The Really Ugly Thing Was the Final Score

UCLA cheerleaders were an inspiring bunch Monday night at Indianapolis -- and the new national champion Florida Gators are thankful.

“They were talking lots of trash,” Joakim Noah, one of the stars in the 73-57 triumph, said.

“They were just talking crazy to me, like, ‘You’re so ugly.’ Man, that was cold. I mean, it hurts when you have so many beautiful girls out there just telling you how ugly you are and stuff.”

A title-game record six blocked shots, 16 points and nine rebounds -- plus the tournament most-outstanding-player award -- undoubtedly helped ease the pain.

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Trivia time: Fifty years ago, Bill Shoemaker posted his first of eight Santa Anita Derby victories. What was the name of the winning horse?

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From left field: Noting that President Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the season-opening game between the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, the Tonight Show’s Jay Leno remarked: “And then Dick Cheney shot an old guy out of the upper deck.”

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More tasteless humor: Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News offers a suggestion for the sausage portion of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ concession menu: “Major League wurst.”

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If you sully it... More than 597,000 fans attended 13 games on Monday -- proof, apparently, that despite scandal, controversy, outside investigations and internal probes, they will come.

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A really big showman: Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer penned that the NBA Hall of Fame needs a colorful character such as Charles Barkley, even though he never played on a championship team.

Actually, what Ford wrote of Monday’s election of Barkley was, “The Hall of Fame needs Barkley in the same way that Ed Sullivan needed the guy who spun plates on sticks.”

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Huh! Soccer referees in Nigeria have been told by the head of the Nigerian Football Assn. that it’s OK to accept bribes -- as long as they don’t let it influence their decisions on the field.

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Safe bet: Davis Love III was given permission to move his golf ball during last week’s BellSouth Classic because it had stopped near a large water moccasin. Wrote Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel: “I’m betting he told his caddie to go get the ball.”

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A star is born? Romanian-born Bela Karolyi, now the U.S. gymnastics coach, is in Hawaii promoting the upcoming Pacific Alliance Championships and spreading a little gossip.

Asked about former pupil Nadia Comaneci, the petite Romanian who at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 scored the first perfect 10 to upstage the powerful Soviets, Karolyi told a Honolulu Star-Bulletin columnist:

“Nadia is 45 years old. Oh my! She’s 45 years old, she’s living in Norman, Okla., married with former gymnast Bart Conner. Happily married. And expecting now, 45 years of age, a child!”

(For the record, she is 44.)

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Trivia answer: Terrang.

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And finally: To give you an idea of how much green you have to work with if you want to attend this week’s Masters, a pair of weekend badges was on sale recently on EBay for $6,500.