This Blueprint Was Drawn Up Long Ago

Ray Ratto, writing for ESPN.com, reasons that Norv Turner shouldn’t have been surprised by his firing as Washington Redskin coach because he knew what he was in for, dealing with owner Daniel Snyder.

” . . . Snyder, you see, is the modern young ball owner, with a fat wallet and the attention span of a fruit fly. So the assumption was that Turner would be blown to smithereens long before this.

“He wasn’t, amazingly, despite Snyder’s reputation. Not that Snyder’s reputation isn’t well deserved, but let’s face it, kids: If we knew so long ago that Turner was going to be fired, and if nobody around the Redskins thinks that he was wrongfully smoked, then how can we in fairness object?”

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Trivia time: Notre Dame has had seven Heisman Trophy winners, one of whom remains the only lineman to have received the award. His name?

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Shall we use them? Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “According to Los Angeles organizers bidding to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, the only facility that would have to be built from scratch would be a shooting range.

“ ‘Not true,’ says Bill Shinnick of Redwood City. ‘L.A. has two shooting ranges: I-10 and 405.’ ”

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Mrs. Yogi-isms: After half a century of marriage, it’s not surprising that Yogi Berra’s speech habits are starting to rub off on Carmen Berra.

“If I hadn’t woken up, I’d still be asleep,” the Hall of Famer’s wife said in accepting the Salvation Army Assn. of New York’s “Pinnacle of Achievement Award.”

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It Had to Happen Dept.: Scrabble, the golf edition: Think of it as the first time you can improve your score by spelling such words as “bogey” and ‘mulligan.”

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About time: Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has a football program that dates to 1879. Make that had. The school announced it is dropping football.

At one point, Swarthmore had the nation’s longest losing streak--28 games--that ended in 1999. The Garnet Tide regularly lost by more than five touchdowns.

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Tradition? Bah! Iowa cornerback Matt Stockdale, after the Hawkeyes lost to Minnesota, 27-24, in the annual trophy game for that immortal pig, Floyd of Rosedale:

“I don’t really care about some pig.”

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XFL here I come: Gary Shelton in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: “I don’t know about you, but if I’m Ryan Leaf, I shave my head, paint my face and invite Vince McMahon to lunch.”

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Is that all? New York Jet center Kevin Mawae on playing the Raiders in Oakland: “When you get hit with chicken bones and pennies, you know you’re in a wild place.”

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Is it interesting? The latest edition of “The Dallas Cowboys’ Family Cookbook” contains snippets of information about the players.

Asked what he would leave behind for the world to learn from his life, rookie running back Troy Hambrick said: “My police record.”

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Trivia answer: End Leon Hart in 1949.

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And finally: Norman Chad, who writes a syndicated NFL column, says the Washington Post changes his wording when he writes about Snyder, the Redskin owner.

Chad wrote, in jest, that “high-handed honcho is quietly taking bids for naming rights to his children.”

He says the Post--unlike other papers--deleted the “high-handed honcho” phrase, then changed the rest to “naming rights to his helicopter.”