Time to Use the Gag Rule on Ryan, Ditka

For an assistant coach, Buddy Ryan sure gets a lot of air time on television. Even Buddy’s buddy, Mike Ditka, is getting tired of it. Said Ditka on NBC Saturday: “I want to hear from (Oiler Coach) Jack Pardee.”

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Add Ryan: Joanie Ryan, wife of the bombastic Ryan, says he’s a different guy at home.

“People feel sorry for me,” she said. “They ask me how I can live with it. But he’s never like that at home. He’s a pussycat.”

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Add Ditka: After NBC’s Joe Gibbs gave a rather expansive, straightforward analysis of Buffalo’s victory over the Raiders, it was Ditka’s turn.

“Boring,” he said.

Ditka also said of the Raiders: “They brought in a tough quarterback. Now they need to bring in some tough players on defense.”

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Trivia time: USC has won six and lost 11 in the NCAA basketball tournament. What is the furthest the Trojans have advanced?

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Wait a minute: Said Dave Dorr of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in writing about Wisconsin freshman Rashard Griffith, a 7-foot center: “He’s a classic example of how one player can change the fortunes of a school’s basketball program overnight. Patrick Ewing did it for Georgetown. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it for UCLA.”

UCLA had won the NCAA championship two of the three years before Abdul-Jabbar--then Lew Alcindor--played for the varsity in Westwood.

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Exercise Bowl: If you’re going to the Super Bowl, you’d better be prepared to walk.

Downtown Atlanta will be almost impossible to reach by car on game day. Thirty blocks around the Georgia Dome will be closed to motorists without special passes. An eight-block corridor to major downtown hotels will be closed to traffic four hours before the game and hotel guests will be urged to walk to the game.

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It worked: Remember the poignant sign on a motor home at the Rose Bowl from a woman looking for a ticket so she could attend the game with her father, a Wisconsin graduate and World War II fighter pilot?

Lynn Conant Gomez of Newport Beach writes to say that she was the woman who wrote the note and that the sign helped her purchase a ticket “for a reasonable price” to join her father.

Nice way to start the new year.

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Too good: Norway’s Sonja Henie won Olympic figure skating gold medals in 1928, 1932 and 1936, but her compatriots frowned on her turning professional to make a fortune in films.

Envious Norwegians called her “Little Miss Money Bags.”

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Trivia answer: USC lost in the semifinals twice, in 1940 to Kansas, 43-42; and in 1954 to Bradley, 74-72.

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Namesake: In a few years, if someone wants to bet you that Michael Jordan played baseball in the major leagues, be careful.

A Michael Jordan played 37 games for Pittsburgh in 1890. Batted .096.

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Quotebook: Orlando Magic General Manager Pat Williams, on the off-court activities of Shaquille O’Neal: “He’s sucking the marrow out of the bone of life. And I applaud him for it.”