He Should Rename the Award After Her

The new and improved Andre Agassi doesn’t annoy sports columnist Mike Lupica quite as much as he once did. So he found a new standard for outstanding achievement in sports obnoxiousness--Deion Sanders.

Of course, the usual suspects were given Deion Awards by Lupica--Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, Newt Gingrich, Marge Schott and Derrick Coleman, to name a few. But there was a special place in his heart for Georgia Frontiere.

“If eye shadow were brains in football, Georgia would have more Super Bowls than the 49ers’ Eddie DeBartolo Jr.,” Lupica wrote in Esquire magazine.

“Alas, that’s just not the way things shook out, and so the ex-chorus girl now wants to run her St. Louis Rams into the Mississippi River the way she ran the Los Angeles Rams into the ocean.

“Before she’s done, she’ll probably go through American cities the way she once went through husbands.

“So we’re giving you a Deion, Georgia. And, God, don’t start blubbering with all that makeup on your face or it will end up looking like an oil spill.”

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Trivia time: What is the fastest lap ever run during the Indianapolis 500?

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Shark spark: Jerry Tarkanian’s presence at Fresno State will bring in an estimated $1 million more than the athletic department’s fund-raising goal of $4.2 million.

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Money for nothing? Boston Bruin owner Jeremy Jacobs rejected the notion that a high payroll automatically triggers success on the ice, fingering the Kings as the prime example.

“The highest-paid team in the NHL this past year was the Los Angeles Kings,” Jacobs told the Boston Globe. “They were also one of the worst. They didn’t even make the playoffs. They stunk on the ice and they lost a ton of money.

“And they have also put themselves in a hole with those contracts that they won’t be able to dig out of for quite some time.”

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But what am I? The Good Doctor in Inside Sports magazine on the funniest member of the New Zealand America’s Cup crew: “Kiwi Herman.”

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Soccer smack: Paul Gardner, columnist/curmudgeon for Soccer America, writing on the recent Cup Winners Cup final between Arsenal of England and Real Zaragoza of Spain:

“The first half leaves you wondering how on earth a team as just plain dull as Arsenal could ever have got this far. Long useless passes galore, frenetic energy, prodigious charging about. Crushed, flattened, squashed, knocked completely out by all this hysteria is any chance of playing soccer.”

Arsenal lost in the final seconds of overtime, 2-1, on a desperation 45-yard lob into the net by Real Zaragoza’s Nayim, a result that seemed to please Gardner no end:

“An astonishing goal, scored dramatically with only seconds left in the game. But a goal that gave the right result. If soccer counts for anything, Arsenal should have lost by a much larger margin.”

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Trivia answer: 229.118 m.p.h by Michael Andretti in 1992.

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Quotebook: Hugo Sanchez, aging soccer star recently dropped from the Mexican national team, on what his absence will mean to his country: “Brazil without Romario, Argentina without Maradona or Italy without Baggio.”