Writer Taking Some Pot Shots at This Hot Shot

Rick Bozich, a columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, on Dana Kirk, coach of the Memphis Hot Shots of the Global Basketball Assn.:

“The name is Kirk.

“Used to be: ‘As in jerk.’

“Now that can be amended to: ‘Out of jail and back to work. But still a jerk.’ ”

Add Kirk: Bozich says Kirk, a former Memphis State coach now plying his trade in the GBA, answers questions like someone who spent a lot of time being cross-examined.

“Perhaps that should not be surprising considering that Kirk spent nearly four months in a minimum-security prison for income tax evasion and obstruction of justice.”

Trivia time: Name the two active Division I-A college football coaches who have won 200 or more games.

Steel strings: Lars Ulrich, son of a Danish tennis professional, was a Bjorn Borg protege before choosing drum sticks over wooden rackets. Today Ulrich is the drummer for the heavy metal group, Metallica.

Sizing up the problem: Bobby Hull, the one-time NHL star, thinks the league needs more small, quick players: “All you see are these big kookaloos,” he told the Boston Globe. “That’s why the game looks like it’s played by robots. They’re all like trees.”

Retorted former goalie John Davidson: “Bobby Hull’s a great player, right? But there’s nothing more disappointing to hear than Bobby Hull yap about how bad the NHL is. Bobby Hull couldn’t name 15 players playing in the National Hockey League.”

Media is the message: The Sponsors Report, a publication that measures how much air time athletes’ sponsors get during nationally televised events, reports that race car driver Michael Andretti’s primary sponsors, K mart and Havoline, garnered a combined $20.2 million of exposure during the season.

Stepping out: After the original spikes left indentations on the golf greens, Reebok sent new spikes to distributors who sell its Pump golf shoe, reports Paul Harber of the Boston Globe.

Movable feasts: Brent Musburger mentioned during an ABC telecast of the Iowa-Indiana football game that he and fellow announcer Dick Vermeil had discovered great pizza in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at a joint called the Sip-N-Stir.

“You’d expect a Harry Caray to do something like that, but not someone during a college football game,” restaurant owner George Haddy told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “Since that game, we’ve had calls from all over the country . . . California, New York, Virginia.”

It would have been a wipeout: Hawaiian surfer John Shimooka, who once criticized Brazilians for throwing rocks at him during a contest near Sao Paulo, was confronted by Brazilian jujitsu fighters during a recent Grand Prix tournament in Brazil, according to Surfing magazine. Some Brazilian pros came to Shimooka’s aid to ward off disaster.

“They (the fighters) wouldn’t care if they killed him,” said Al Hunt, tour director.

Trivia answer: Penn State’s Joe Paterno and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden.

Quotebook: Promoter Bob Arum, on heavyweight Riddick Bowe: “He’s got no heart. Everybody knows that.”