If Best Ton for Ton Met Best Pound for Pound

It will never happen, but Roy Jones Jr. can’t help but wonder what it would be like to fight 46-year-old heavyweight champion George Foreman.

Jones, considered one of the world’s top fighters, pound for pound, after dominating James Toney to win the International Boxing Federation super-middleweight title, says he could be very effective against Foreman.

“He would never land a punch,” Jones says. “I would be the most frustrating opponent for him, because I would hit him eight or 10 times before he realized I had moved to a new position and would be whaling on him again.

“If I stood there with frozen feet in front of him, I wouldn’t have time to be stupid, because I’d be in a coma.”

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Add Jones: “I can see why Foreman would want to fight Mike Tyson,” Jones says. “First of all, he could make $30 million. But more importantly, he could win.

“Tyson would come straight at him like a bull, but George is crafty. He would be like the matador in those cartoons, holding the red cape with a big iron anvil hidden behind it.”

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Trivia time: Don Shula is so closely identified with the Miami Dolphins’ franchise, it’s easy to forget he wasn’t the team’s first coach. Who was?

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But has he been good? Bill Parcells, the workaholic coach of the New England Patriots, on whether he was looking for anything special under his Christmas tree: “I don’t even know if I’ve got a tree.”

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Sugar-coated: Recently, Bert Sugar of Boxing Illustrated noticed that the Boston Globe ran a picture under a schedule of fights with a caption that read: “Joey Gamache gets a shot at the WBZ lightweight title Oct. 29.”

“And you know what?” Sugar says, “They didn’t get one letter telling them it was a typo and that Gamache would be fighting for the WB A title.

“Why do you think the typo went unnoticed? Because it’s entirely possible, with sanctioning bodies multiplying like rabbits, that there really is a WBZ.”

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Fast start: Ross Atkin of the Christian Science Monitor points out the weird reality of the NFL’s current expansion.

“Tom Coughlin, coach of the latest NFL team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, has a radio talk show,” Atkin writes, “and his team doesn’t even begin play until next year.”

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Trivia answer: George Wilson, who was 15-39-2 in the first four years of the franchise, before Shula took over in 1970.

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Quotebook: New York Jet General Manager Dick Steinberg, on compiling a 32-49 five-year record: “I’ve been around long enough to know what the record is. I’ve been in charge during that time. I can’t stand on my record.”