Same Old, Same Old Story in NFL Coaching Circles

Greg Cote in the Miami Herald: “This [past] week proved the NFL is so powerful it doesn’t need to play games to make headlines. The coaching carousel took care of that.

“Marty Schottenheimer got back in the fray, and it looks like Dick Vermeil will do the same. Schottenheimer and Vermeil? Good God, what decade is this?

“The NFL has two African-American coaches out of 31, and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue keeps insisting the league must do better, and yet the OWC [Old White Coaches] keep coming back like heartburn.

“The league recycles more than a suburban soccer mom.”

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Same script? Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Redskin owner Daniel Snyder’s faith in Schottenheimer is misguided, says James Hicks of San Francisco.

“ ‘I mean, if he wants a 10-6 record and an early exit from the playoffs, why didn’t he just keep Norv Turner?’ ”

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL postseason record for yards gained in a career?

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That’s a lot of shoveling: According to Newsday, it took 7,500 work hours and 15 tons of magnesium chloride (a melting agent) to remove last week’s snow from Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands, site of today’s NFC divisional playoff game between New York and Philadelphia.

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Inspired: Miami Dolphin linebacker Zach Thomas, on Oakland Raider fans:

“They throw candy at us and drinks at us. They try to intimidate you, but it just motivates me. Everyone is wearing black and acting crazy. It’s a great feeling. It’s like being in ‘Gladiator.’ You feel like you’re in a war.”

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Cool it, ladies: Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova had a heated argument in Chile after an exhibition match that Kournikova won in straight sets.

“ ‘She asked if I thought I was the queen because the real queen was her,’ Kournikova told the newspaper La Tercera.

“According to reports, they fired insults, bouquets and trophies at each other. ‘It was so bad I thought they were going to beat each other,’ Chilean tennis legend Jaimie Fillol said.”

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Nothing to it: Mark O’Meara in GolfWorld, on Tiger Woods: ‘There’s an inner calmness about him. Even if he has a couple of bad holes, he knows with his talent he can rattle off five or six birdies so fast it will make your heart stop.”

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Trivia answer: Emmitt Smith of Dallas, 1,586 yards in 17 games.

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And finally: David Wells, a former Yankee, now with Toronto, told Andrew Marchand of the New York Post he wants to be traded to the Mets, so he can “beat the pants off the Yankees.”

Asked how he would get along with Met Manager Bobby Valentine, Wells said: “I know I’d fit in as long as I am on one side of the bench and Bobby is on the other side, then I can deal with that.”