The Only Thing They Didn’t Lose Was Sleep

Washington Redskin Coach Steve Spurrier was a member of the last winless NFL team, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“I remember a speech our coach, John McKay, was giving us at one point in the season,” he told the New Yorker. “He was emphasizing that games were lost in the trenches by failing to block and tackle on the front lines.

“And as he was talking he noticed a lineman asleep in the back. He called his name, woke him up and asked, ‘Where are most games lost?’ And the lineman says, ‘Right here in Tampa, sir.’ ”

Trivia time: Which school holds the Pacific 10 record for consecutive football games without being shut out?

Not a bad idea: A Czech soccer team is playing so poorly that it has ordered its players to pay for fans’ tickets for Saturday’s home game against Sparta Prague. Sigma Olomouc, with a 2-5-5 record, ranks 13th in the 16-team Czech League.

Tickets are priced at $1.70, meaning that a sellout at 12,119-seat Andruv Stadium would cost the players a collective $20,000. The average Czech earns $5,900 a year.

Just wondering: Could such a policy be implemented against lousy teams in the NBA or NFL?

Unusual punishment: Bill Lankhof of the Toronto Sun on the Maple Leafs’ 3-7-2 start: “[Coach Pat] Quinn says this isn’t a good time to make a trade. He’s right. If the fans have to watch hockey this horrible all year, then the players should have to stay and watch it too. It’s only fair.”

Qualifications: Comedian Billy Crystal, speaking to the U.S. Olympic Committee, offered up some reasons why New York is the perfect city to host the 2012 Summer Games. For instance: “All the foreigners are already there and the Mets are helping out with drug testing.”

Always works: David Letterman on New York beating out San Francisco to become the bid city for the 2012 Games: “We convinced the Olympic Committee the old-fashioned way -- with hookers and cash.”

Say again? Promoter Don King on boxing’s rating system: “When we started, it was based on lies. It’s changing now. There are no secrets in the business. You’ve got to come with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s becoming very confusing.”

Yawn: Bernie Lincicome in the Rocky Mountain News: “Anticipating the return of Bill Romanowski to Denver is every bit as thrilling as looking forward to an oil change.”

Looking back: On this day in 1959, Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers scored 64 points against the Boston Celtics.

Trivia answer: UCLA, 246, 1971-1992.

And finally: Steve Rosenbloom in the Chicago Tribune: “Onetime Hawks assistant Roger Neilson is one of hockey’s great innovators -- Nickname, Capt. Video -- and one of the game’s great savants.

“A story: One time he walked into an appliance store looking for a new video monitor and stopped a salesperson to ask, ‘Don’t you have any TVs with a bigger screen than this?’ ‘Yes, sir, we do,’ said the salesperson. ‘This is a microwave oven.’ ”

-- Mal Florence