Memories From a Season to Forget

Low lights, dark nights and weird sights of football, 1992, as culled from the Dead Season Scrolls:

THE COLLEGES

Mascot free-for-alls: Northeast Louisiana mascot Chief Brave Spirit tangled with Vic the Demon of Northwestern (La.) State, requiring the intervention of security guards. Spirit ripped off Demon’s head but later gave it back. In a separate incident, Stanford’s Tree mascot--a man dressed as a shrub--was attacked at halftime by a Cal fan at Berkeley.

Hand-gun formation: Washington safety Tommie Smith revealed that “a lot of people on the team have guns. They just don’t have them on campus. They let their (off-campus) friends keep them when they don’t need them.”

You bet your life: Temple fired coach Jerry Berndt after alumnus Bill Cosby volunteered to buy out Berndt’s $400,000 contract.

A loser in the Class Favorite voting: Auburn students and supporters booed and screamed, “Go to hell!” as former football player Eric Ramsey received his diploma, three weeks after his claims of cheating led to coach Pat Dye’s resignation.

The unkindest cut: Before the team’s game against the Texas Longhorns, Mississippi State Coach Jackie Sherrill had a 540-pound steer castrated in front of his players. He called the demonstration educational.

Radio Shack Player of the Year: Vanderbilt lineman Mike Gandolfo was thrown off the team after it was revealed he had secretly tape-recorded an in-person conversation with Coach Gerry DiNardo. The coach could be overheard telling Gandolfo that he wasn’t interested in any player “who just wants an education.”

Actually, he redshirted for 20 years: Miami QB Gino Torretta became the oldest-looking person in memory to win the Heisman Trophy.

SI Jinx in reverse: New Mexico State, called the worst Division I team in the nation in Sports Illustrated’s preseason issue, finished 6-5.

Lock of the Irish: That was the New York Times’ description of the wrestling hold put on a referee by Coach Hulk Holtz during the Notre Dame-BYU game.

The Midwest Larry Smith: By tying Michigan, Ohio State Coach John Cooper kept alive his streak of having failed to beat his team’s traditional rival for the last eight years. He’s 0-4-1 vs. Michigan. As coach of Arizona State before that, he was 0-2-1 vs. Arizona.

Alarm-clock tampering? Willy Merrick, subbing for brother David, kicked his first college field goal to give Marshall a 31-28 victory over Youngstown State in an NCAA I-AA title game. David had been suspended after oversleeping and missing practice.

THE PROS

We’re sure the Dolphins would have paid the ransom: In order to avoid punishment for breaking curfew and missing a preseason practice with Miami, nose tackle Alfred Oglesby lied to team officials that he had been kidnaped.

Captive audience: With the wind-chill factor at minus 5 degrees, Foxboro Stadium raised the price of hot chocolate from $1 to 1.50 for the New England Patriots’ late-season game against the Indianapolis Colts. “It was accidental,” said Brian O’Donovan, the stadium general manager.

Everybody was Kung Fu signaling: When Patriot punt returner Walter Stanley signaled for a fair catch but then ran with the ball, referee Jerry Markbreit didn’t know how to signal the infraction. Colt lineman Tony Siragusa advised him to “make the signal like a Kung Fu stance. . . . Nobody is going to care anyway.”

A team man: Running back Dave Meggett of the New York Giants wasn’t satisfied with tying a club record of catching passes in 45 straight games. When the streak was broken, he criticized the team’s offense: “I didn’t like it and I didn’t think it was fair. That’s three years of work down the drain.”

A team man, but what team? Defensive end Neil Smith of the Kansas City Chiefs celebrated big plays by pantomiming the swinging of a baseball bat, which he said was a tribute to the Royals’ George Brett.

And Dan Devine, Forrest Gregg and Lindy Infante kept the name alive: Kent Rasmussen of Thousand Oaks sent the Bottom Ten an excerpt from the book, “Names on the Land,” which notes that the original Indian settlers of Green Bay, Wis., referred to the area as “Stinky Bay.”

Low-intensity espouser: Chicago Bear Coach Mike Ditka, denying that he’s success-oriented, said: “When all is said and done, perfection is never something I espoused to.”

Even Stinky Bay never sank this low: After several third-quarter letdowns, Tampa Bay Coach Sam Wyche announced that the Buccaneers would incorporate halftimes into its practice sessions. Stools would be set up in the locker room, he explained, and “the coaches will talk about . . . what we’re going to do when we go back out there.” The Bucs went on to lose nine of their next 10 games.

Illegal use of the camera: The Denver Broncos’ Vance Johnson sued HBO for a broadcast of locker room footage that showed him fully naked..