notre Dame. He explains the difference:

“I go from playing Michael Jordan in a three-game series in New York, to 10 days later talking to high school kids on the phone. That’s a major, major change.”

Quotebook: Drag racing veteran Ed (Ace) McCulloch: “In all forms of auto racing, there are more bad days than good days; that’s nature of the sport.”