By Saturday, Lou Might Remember It

If USC receiver Keyshawn Johnson needed any added motivation for Saturday’s Trojan-Notre Dame clash at South Bend, Irish Coach Lou Holtz served it up on a silver platter Sunday morning.

Staff writer Earl Gustkey reports that in the coach’s national conference call with media, Holtz, in answering a question about USC’s offense, responded:

“Can we slow down Keyshawn Jones? I don’t know. We’re capable of beating Southern Cal, but not the way we’ve been playing.”

Trivia time: Who is the only player in Boston Celtic history to have played alongside Bill Russell and Larry Bird?

He talks a good game too: Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith plans to open at least five stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that will sell cellular telephones and pagers.

The first of the stores, which will be called Emmitt Smith Communications, will have a “memorabilia wall” highlighting Smith’s achievements since high school. It’s scheduled to open Tuesday in Dallas.

According to a business associate of Smith’s, Horace Irwin, Smith won’t be only a figurehead. “Emmitt loves to sell. He loves the one-on-one of selling,” Irwin said.

From the X-(rated) files: An employee of the St. Louis Blues apparently couldn’t resist a parting shot at the team after he was fired.

On the page listing playoff records in the hockey team’s media guide, between the date of the Blues’ last overtime game on the road and their last overtime loss at home, the anonymous employee slipped in a crudely worded “record” for sexual favors.

The red-faced Blues have recalled the guide and will have to amend it, at a reported cost of $70,000.

Can’t we all get along?Charlotte forward Larry Johnson says he’s “not in the right frame of mind to play basketball” because the Hornets traded Hersey Hawkins to Seattle for Kendall Gill, with whom Johnson had an on-court fight two seasons ago.

Johnson’s teammates, however, aren’t offering him any sympathy.

“They don’t have to go home with each other,” center Alonzo Mourning said. “They just have to work together a couple of hours a day.”

Trivia answer: Don Chaney, now an assistant coach with the New York Knicks. Chaney played with Russell in the 1968-69 season (Chaney’s first and Russell’s last) and he played with Bird in 1979-80, Bird’s rookie season.

Quotebook: Carmen Policy, president of the San Francisco 49ers, quoted in “King of the Cowboys, the Life and Times of Jerry Jones,” about the Dallas owner: “When I think of Jerry Jones, I think of a snake-oil salesman.”