Cincinnati Finds a Few Hang-Ups About Being No. 1

The University of Cincinnati’s campus telephone system broke down last Tuesday, and school officials knew what to blame it on: The basketball team was ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press preseason poll.

“There have been hundreds of thousands of phone calls,” university spokesman Greg Hand said. “The phone system just keeps going down.”

Hand speculated that callers were trying to buy tickets for Bearcat home games. Officials said last week that fewer than 1,000 tickets remained for each of those games.

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Trivia time: Who were the Clippers when they first joined the NBA?

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Who’s the boss? Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, drove a rental car to Arrowhead Stadium last Sunday and parked it in the lot in front of the Chiefs’ offices, where Coach Marty Schottenheimer and other team officials have their own parking places. The low-key Hunt does not.

Just before the game, when Hunt’s son went out to fetch an item from his father’s car, it was gone--towed to another lot. Hunt had forgotten to put his parking sticker on it.

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Bottoms up: In voting for American League manager of the year, Joe Falls, sports editor of the Detroit News, named Buddy Bell of the Detroit Tigers, whose team lost 109 games and finished in last place, 39 games behind the New York Yankees. Falls reasoned that Bell had a tougher job than the others and deserved credit for winning 53 games.

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Tell the grandkids: George Musso, an NFL Hall of Fame lineman for the Chicago Bears from 1933 to 1944, has a unique distinction. He is the only player to play against two U.S. presidents.

At Millikin, he went against Eureka College guard Ronald Reagan. As a member of the Bears, he played against Michigan center Gerald Ford in the 1935 College All-Star game at Chicago.

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Record attempt: If Chicago Bear quarterback Dave Krieg is sacked once today in Kansas City, he’ll be tied with Fran Tarkenton as the most sacked quarterback in NFL history. He has been taken down attempting to pass 483 times.

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The name game: When Indy car veteran Al Unser Jr. was a teenager and had to sit on telephone books to see over the hood of his race car and his dad was winning Indy 500s, he was known as Little Al. Now that Junior is 34, does he wish people would quit calling him “Little Al”?

“Not at all, I love it,” he told magazine writer Norm Froscher. “It makes it sound like I’m a lot younger.”

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How about Clinton? Reader Allen Kahn, noting an item about the Oakland Raiders’ Lincoln Kennedy in a recent Morning Briefing, carries the presidential angle even farther by pointing out that Kennedy played his college ball at Washington.

“I’ll never understand why he wasn’t drafted by the Washington Redskins,” Kahn said.

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Trivia answer: The Buffalo Braves, from 1970-71 to 1977-78.

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And finally: USA Today Baseball Weekly editor Paul White asks, “Has anyone ever seen Bud Selig and Jack Kevorkian in the same room?”