Some Good Vibrations at Low End of Spectrum

Wayne Coffey of the New York Daily News has written a book, “Winning Sounds Like This,” an account of the season he spent with the women’s basketball team at Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., the world’s only university for the deaf.

He had perhaps his most memorable experience on the first night he spent in a Gallaudet dormitory. He was warned that some students liked to crank their stereo bass settings to the max, the better to feel vibrations.

He paid no heed until he was jolted awake at 4 a.m. by music so loud the handle of his toilet was rattling. The concert went on for three hours and by the end Coffey was more amused than annoyed.

“A hearing writer getting rousted by a bunch of deaf kids blasting their hip-hop music? I mean, how rich is that?”

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Trivia time: Which school holds the NCAA Final Four single-game record for steals?

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Cosmic awareness: In a commercial for the Seattle Mariners, Manager Lou Piniella motions for center fielder Mike Cameron to move a few steps, just before a meteorite plummets to the exact spot where he’d been standing.

A coach asks Piniella, “How’d you see that one coming?”

Says Piniella, “Just a hunch.”

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Quit pouting: Derek Bell says that if the Pittsburgh Pirates don’t give him the starting right-field job, instead of making him compete for it, he’ll perform “Operation Shutdown” and won’t risk injuring himself in spring training.

Comment from Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Bell, who hit .172 in an injury-plagued 2001 season, might be better served by moving immediately to ‘Operation Shutup.’”

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FYI: Add up all the NCAA basketball tournament pools and there is $2.5 billion at stake, according to the FBI.

One little problem, says Bankrate.com: Only $80 million of it is gambled legally through sports books in Nevada.

However, office pools with $1 to $5 entry fees aren’t enough to alert FBI agents.

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Homeless: Athens 2004 organizers have issued an eviction order to oust a nine-foot crocodile from his aquarium in southern Athens so they can start construction of the Olympic sailing center.

The reptile’s plight has made him a Greek media star and there have been calls for authorities to find a new home for him.

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Tough town: Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel: “What? The St. Louis Cards are threatening to move to East St. Louis? ‘Brass Knuckles Day?’ The only way anybody goes to East St. Louis is in the trunk of their own car.”

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Turtle pace: Blackie Sherrod in the Dallas Morning News: “And then there was the horse so slow, he won the following race.”

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Trivia answer: Nevada Las Vegas, 16, against Duke in the 1990 championship game.

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And finally: Notre Dame has the best public restrooms in the U.S., according to an online poll that took nearly a year to complete.

Voters were impressed by the restrooms’ Victorian charm, with tile floors imported from England, faucets with chrome and brass accents, and solid oak doors on the stalls.

Well, if you’re no longer a football power, classy restrooms will have to suffice.