At LSU, Shaq the Quitter Is No Hall of Famer

Shaquille O’Neal made big plays and earned lots of honors during three seasons of basketball at LSU. Then he got a huge NBA contract.

What he didn’t get is a degree, and because of that he won’t get something else: a place in the LSU athletic hall of fame.

“A degree is mandatory for induction so Shaquille absolutely does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame,” said Hugh Buckingham, a member of the LSU Athletic Council. “He not only didn’t get a degree, he left in the middle of the semester after his last season. It makes our rhetoric about educating athletes look like a sham.”

Trivia time: Which of today’s Super Bowl coaches earned a Phi Beta Kappa key?

One man’s view: John Nelson of the Associated Press had this to say about the Super Bowl:

“Warning! Sunday afternoon, when you’re setting out the platters of head cheese, the bowls of barbecue chips and the buckets of beer, don’t bury the TV Guide. If the Super Bowl kickoff is on time, at 3:18 p.m. PST, you’ll need it by 4.

“By then, figuring the Cowboys start slow, unlimber a little, find their wives in the stands and order pizza, they should be ahead of Buffalo by about four touchdowns. Goodby, NBC.”

Popular date: UCLA’s basketball team--or it’s schedule maker--apparently isn’t much of a Super Bowl fan. For the second year in a row, the Bruins are scheduled on Super Bowl Sunday.

They play California today at the Oakland Coliseum Arena at 1 p.m., opposite the Super Bowl pregame show. Last year, they played host to Notre Dame, also at 1 p.m.

Expanding horizons: The Amateur Athletic Foundation sportsletter reports that the New Jersey Nets of the NBA have hired two bilingual staff members, one fluent in Japanese and the other in Hindi, the language spoken in India, to concentrate on attracting growing ethnic groups in their area.

Swift Soviet: Detroit’s Paul Coffey, the NHL’s all-time leading scorer among defensemen, is a great fan of teammate Sergei Fedorov, the former Soviet Union star who won the fastest-skater competition during the All-Star game break.

“I’ve been fortunate in my career to play with some of the great skaters, but nobody skates like Sergei,” Coffey said.

Return engagement: Entertainer Phil Harris, who teamed with Dutch Harrison to win the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am in 1951, will celebrate his 90th birthday next Wednesday during the 3M Celebrity Challenge by attempting to make a 90-foot putt on the 17th green at Pebble Beach.

A long putt by Harris on that green helped the team win the pro-am 43 years ago.

“It wasn’t 90 feet, but it felt like 90 miles,” Harris said.

The new look: Michigan State forward Anthony Miller was known as “Pig” to his teammates last season. This year, having lost 25 pounds, he’s called “Pig Light.”

No Nicklaus: Danny Ainge, who played baseball in the majors before switching to the NBA, had this to say to Toni Ginnetti of the Chicago Sun-Times about the chances of Michael Jordan making it the other way around:

“One thing I’ll say is Michael has a better chance in baseball than making the PGA Tour. I’ve golfed with him.”

Trivia answer: Buffalo’s Marv Levy, from Coe College in Iowa.

Quotebook: Ben Hogan, after Nick Faldo asked him the secret to winning the U.S. Open: “Shoot a lower score than everyone else.”