That Wasn’t Quite What Will Meant

Stanford football Coach Dennis Green is irritated about rumors that link him with the vacated coaching job at Texas.

“I haven’t been contacted (by Texas), and I don’t anticipate being contacted,” Green told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m like Will Rogers--you can’t believe what you read in the newspapers. Will didn’t say that. I’m paraphrasing him.”

The definition of paraphrase is to state the meaning of a passage in other words.

Obviously, Green is not a keen student of Rogers’ whimsy. The famed humorist opened his stage act by saying, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

Add Green: “I’ve never been to Austin, Tex., in my life. I don’t know anything about Texas. I don’t know one person who lives in Austin, Tex.”

Trivia time: Which team holds the NFL record for consecutive defeats?

Some romance: Art Spander of the San Francisco Examiner recalls a time in the early 1970s when Sid Gillman, then the coach of the Houston Oilers, was watching game films with his assistant, Bum Phillips.

“This is better than making love,” said Gillman, who is renowned for his passionate devotion to football.

Said Phillips: “Either I don’t know how to watch film, or you don’t know how to make love.”

Keep it quiet: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, at just about the time a professional football game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers was starting at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.

Through the first half, word of the events in Hawaii spread.

“At halftime, our coach, Steve Owen, told us about Pearl Harbor,” Jim Poole, an end for the Giants that day, recently told Dave Anderson of the New York Times.

“He gave us an account of all the bad things that happened there, it was like we didn’t want to go back out on the field.”

In the other locker room, Coach Jock Sutherland was told of the attack by Frank Scott, the Dodgers’ traveling secretary.

“Don’t mention this to the players, Scotty,” Sutherland said. “They’ll get upset. We’ve got another half to play.”

The Dodgers won, 21-7, if anyone cared at the time.

Costly change: Tim Simpson was eighth on the PGA Tour money winning list in 1990, earning $809,772. Then he switched clubs this year. He didn’t win a tournament and earned $196,582, slipping to 85th.

“When you’re in the top 10 a couple of times, somebody is going to come along with an armored truck and offer you a bundle to play their clubs,” Simpson told Golf World. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

There’s still hope: The Rams lost their eighth consecutive game Sunday, tying a club record set in 1965. The ’65 team ended its losing streak by beating Green Bay, 21-10, at the Coliseum. The Packers went on to win the NFL championship.

Trivia answer: Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers lost 26 consecutive games in 1976 and 1977.

Quotebook: California quarterback Mike Pawlawski, on the criticism directed at the penalty-plagued Bears after losing to Stanford: “We went from being media darlings to the Son of Satan.”