This Gator Will Get Used to His New ‘Skins

Washington Redskin owner Dan Snyder is introducing retro uniforms for next season that bring “Florida State” to mind--the colors, the spear and the feather on the helmet.

And Snyder’s new coach, former Florida Coach Steve Spurrier, loathed the Seminoles while running the Gator program.

The new old-Redskin look had Spurrier scrambling for an explanation: “We’re burgundy,” he said. “That other school is not burgundy.”

Whatever you say, Coach.

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Trivia time: Which Pacific 10 schools have won the women’s NCAA basketball championship?

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Winter wonderland: Bob Kravitz in the Indianapolis Star: “Now, the truth is, American journalists covering the Winter Olympics don’t know much of anything about the sports they’ll be covering.

“Of course, the same thing can be said of our knowledge of football, basketball, etc., but when it comes to luge, bobsled and curling, we really don’t know what’s going on.”

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Transformation: Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer writing on the positive personality change of 76er star Allen Iverson: “In barely a year he had gone from almost-traded-to-the-Black-Hole-of-Calcutta Clippers to a captain and the acknowledged leader of a scrappy little team that kept surviving seventh [playoff] games.”

Black Hole? Staples Center is a luxurious “hole.”

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So you say: Two men who had bought the rights to the Web site www.memphisgrizzlies.com for $35 have agreed to surrender the address to the NBA team.

As part of the deal, each will receive six bobblehead dolls of Grizzlies’ players. Club executive Mike Golub told the Memphis Commercial Appeal: “They are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them. They’re priceless.”

Make up your mind.

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High finance: Washington Husky football Coach Rick Neuheisel is critical of some Pacific 10 schools, which he didn’t identify, for going after players who made commitments to Washington.

Neuheisel said the Huskies lost a player to a school that promised him $40,000 in flight training as part of his education because he wanted to become a pilot.

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Lonely: Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in eight days. Comedy writer Alan Ray told the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Montreal Expos have announced practices will be closed to the public. They want to simulate a real game atmosphere.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1979, Moses Malone of the Houston Rockets set an NBA record with 19 offensive rebounds against New Orleans. He would improve on this record to 21 three years later.

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Trivia answer: USC (1983, ‘84) and Stanford (’90 and ‘92). The first NCAA Women’s Final Four was in 1982. UCLA won the AIAW national title (Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) in 1978.

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And finally: Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, who is “somewhere in Utah”: “The intense security has already caused an unfortunate incident involving the Olympic torch, which after being painstakingly carried more than 10,000 miles from Athens, Greece, was extinguished by suspicious security personnel who noticed that it was--and this is a direct quote--’on fire.’”

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Mal Florence