Down in the Heart of Texas Blows Cowboy-Sized Bluster

Steve Jacobson in Newsday: “I don’t like Barry Switzer or the Dallas Cowboys. He is one of the reasons college football is such a dismal swamp. There’s no blowhard like a Texas blowhard.

“If that’s not reason enough, there are others. I’d hate to see that owner (Jerry Jones) strut off with another championship like a puffed-up pigskin Steinbrenner.”

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Trivia time: Which Academy Award-winning actor played left guard for Harvard in a famous 29-29 tie with Yale in 1968?

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Bottoms up: Mark Soltau of the San Francisco Examiner reported that Roger Maltbie, NBC television golf analyst and PGA Tour veteran, spent the holidays at Telluride, Colo.

Asked if did any skiing, Maltbie replied: “The biggest vertical drop I made was off a bar stool.”

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Options: Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press on reports that TV commentator Dick Vermeil might rejoin the Philadelphia Eagles:

“Why would Vermeil ever consider coaching again? If your job required sitting next to Brent Musburger, what would you do?”

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Trash supporter: Hal Bock of the Associated Press writes that trash-talking in sports has gotten out of hand, but Rudy Washington, Drake basketball coach, doesn’t agree.

“Every industry has its own lingo,” he said. “The computer business has its own lingo. Banking has its own lingo. Trash talk is the language of athletics; it’s the language of the game.”

Comment: Ugh.

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Rumor mill: Don Pierson in the Chicago Tribune: “With (NFL) head coaching jobs filling up fast, Mike Ditka looks left out. But wait. The soon-to-be St. Louis Rams are looking for a successor to Chuck Knox. Ditka is on their list.”

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Shame on Ted: Lenny Wilkens of the Atlanta Hawks became the NBA’s winningest coach with 939 victories on Friday, but his wife, Marilyn, knocked the franchise for poor home attendance at the potential milestone games:

“(Atlanta owner) Ted Turner is the media mogul of the world and we don’t even have a video board (in the Omni).”

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Early result: The Hicksville (Ohio) High girls’ basketball team knew it was going to be a long night Thursday when it trailed Sherwood Fairview, 41-0, at the end of the first quarter.

Final score: 135-16.

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Now hear this: Bob Knight, Indiana basketball coach, in Inside Sports: “Unless you’ve coached, you don’t know what it’s like to get 12 kids to listen. If you were to ask me to name the five most important things to being a basketball player, I would make listening one of the five. I’ll bet I’d be the only coach in the world who would do that.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1972, the Milwaukee Bucks, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, ended the Lakers’ 33-game winning streak--longest in major professional sports--at Milwaukee, 120-104.

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Trivia answer: Tommy Lee Jones.

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Quotebook: Rick Neuheisel, new Colorado football coach, on how he’s going to tackle the task at hand: “There are no books on how to be a head coach. I’ve looked.”