Two Reasons to Back Wings and a Prayer

How many Wings can one town handle?

Apparently one, if that town is Los Angeles. In one of the stranger sports controversies to hit the city in some time, the Arena Football League has crossed the National Cycle League over use of the nickname “Wings.”

The cycling Wings, who have been in Los Angeles since 1988, compete from May to August. The football Wings will open their first season in L.A. on June 6.

Add Wings: Bob Frazier, president of the Wing bicycle franchise, said he expects the football team, called the Cobras the last time Arena Football was played in Los Angeles, will change its name before this gets any more confusing.

Frazier’s office has been inundated with callers wanting season tickets and congratulating the Wings for hiring Joe Kapp as coach.

“For four years we have been trying to gain recognition here and finally we get it, but it’s for the wrong reason,” Frazier said.

“I could have sold 300 tickets already.”

Last add Wings: How did the Arena Football officials select the name?

“I guess they didn’t do much research,” Frazier said.

Trivia time: Name the two schools have reached the Final Four within five years of joining Division I.

Dial ‘S’ for strange: Fred Couples, on his phobia with telephones: “Every time it rings, I’m always afraid there’ll be someone on the other end.”

More bark than bite: Kirk Gibson, told he would play a backup role with the Kansas City Royals this year: “They say happy cows give more milk, but they’ve basically told me I’m dog meat.”

Tonight’s not the night: Jim Kelly, quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, was making the rounds of the talk shows for a while. After appearing with Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman and Arsenio Hall, Kelly was ready to meet Johnny Carson.

“I was all set to do ‘The Tonight Show’ . . . until, that is, we lost the Super Bowl,” he said.

Glad to know it: “The world’s a better place when we beat the Australians at cricket,” Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, was quoted as saying in the Sun after England had beaten Australia in the Cricket World Cup.

Food for thought: Coach Gary McKnight of Santa Ana Mater Dei High School has won seven Southern Section championships in 10 years. But he gets little joy out of the experience during the season, he said the day before Saturday’s Division I-A victory over Riverside North.

“The only thing I don’t lose is my appetite,” McKnight said.

A little alliteration: Tom Callahan, waxing poetic in the Washington Post: “In a fishery on the Ginza, fingering a flap of fugu, figuring the family’s fugu-fixing license wasn’t a forgery, trying to forget that improperly prepared fugu is unfailingly fatal, an American and a Japanese were talking baseball.”

Trivia answer: Jacksonville, led by Artis Gilmore, in 1970, and North Carolina Charlotte, led by Cedric (Cornbread) Maxwell, in 1977.

Let the good times roll: There is a race horse on the East Coast named Iseverybodyhappy. When the track announcer calls his name during a race, the crowd roars in the affirmative.

Quotebook: Don King, introducing Azumah Nelson at a news conference after Nelson had defeated Jeff Fenech to retain his WBC super-featherweight title: “Here’s the man of the hour at this particular moment.”