The Crocodile Wouldn’t Need Any Motivation

Mark Davies, an Australian swim coach, going where few motivational geniuses had ever ventured, planned to inspire his charges, ages 7 to 20, by dropping a crocodile into the pool.

He was going to have its jaw wired shut, of course, for safety.

Davies actually arranged with a local reptile park to provide the croc before the Darwin City Council rejected the scheme.

“I used to tell them [pupils] that to help them swim faster, they should imagine that a three-meter crocodile was chasing them,” Davies said. “I thought to have the real thing would be a good start to the swimming season.”

Darwin council chief Allan McGill noted: “Public swimming pools are for people, not for crocodiles and as well we do not condone the stress to a crocodile that must ensue from being physically restrained and put in chlorinated water.”

Besides bureaucratic objections, parents might worry about the chance of the croc working his jaws free and eating a swimmer.

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Trivia time: Who were the Dodgers who won four consecutive rookie-of-the-year awards from 1979 to 1982?

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Oops: Randy Moss went 21st to the Minnesota Vikings but, after a sensational exhibition season and two touchdown catches in his debut, if they held the draft over, he might be a little higher on the list.

“Dennis [Green, Viking coach] and I talk about Randy and we say we’ve never seen anything like him,” receiver coach Hubbard Alexander told the New York Daily News.

“We’re amazed. He might have a little [Jerry] Rice in him. He might have a little Michael [Irvin] in him. He might have a little Cris [Carter] in him.

“Seven or eight years from now, when you ask about other receivers, you’ll ask if he’s like Randy.”

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Sorry, Rog: Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Statistical Bureau played a part in Commissioner Ford Frick’s decision to place an asterisk by Roger Maris’ record, thus keeping Babe Ruth in the record books.

“It was a terrible mistake and a horrible injustice to Maris,” Siwoff told the New York Daily News. “At the time, Frick convinced the sportswriters that the extra eight games Maris had wasn’t fair and I have to admit when he came to me, I didn’t know what to think. I’m as guilty as anyone for keeping Ruth in the record book all those years. It just seemed like somebody else would do it, hit more than Maris, but nobody ever did.

“I remember seeing Maris at the All-Star game one year, seeing the look on his face, and I felt just awful. I said to myself, ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’ ”

In 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent dropped the asterisk, but Maris didn’t live to see it.

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Trivia answer: Rick Sutcliffe in 1979, Steve Howe in ‘80, Fernando Valenzuela in ’81 and Steve Sax in ’82.

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And finally: Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, still coaching at 68: “I’d just as soon die on the field, rather than pulling weeds out of my wife’s garden.”