Super Advice, but It Doesn’t Always Seem to Work So Well

Raider receiver Tim Brown celebrated the team’s 5-1 start with a look ahead--four months ahead--and assessed their chances in the Super Bowl.

“Joe Bugel [assistant coach] tells us all the time we can’t be afraid to talk about the Super Bowl and talk about winning it,” Brown said.

“I don’t know if we’ll be favored against San Francisco or Dallas, but I think definitely it would be the best chance for the AFC to win a Super Bowl.”

In the Raiders’ next game, Monday night, they were shut out by the Denver Broncos, 27-0.

Thanks for the advice, Joe.

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Trivia time: How many times have the Raiders made the playoffs since winning the ’84 Super Bowl?

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The Boss is in: In New York, there is mounting suspicion that Yankee owner George Steinbrenner signed Dwight Gooden to take the heat off while he decides whether to fire popular Manager Buck Showalter and let longtime favorite Don Mattingly depart as a free agent.

In any case, there is concern that Gooden picked the wrong zoo.

“For his sake, he’s better off someplace else,” General Manager Joe McIlvaine of the Mets told the New York Times. “And it’s sad for me to say that because I liked that pitcher as much as anybody I’ve ever had. I’ve known him since he was 17 years old. But sometimes we have to take our hearts out and put them on the desk.”

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Like father, like son: Skip Holtz, whose father, Lou, is known for hyping opponents and downgrading his own team, is off to a 6-0 start at Division I-AA Connecticut and, upholding the family tradition, acting disconsolate about it.

“We could easily lose all of our remaining games,” Skip told the New York Times. “We are a long, long way from being a great football team.

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Familiar waters: Basketball practice couldn’t start soon enough for the new Fresno State coach, Jerry Tarkanian, who had an even more interesting off-season than usual.

Last spring he speculated about going after orally committed but unsigned prep stars, such as Georgia Tech’s Stephone Marbury. Before he coached his first practice, the school conducted an in-house investigation into reports that Tark and his staff had violated NCAA rules by watching players practice during the summer.

Ben Quillian, interim athletic director, says the team broke no rules.

Darnell McCulloch, one of Fresno’s returning players, said Saturday’s midnight madness was a way to get attention on the team back on the court.

“That’s all behind us,” he said. “We’re a very tight group. We’ll get over it.”

Last year, McCulloch slept in the gym to protest Coach Gary Colson’s decision not to hold a midnight madness opening practice, but de-emphasis isn’t expected to be a problem anymore.

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Trivia answer: Four. In three of those, they were a wild-card team. In two, they lost their first game.

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Quotebook: San Francisco 49er Coach George Seifert on Nate Singleton’s broken collarbone: “The fact that they didn’t have to operate was good, from the standpoint they didn’t have to operate.”