Davie Had an Impact Away From Football

Ron Rapoport in the Chicago Sun Times: “For the first time in its history, the Notre Dame Club of Chicago will not honor a football player at its annual Rockne athletic banquet next month. Instead, the club’s athlete of the year award will go to Ruth Riley, who led the Irish women to the NCAA basketball title last year.

“And to think there are those who don’t believe Bob Davie’s tenure at Notre Dame left no lasting legacy.”

FYI: Easter Sunday will be the 71st anniversary of Knute Rockne’s death. The football coach died in a plane crash near Bazaar, Kan., on March 31, 1931.

More Rapoport: “The Miami Heat is changing its courtside seats from bright yellow to muted red. The old color highlighted all the empty seats.”

Trivia time: Which school holds the record for fewest points scored in a men’s Final Four game?

Tough guy: Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer scoffs at the notion that the broken left hand suffered by 76er star Allen Iverson will sideline him from four to six weeks: “Four to six days, maybe. Four to six hours, possibly.

“You want to keep him out? You’ll need a wooden stake, a silver bullet and a mob of villagers with pitchforks, and even then it’s even money he plays.”

New career? After hearing CBS analyst Billy Packer proclaim “Great catch!” repeatedly during the Maryland-Connecticut game, Randy Hill of Foxsports.com said: “Maybe he’s auditioning for the analyst gig on Dennis Green’s cable-network fishing show.”

The nothing ball: Former major league reliever Tug McGraw, who served as a guest pitching instructor in the Philadelphia Phillies’ camp, lamented the passing of jazz great Peggy Lee. He said he named his changeup after her, thanks to her song, “Is That All There Is?”

Oxymoron: An ad in Wednesday’s Times Sports section says that the Dodgers will host the Cleveland Indians in an exciting two-game exhibition series at Dodger Stadium.

Exciting? Exhibition baseball is as exciting as watching grass grow.

Hold the mustard: Reader Janice Hough to the San Francisco Chronicle: “Jeff Kent is getting increasingly frustrated with media coverage of his accident. On the bright side, he may pick up a new sponsor: Burger King, home of the Whopper.”

In style: With the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson fight set for June 8 and expected to bring 12,000 visitors to Memphis, limousine operator Jim Hagmaier is calling for backup.

“A buddy of mine has 30 in Nashville,” he said. “I’ll call him up and he’ll bring his in.”

Looking back: On this day in 1977, Marquette, coached by Al McGuire, won the men’s NCAA basketball championship with a 67-59 victory over North Carolina in Atlanta.

Trivia answer: Kentucky, 28, against Dartmouth, 47, in 1942.

And finally: Rudy Martzke in USA Today: “Asked to answer in one word by ESPN SportsCenter co-host Linda Cohn on the winner of the Oklahoma-Indiana game in the Final Four, Dick Vitale began a long explanation with, ‘Oklahoma, but I can’t say anything in one word.’”