They’ve Always Loved to Ham It Up

Duke’s Cameron Crazies, known for their biting witticisms, have been duped.

An unidentified Maryland fan spread word before the Terrapins played the Blue Devils on Jan. 26 at Cameron Indoor Stadium that Maryland forward Nik Caner-Medley’s girlfriend was named Myra, and that her pet name for him was Piggy.

Duke fans thought they were mocking Caner-Medley with chants of “Myra and Piggy,” but the joke was on them. It sounded as if they were saying “Myron Piggie,” the summer-league coach who had arranged for improper payments to former Blue Devil standout Corey Maggette.

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Trivia time: Who did Jeffrey Lurie, the Philadelphia Eagles’ owner, portray in the movie “Jerry Maguire”?

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Philly fanatics: Terrell Owens, the outspoken Eagle receiver who has attracted quite a media following this week during his attempt to return from an ankle injury, isn’t even the most outrageous receiver on his own team, according to Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald.

“That distinction would belong to Freddie Mitchell, who fashion-runways through the locker room in look-at-me chinchilla fur,” Le Batard wrote. “Flamboyant? Owens isn’t even as flashy as teammate Hugh Douglas, whose wedding cake was shaped like a Ferrari.

“But they aren’t talented or famous enough for us to turn them into one-dimensional stick figures, which is how Owens has become the most controversial cartoon since the Simpsons.”

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Super boasts: Associated Press columnist Jim Litke, noting history’s tendency to repeat itself, cautioned the participants in Sunday’s Super Bowl against making pregame guarantees.

“The very first Super Bowl in 1967 featured Chiefs’ cornerback and B-movie action star Fred ‘the Hammer’ Williamson promising to drop so many forearm shivers on the Packers that they’d ‘go back to the huddle with their heads ringing,’ ” Litke wrote.

“Instead, it was Williamson who wound up being carried off the field in the fourth quarter of Green Bay’s 35-10 win.

“ ‘Laid him out like a bear rug too,’ a Packer official would recall more than three decades later. ‘Some hammer.’ ”

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No more Mizzou-rah: Can Missouri basketball Coach Quin Snyder save the season with his team slipping farther below .500 this week after a loss to Kansas? Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch doubts it.

“In his customary postgame ‘Dr. Phil’ sessions, he provides psychobabble but no solutions,” Miklasz wrote. “Quin frequently blames the players, which is a cop-out, considering that he recruited them, coaches them, and is supposed to lead them.

“If all Snyder could do was win 16 games and make it to the NIT last season with a nucleus anchored by heralded seniors Arthur Johnson and Rickey Paulding, why would we expect the coach to maximize the talent of his current core of players?”

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Trivia answer: Himself.

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And finally: Bill Scheft of Sports Illustrated wrote that New England Patriot Coach Bill Belichick has been so exhausted by the rigors of a long season that “his personal physician recommended he cut back to five minutes of evasive answers to the press.”