Why play when you can vote?

Florida became the first team to win national football and men’s basketball titles in the same school year.

Is it true?

Let the spinning begin.

Reader Ward D. Skinner noted that, “USC football won a share of the national football title in 1939 (Dickinson) which is recognized by the university. The basketball team in 1940 (the same school year) lost in the semifinals of the very young NCAA tournament. What is interesting is that the basketball team was voted a share of the national title by the Helms [Athletic] Foundation.”

Of course, on the court Indiana won the title, after USC was beaten by Kansas in the semifinals. But details, details. It was one of only four times that the now-defunct Helms Poll disagreed with the NCAA tournament results.

Kentucky can also boast about winning both titles in 1950-51, but only because the Sagarin Poll anointed the Wildcats’ football team as champions many years later.

Meanwhile, Ohio State may want to look into giving the state of Florida back to the Spanish, thus voiding the Gators’ two national titles.

Trivia time

In the Trojans’ 43-42 loss to Kansas in the 1940 semifinals, who made the game-winning shot?

Upon further review ...

Retroactive revisions of college sports could be a slippery slope for USC fans. It could lead to ...

... Notre Dame fans celebrating the school’s 1982 victory over the Trojans. Touchdown Jesus has long refused to raise his arms for Michael Harper’s one-yard journey into the end zone without the ball.

... Michigan fans settling for a tie in the 1979 Rose Bowl, insisting that Charles White got a gimme after leaving a souvenir (the football) on the one-yard line. Refs said 99 yards is close enough.

... And UCLA fans wanting that 1970 Rose Bowl bid, having long contended that on USC’s winning touchdown play at the Coliseum, Sam Dickerson was closer to the Natural History Museum than the end zone when he caught the ball.

Then again, Trojans fans could also file a claim for the 2005 national title. After all, Texas’ Vince Young was supposed to pass the ball on the play in which he scored the winning touchdown.

Rights, and lefts, of spring

Will Durst, comedian and long-suffering San Francisco Giants fan, trotted out his national pastime take on the national obsession: politics.

“The World Series of presidential politics may be 19 months down the road, but the players are already lacing up their cleats and playing pepper with fungo bats on the sandlots of Iowa and New Hampshire. Yes, my friends, it’s spring training for the presidency. A spring training where fundraising takes the place of calisthenics. And batting clinics are supplanted by fundraising. And the closet full of Ace bandages is now packed with envelopes earmarked for ... you got it, fundraising.”

Who do you like?

Durst also had the early line on the favorites. And, like in baseball, it’s hard to ignore the Big Apple.

* New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is 7-to-2 to be the Democratic candidate. “Like the Yankees, she’s a converted fan of, acts miffed nomination isn’t just handed to her and instead has to actually compete for it.”

* Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is 3-to-1 to be the Republican nominee. “Highlighting commitment to traditional family values. Having had three wives just means he’s extra traditional. Better chance to win Series than to get there.”

Wonder who Pete Rose has his money on?

Trivia answer

Bob Allen, son of Kansas Coach Phog Allen.

And finally

An official from China’s top sports body said he wants no doping scandals in the run-up to the Summer Olympics next year.

“There should be no big and nasty doping scandals in all central and local sports departments before the Beijing Olympic Games,” Jiang Zhixue of the General Administration of Sports said in the China Sports Daily.

Zhixue is also insisting on gas prices under $1 a gallon, fat-free pork rinds and that the cable guy showing up between 1-5 p.m. gets there before 4:45.

*

chris.foster@latimes.com