NFL’s Image Glazered Over at Tampa Bay

If public perception of NFL owners is that they are rich, greedy and heartless, Malcolm Glazer is not doing much to improve the image.

Glazer, a Palm Beach, Fla., business tycoon who bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last summer for an estimated $192 million, recently got out from under a $100-million class-action suit filed by tenants of several trailer parks he owns in New York.

For six years, Glazer has been illegally charging his tenants $3 a month for each child and $5 a month for each dog. The suit against him was dismissed on a technicality, but the case isn’t closed.

The multimillionaire has filed a $3-million libel suit against the tenants’ group.

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Trivia time: Before the Ice Dogs began play this season, what were the names of all the ice hockey teams to use the Sports Arena as their home?

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19th hole: When Sam Torrance’s final tee shot skipped out of sight over a mound and toward the light rough last weekend at the World Cup of Golf in Schenzhen, China, Scotland’s hopes for second place were over. After a lengthy search for the ball came up empty, he was not in the best of humor.

“Some ... picked it up,” Torrance said in the International Express. “...But it’s been a pleasure to be here, a great golf course and now I’m going to get drunk...”

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Add golf: According to the International Express, some players seemed as bemused as some of the spectators about what happened during the final round.

“Mexico’s Rafael Alarcon was almost on the 11th tee when Australia’s Robert Allenby recalled him to the 10th green. He had forgotten to hole out,” the newspaper reported.

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Stomach turning: Winnipeg Jet center Mike Stapleton, who suffered a broken jaw Nov. 1 when hit by a puck, has developed a new appreciation for solid food since his jaw was wired shut and he can’t chew.

He’s getting nourishment through a straw, which he inserts into a gap where he had a tooth knocked out several years ago.

“I’ve had a taco. I just put a lot of mild sauce in it and made it kind of soupy and sucked it through,” he told the Winnipeg Free Press.

“You wouldn’t realize just how many commercials on TV have to do with food. You start to notice.”

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Trivia answer: Blades (Western Hockey League), Kings ( a few games in 1967 before the opening of the Forum), Sharks (World Hockey Assn.), another team called the Blades (Pacific Hockey League).

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Quotebook: Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard on how Alonzo Mourning’s acquisition toughens the Miami Heat: “He makes the Heat instantly intimidating--impressive when you consider one of this team’s starting guards is named Bimbo [Coles] and the other is named Sasha [Danilovic].”