This Little Piggy Went a’Diving, This Little . . .

Visitors to Tennessee’s State Fair in Nashville over the weekend watched Randall’s High Diving & Racing Pigs, billed as the world’s only diving pigs.

A dozen porkers sprinted around a track before two plunged three feet into a pool.

They were just hamming it up.

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Trivia time: Which is the winningest NCAA Division I-A college football team in the 1990s, excluding this season?

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Raider requiem: Woody Paige in the Denver Post: “The Raiders aren’t worth killing anymore. We shouldn’t waste our hate on them. There are bigger fish to salute.

“The Broncos now are what the Raiders used to be, and the Raiders have become what the Broncos once were.

“The Broncos are the Evander Holyfields, world heavyweight champions. The Raiders are Mike Tysons, champs turned chumps who just seek another ear to bite, another eye to gouge, another fight to fight.”

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Out of his league: Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) struck out at a Boston fund-raiser Thursday when he tried to compare President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

First, Kennedy called the St. Louis Cardinal star “Mike McGwire.” Then he pronounced the Chicago Cub slugger’s last name as “Soo-ser.”

The senator was introducing Clinton and Gore as the “home run kings for working families.”

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Ouch! Humorist Stu Silverstein: “After seeing the home run record broken twice in one week, Hillary Clinton claimed that it was just another ‘Right Swing Conspiracy.’ ”

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Four score . . . Italy’s Corriere dello Sport, on McGwire: “He’s entrenched in American history and given the same respect that is accorded Abraham Lincoln and Michael Jordan.”

What’s next for Big Mac, a Gettysburg-like address?

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Cleanup man: John Madden commenting on his long-time television partnership with Pat Summerall on NFL games:

“I kind of ramble and don’t make sense a lot of time. He then puts the period at the end of my sentences or a sentence at the end of my paragraphs. He makes sense of what I say.”

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Russian influence: Nick Canepa in the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Oregon State, a Pac-10 school, is $8.2 million in the red. Who’s handling the budget in Corvallis, Boris Yeltsin?”

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FYI: This is the first year since 1988 that both USC and UCLA have unbeaten records after five games--3-0 for the Trojans, 2-0 for the Bruins.

USC went 10-0 in ’88 before losing to Notre Dame, then to Michigan in the Rose Bowl game. UCLA went 7-0 and was ranked No. 1 before losing to Washington State.

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Looking back: On this day in 1973, UCLA routed Iowa at the Coliseum, 55-18.

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Trivia answer: Nebraska, with an 87-11-1 record, one victory more than Florida State.

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And finally: San Diego’s Tony Gwynn, on home run leaders McGwire and Sosa: “I have no idea how they’re doing it. When I’m chasing .400, I’m allowed to make outs.

“These guys get hits, and they’re failures if they weren’t home runs.”