The Broncos Have Become Excess Baggage

Woody Paige in the Denver Post on the Broncos’ 48-16 loss to the Raiders last Sunday: “Denver International Airport is no longer the biggest joke in town.

“This is the most overpaid, underachieving team in the history of the National Football League. Owner Pat Bowlen wants a new stadium. We want a new team.”

Trivia time: Who is the only NFL player to have scored two safeties in a game?

Prophecy: Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle: “In Ken Burns’ TV documentary ‘Baseball,’ Ty Cobb talks about what kind of man plays the game. He snarls, ‘Mollycoddles had better stay out.’

“Seventy years later, the mollycoddles have finally heeded Cobb’s warning.”

The winner: SportsLetter of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles asks which publication’s cover photo will provide an athlete with the greatest exposure, Sports Illustrated or GQ?

Neither.

With a paid circulation of 22,140,641, Modern Maturity is the most read publication in the Audit Bureau’s survey, with 33 times the circulation of GQ and six times that of SI.

Modern Maturity is the magazine of the American Assn. of Retired Persons.

Spare us: Houston Astro owner Drayton McLane: “We’re going to have baseball next spring, if you see nothing more than (General Manager) Bob Watson and (Manager) Terry Collins and me running around in shorts.”

Pippen’s plea: Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls, tired and perhaps angry about rumors that he will be traded, has recorded a rap song, “Respect.”

The song will be the theme for Pippen’s new live-action basketball video game, “Slam City With Scottie Pippen.”

Crowd control: Center David Alexander of the Philadelphia Eagles on being told that the offense had performed better when the Philadelphia fans were booing:

“When you put it like that, it does sound kind of sick.”

Opinion: Dave Kindred in the Sporting News on baseball owners shutting down the game:

“They did it for the macho glee of it. They did it to show they could strut as cockily as any kid wearing his cap backward.

“They did it to prove again who lives in the big house.”

Crisis: During the recent Presidents Cup competition in Gainesville, Va., South Africa’s David Frost acted strangely on the 11th tee.

Then, according to Golf World, he suddenly unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. He was left standing in his shorts.

The problem? A wasp in his trousers.

New MVP: Tom Weir in USA Today on the baseball strike: “Maybe this says it all: Frank Thomas and Don Mattingly have no chance to be this year’s Mr. October, but Robert Shapiro does.”

Trivia answer: Fred Dryer of the Rams against Green Bay on Oct. 21, 1973.

Quotebook: Chase Carey, chairman of Fox television, on agreeing to pay the NHL more for TV rights than it has ever been paid: “We play by our own rules.”