Harvard Linebacker Has a Real Nose for Show Business

How do you pass the time the night before a big game? If you’re Harvard linebacker Joe Weidle, you go on national television, stick the entire stem of a tablespoon up your nose, then use it to gulp some Rice Krispies.

Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe reported on Weidle’s “stupid human trick” on “Late Night With David Letterman” on Nov. 1.

Weidle told Shaughnessy of his technique: “A spoon is good and flat. It goes into my sinuses. I can actually taste the metal. I really don’t worry abut the medical consequences. Most girls think it’s gross, but the guys love it.”

By the way, Harvard lost to Dartmouth, 6-3, last Saturday, when a last-second Crimson field goal try hit the right upright--smack on the nose.

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Trivia time: Which UCLA basketball coach had the highest won-lost percentage?

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Hockey birth: After Hartford ended a five-game winless streak with a 5-1 victory over the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, Whaler goaltender Sean Burke said, “It felt like I was 10 months pregnant coming into the game and I finally had the baby.”

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Come again? Stanford football Coach Tyrone Willingham told C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle that he is still bothered by his team’s 26-12 loss to woeful Oregon State.

“That was the first time since I’ve been here [two years] that we did not play what I would call Stanford football.”

What is Stanford football?

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Learning deficiency: Joe Gibbs, former successful Washington Redskin coach and now a television studio analyst for NFL games, told Will McDonough of the Boston Globe that the media don’t really study the game or understand it the way they should.

“The guys who cover day to day have a pretty good idea, but the columnists, for the most part, don’t,” he said.

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Overlooked? Reggie Theus wasn’t on the list of the NBA’s 50 all-time best players even though he is one of four players with 19,000 points and 6,000 assists.

The others are Oscar Robertson, Jerry West and John Havlicek, who were among the top 50.

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Looking back: On this day in 1946, Army and Notre Dame played to a scoreless tie at Yankee Stadium. The deadlock ended the Cadets’ 26-game winning streak.

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Trivia answer: Gary Cunningham, .862 from 1977-78 to 1978-79.

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And finally: The score was Watauga Harvest Christian 105, Fort Worth Christian Temple 13--and that was at halftime when the six-man high school football game mercifully ended. In a classic understatement, Harvest Christian Coach Brig Thompson said: “There was some talent difference between the teams.”