They take it to the extreme

It wasn’t so long ago that people were getting worked up about high school football powerhouses running up the score, high school fantasy football leagues in the newspaper and a team canceling the season after failing to score a point.

Mundane matters.

That is, compared to recent doings in Montana and Utah.

In Montana, officials canceled the rest of the season at Alberton High when a boy was said to have been taped to the ceiling of a school bus, reportedly as part of a hazing ritual.

In Utah, fans of Richfield High were suspected of killing a sheep and fastening it to a goalpost at rival South Sevier High. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the incident was a shot at South Sevier’s ram mascot.

But South Sevier’s coach, Travis McAllister, hoped to use the incident to his advantage.

“It’s part of the rivalry,” he told the Tribune.

“It gives our kids an incentive to play harder.”

Short cuts

Outside magazine asked 10 athletes to name their favorite sports films. Not surprisingly, Shaun White picked a snowboarding movie, Kelly Slater a surfing move and Greg LeMond a cycling flick.

“The only true cycling classic,” LeMond said of “Breaking Away.”

“I used to race with a friend who could have been the inspiration for the film. He dressed and acted as though he were Italian. He even changed his name form Tony Comfort to Antonio Conforte.”

Said Tony Hawk: “ ‘Thrashin’ ’ is the quintessential cheese of skateboarding movies, which makes it my favorite. The plot is a thin version of ‘West Side Story,’ with plenty of ‘80s skate action.”

Think of the possible lyrics: “I just met a skateboarder named Maria.”

Trivia time

Where did baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby finish his playing career?

Freaky Friday

Certainly, young defensive back Dustin Shreve of Wayne High in Wayne, W. Va., is tempting fate.

Not only will he be playing tonight, Friday the 13th, the most frightening date on the high school football calendar, he’ll be wearing No. 13.

“I got it because I love Ohio State and Maurice Clarett used to wear 13 when they won a national championship,” Shreve told the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, W. Va. “But then he went off the deep end.”

Yeah, Clarett surely would have avoided trouble if there had been a mistake in the stitching and he’d ended up with 31.

Trivia answer

Hornsby, who died in 1963, finished with the St. Louis Browns in 1937.

And finally

Nigel Short, English grandmaster, was not thrilled by the world chess championship final’s being held in Elista, Russia. Still, he told the Times of London it was an improvement over 2004:

“In Libya, the world championship final was watched by two men and a dog.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com