It’s Easier to Support Your Local Sportswriter

Applauding the decision by Associated Press to withdraw its football poll from the bowl championship series, Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer pointed out that voting sportswriters often find themselves painted into a corner.

“Imagine if you were a scribe with a vote in such places as Lincoln, Neb., Tuscaloosa, Ala., Norman, Okla., or any other one-horse college town where The Program is bigger that God Hisownself,” Thiel wrote.

“If your journalistic obligation to football objectivity precludes you from voting the hometown party line, plan to have your car in the body shop getting the scratches buffed out from a bumper-to-bumper key-ring. Then, if you retaliate with another contradictory vote, you’re back in the shop again. This goes on and on until the only winner is Earl Scheib.”

Trivia time: If it defeats Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl, California will have won 11 games this season. When last did that happen?

It figures: After much doodling, Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun figured that, “The odds against the Ravens and Redskins playing each other in the Super Bowl are 2.3 billion-to-1, or about the same as the odds against [Coach] Brian Billick admitting the Ravens could have used a little more experience at quarterback this year.”

Sunk again: As if their overtime loss to Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat was not enough, the Lakers received another shot from Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald.

“And as he left his court a loser again Saturday, after he walked past all those movie stars and into the locker room he completely dismantled with his arrogance and greed and selfishness,” Le Batard wrote, “Kobe Bryant had to know this as he joined his 14-12 team: He is going to rue running off O’Neal only for the rest of his basketball life.”

A little loose: According to Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News, without Terrell Owens, the Philadelphia Eagles are just another NFC team. “While inserting a screw in T.O.’s injured ankle,” Geracie observed, “doctors should have tightened the one in his head.”

Spirited ensemble: Attending the Minnesota Vikings’ 34-31 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Friday, Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune noted a low percentage of Packer fans.

“No matter,” Reusse wrote. “The Purple Faithful did the drinking for them. I got caught in the crowd filing into the Metrodome.... Now I’m going to be required to call my AA sponsor and inquire as to whether breathing air with an alcohol content of .25 constitutes a slip from sobriety.”

Ink stains: “Pats Stay the Course” and “New England Handles Miami, Keeps Pace with Pittsburgh,” read the headlines last week in the early editions of the Providence Journal. Final score: Miami 29, New England 28. Oops.

Trivia answer: In 1914, the Bears went 14-1, playing something more akin to rugby and against club teams.

And finally: Recalling when Texas Tech basketball Coach Bob Knight’s former home in Bloomington, Ind., was put on the market on Ebay for $397,500, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times said, “Just to spice up the deal, rumor had it that they’d even throw in a folding chair.”