For Futility, Prairie View Can’t Be Beat

Being a Prairie View A&M; football player was not easy this week. It isn’t most weeks, for that matter.

“I think if you looked at the whole picture, you probably wouldn’t play anymore,” linebacker Jerrold Crowder said. “That’s too depressing. If you played anything and lost 44 games, you’d probably quit it after a while.”

But Crowder won’t quit, even after last week’s 70-20 loss to Tarleton State that tied the Panthers with Columbia (1983-1988) for the longest losing streak in NCAA Division I-AA.

Prairie View, without scholarships and under severe budget restraints, could break the record today against Jackson State.

Add losers: Treboh Joe, the worst horse in harness racing history--167 consecutive losses--has run his last race, according to the gelding’s owner, Willie Mitchell Jr., who raced him mostly at Pocono Downs near Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

“I think (Treboh Joe) had one speed--slow,” said John Zimitch, public relations director for Pocono Downs. “I think if he was the only horse in the race, he’d have come in second.”

Trivia time: How many quarterbacks have played in the Rose Bowl and Super Bowl?

Just in case: Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam now has an insurance plan.

It doesn’t guarantee touchdowns, but it does cover him if he suffers a career-ending injury. The maximum value of the policy is $1.8 million, and it carries a $14,040 premium, which must be paid within a year of his signing a pro contract.

Looking back: On this day in 1920, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was named the first commissioner of baseball.

Sociology lesson: Dick Motta knows what it’s like to try to revive a losing NBA team, such as the Dallas squad he took over this year after it had posted a 24-140 record the last two seasons.

“You can take a battered child, give them a shower, a hot meal and a good night’s sleep,” Motta said. “But in the morning, it’s still a battered child.”

The Boston way: After a water cannon went off in the Alamodome’s fire system and doused the crowd before the San Antonio Spurs’ home opener, assistant coach Dave Cowens was asked if anything like that had ever happened when he was playing in the Boston Garden.

“They don’t even have those things in the Garden,” he said. “They’d just let it burn down.”

Trivia answer: Five. Earl Morrall, Michigan State-Baltimore Colts; Joe Kapp, California-Minnesota Vikings; Bob Griese, Purdue-Miami Dolphins; Mike Rae, USC-Oakland Raiders; Jim Plunkett, Stanford-Raiders.

A little early?ABC’s Dan Dierdorf on Sunday’s big NFL game: “If the Dallas Cowboys go to Candlestick Park and win this football game, the season is over. The Super Bowl is won.”

FYI: Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas, baseball’s two MVPs this year, were born on the same day, May 27, 1968.

Quotebook: New York Giant quarterback Dave Brown, on learning from his mistakes: “Unfortunately, in society you tend to learn more by mistakes and by failure than you do by positives. With the mistakes I’ve made, I’ll probably be Einstein pretty soon.”