In End, Maybe He Didn’t Want to Sell His Sole

The 14-year relationship between Adidas and Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight was ended by the shoe manufacturer last week because he failed to wear the company’s apparel as required under his contract.

But Adidas said it wasn’t because Knight wore the wrong shoes. Nor did it have anything to do with Knight’s recent one-game suspension for unsportsmanlike conduct when he appeared to kick his son, Patrick, during a game.

So what’s the rift? Adidas would not disclose what apparel Knight had not worn, or if he had worn any, but said the violation occurred on several occasions.

“It was a real cut-and-dried step over the boundaries,” Adidas’ spokesman John Fread said. “It was not a personality thing at all.”

With Bobby? Of course not.

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for most playoff touchdowns?

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Add shoe biz: NFL players under contract to Apex One, Inc., have been applying an Apex logo over their Nike shoes all season long, a court-bound Nike claims. Ironically, Apex’s advertising slogan is “You can’t fake this.”

Nike says the fakery came to light when Jim Kelly of the Buffalo Bills was caught in 1991. Most recently, they say, Thomas Everett of the Dallas Cowboys, who is featured in an Apex television spot, is faking it. Their list of culprits includes a number of Thomas’ Cowboy teammates, as well as players with the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles.

But the Nike sleuths say it doesn’t take much to figure out who is wearing what. They maintain that one photo in their arsenal shows that William (Refrigerator) Perry had applied his plastic stick-on logos upside down.

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Shu business: Tennessee quarterback Heath Shuler, who announced Sunday that he would turn professional, was one of two players invited to New York to watch Charlie Ward receive the Heisman Trophy in early December. Shuler was widely known in Tennessee, but most outside the state had no idea what he looked like.

“Charlie Ward and I flew up together and no one in any airports or any place else recognized us,” Shuler said. “But then after the (television) show it was unbelievable. I’m flying back through Pittsburgh and I was mobbed at the airport. I signed autographs for a solid hour, just waiting for my plane. I had no idea the show would make me that well known.”

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What’s the point? When the golfers at Rogala public links in Mattoon, Ill., talked about low numbers recently, they were probably referring to the temperature, not their scores. They were among the 174 who paid $5 apiece to battle 20-m.p.h. winds and a windchill that dipped into the teens to play in the 19th annual Frozen Open.

“I played one year when you hit the ball, you’d have to look in the hole in the ice to find it,” said Norris Brockett, 77.

Said Rick Sphar, tournament director, on the New Year’s Day dip by members of the Polar Bear Club: “The only people crazier than these are the ones swimming in Lake Michigan.”

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Trivia answer: Franco Harris of Pittsburgh, with 17 in 19 playoff games.

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Quotebook: Basketball Coach Jim Brovelli of the University of San Francisco after watching an episode of “Beverly Hills 90210” in which his school beat the fictional California University Condors: “It took me 30 years to learn how to schedule. Now I know that I can just book fictional teams on national television and go undefeated.”