After He Gave It His Best Shot, He Was Happy That She Didn’t

NBC television commentator Bob Trumpy had a harrowing experience with a woman in South-Central Los Angeles when he worked for a finance company while attending Glendale College in 1965, according to Steve Zipay of Newsday.

“Here’s a big farm kid from Illinois, who turns out to be a bill collector in a ghetto,” said Trumpy, who is 6 feet 6.

When he went to a home to collect a furniture payment, he got more than he bargained for from the woman living there.

“I’ll never forget her,” Trumpy said. “I went to her front door, and she said, ‘I’m not paying you,’ and I said, ‘But you have to or we’ll take your furniture.’

“She said, ‘Just a minute,’ and came back with a revolver. She pointed it up at my face, and I could see the cartridges in the cylinder.

“I said, ‘Look, you keep the furniture and you keep the money. Don’t worry about it.’ And I left.

“I really wasn’t very good at that job.”

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Trivia time: What three players have won the Super Bowl’s most-valuable-player award more than once?

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Thankless job: Norm Schachter, who was the referee in the first Super Bowl, at the Coliseum in 1967, provides some advice to fellow officials in his book “Close Calls, Confessions of an NFL Referee,” such as:

“It’s comforting to know you have a mother and father when the coaches tell you differently. . . . What a player loses in his legs, he gains in his mouth. . . . Don’t waste time second-guessing yourself--there will be millions who will do it for you.”

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High anxiety: Michigan State basketball Coach Jud Heathcoate was pleased when he heard that Minnesota was spending $41 million to refurbish Williams Arena and to build a new hockey rink. He dislikes Williams Arena’s raised floor, where he is in clear view of the frenzied fans. His joy was short-lived, though, because the raised floor remains.

“There isn’t a raised floor in all of college basketball, so the architect must either be the town drunk or the village idiot,” Heathcoate said. “It doesn’t make sense to spend that kind of money and leave that monstrosity.”

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The Cooke file: Pro Football Weekly lists the most powerful people in the game, and on the owner’s list, the Washington Redskins’ Jack Kent Cooke is 10th.

Of Cooke, the newspaper said: “(He) has never turned his attention to football and the league, but he could be a dominant influence if he wanted. He would like to think he’s influential, but he isn’t, say insiders.

“Other owners seem to put up with him more than listen to him. Yet his team does win.”

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Trivia answer: Bart Starr (1967 and ‘68), Terry Bradshaw (1979 and ‘80) and Joe Montana (1982, ’85 and ‘90).

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Quotebook: USC basketball Coach George Raveling, on UCLA’s 6-foot-10, 260-pound center, Richard Petruska: “If we have Petruska, we might have beaten Fresno State (in the Freedom Bowl).”