Truth Is No Defense for Huskies

Stanford football Coach Bill Walsh angered Washington’s coaches and players with disparaging remarks about the school’s program last May. Walsh insists he was misquoted.

Now, as the schools prepare to meet Saturday in Seattle, Walsh might have stirred up the Huskies again by telling Glenn Dickey of the San Francisco Chronicle that it’s difficult to make an evaluation on the game because Stanford and Washington are different kinds of teams.

“If this were Washington and USC, it would be easy enough to compare because both teams go after the same kind of athletes,” Walsh said. “But Stanford gets a different kind of athlete. You’re not just judging on athletic ability.”

Wrote Dickey: “That’s the kind of remark that will further enrage Washington people, of course, because what Walsh is suggesting is that Stanford players are smarter, which is all the more maddening because it’s true.”

Quick, add up the SAT scores, not the touchdowns.

Trivia time: Who is the last surviving men’s gold-medal winner in track from the 1936 U.S. Olympic team?

Quick Lip: Reader Andrew Byrne recalled that Leo (the Lip) Durocher once coached first base in an exhibition game the Giants played at West Point.

A cadet needled Durocher during the game and finally yelled, “How did a little squirt like you get into the major leagues?”

Replied Durocher: “My congressman appointed me.”

The awful truth: In 1991, tennis player Jimmy Connors asked son Brett, 12, “Do you think I’m ready for the U.S. Open?”

Replied Brett: “I don’t know, Dad. I think you’ve got a bad case of third-round-itis. You do OK till the third round, and then you lose.”

Career change: Pancho Segura, who coaches Andre Agassi, was asked by Sandra McKee of the Baltimore Sun to assess his pupil’s prospects at the outset of the U.S. Open.

“If he’s not ready by the time we get to the U.S. Open, he better quit and become an accountant,” Segura said.

Since Agassi lost to 61st-ranked Thomas Enqvist in the first round, he’s apparently ready to hang out his shingle.

Squeeze play: Dallas wide receiver Michael Irvin on the contract impasse between running back Emmitt Smith and Cowboy owner Jerry Jones:

“Our biggest asset is having Jerry be a hands-on owner because the man really cares about the players being out there and he’s out there with us, win, lose or draw.

“But our biggest liability is Jerry being that hands-on owner because every time he puts a dollar across that table, he sees that dollar and he’s squeezing that George Washington and making him yell, ‘Let me go, Jerry. Let me go.’ ”

Trivia answer: John Woodruff, who won the 800 meters.

Quotebook: Norman Chad of the Washington Post, on the proliferation of sportswriters-turned-broadcasters at the Boston Globe: “At any given time at the Globe, half the staff is on deadline and the other half is in makeup.”