Football Fan Puts His Best Flick Forward for the Home Team

A flicker of fame.

Rest easy. San Diego’s honor in the fourth-annual playoffs of the Finger Flick Football competition is in good hands (or fingers, to be more precise).

Gerard Sbordone, 36, a Brooklyn native transplanted to North Park, will compete tonight in the Unbelieva Bowl flick-off, sponsored by Southern Comfort liqueur and held this year at a sports bar in Minneapolis.

You may remember the forerunner to Finger Flick Football from high school. It drove teachers crazy.

Take a piece of paper, fold it into a triangle. Flick it with your finger toward the far end of the table.

To score, you had to flick the paper so that when it landed it was hanging partially over the edge. If it landed short or fell to the floor, no points.

Southern Comfort took the sport big time: Rules (no more than two flicks in a row), equipment (a tiny cardboard football), regional tournaments, and ex-jocks (members of the 1977 Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders will attend the Unbelieva Bowl).

ESPN is interested in covering tonight’s finale. Look for a finger flicker to be the player of the day.

Sbordone, a wholesale car dealer and horseplayer, began his march to destiny by winning a local tourney at Tuba Man’s Grandslam bar in North Park: “I walked in, these guys asked me to play, and I said, ‘OK, OK.’ ”

Then a bigger match at the Kicks lounge at the Marriott Hotel in Mission Valley.

Then a battle with a former champ in the end zone of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium during halftime of the Chargers-Dolphins game. Shown over DiamondVision.

“Check it out. I beat this guy from Las Vegas who figured he was going to whip my (posterior) because I was just some California (individual).”

Tonight’s winner gets a trophy and a diamond-studded ring. All four finalists are going to Sunday’s Super Bowl at the Metrodome, courtesy of Southern Comfort, which also paid their travel and hotel bills.

Sbordone’s competitors are a metal worker from Streamwood, Ill.; a laborer from Niagara Falls, N.Y., and a postal worker from Brandon, Fla.

“It’s nothing,” Sbordone said. “It doesn’t take any great skill. Just a little touch with your finger.”

The great ones are always modest.

Justice Is Served, Cats Are Not

Look here.

* It started as cat chow and became a mini- cause celebre among animal activists.

Mary Sue Allen, 42, who lives in the De Anza mobile home park, was charged last fall with misdemeanor trespass for refusing to leave Mission Bay Golf Course.

She had been cited after allegedly going to the course to leave food for the cats who make the course their unauthorized home.

The cats are a nuisance to golfers, and the course has signs telling people not to feed them. Allen got into a push-pull with the course manager.

The case had been set to go to trial today. Instead, a city prosecutor will ask the judge to dismiss the charge “in the interest of justice.”

Among other reasons: Allen has stopped leaving food for the feral felines.

* Why, you ask, does Judy Hamilton of Hamilton Accountancy Corp. in Solana Beach have a license plate JOX CPA on her Pontiac?

Because her firm handles the books of several pro athletes? Because she’s a part owner of the minor-league baseball team San Bernardino Spirits? Because she’s a soccer player?

All of the above.

* Who says local politics is bland stuff?

Ocean Beach nightclub/cafe owner Bill Winston announced Monday at a reggae music festival in OB that he’s eyeing the 49th Congressional District.

Dianne Jacob, candidate for the East County supervisor’s seat, held a rally at the Lakeside Rodeo Grounds on the weekend, complete with Western music, mock gunfights and “deputy badges” for supporters.

She galloped in on a horse, of course.

No One Can Say We Weren’t Warned

Computer bashing?

Former San Diego computer executive Winn Schwartau is out with “Terminal Compromise,” a 542-page tome warning about computer terrorism:

“An electronic Pearl Harbor is just waiting to happen.”

Schwartau’s book is not likely to be popular with cops or bankers: He tells how easy it is to loot an automated teller machine.