He turned talk into old news

With Jake Delhomme out for the season and David Carr nursing a back injury, the Carolina Panthers last week signed 43-year-old quarterback Vinny Testaverde, who started Sunday in a 25-10 victory over the Arizona Cardinals.

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald described the Testaverde signing with these words: “Defying believability, logic, probability and perhaps sanity.”

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, tongue in cheek, wrote that when Testaverde was sacked while trying to roll out in practice, he “popped up OK, but his wheelchair was declared a total loss.”

Testaverde completed 20 of 33 passes for 206 yards and one touchdown.

Trivia time

In his previous 20 seasons in the NFL, Testaverde played for six teams. How many can you name?

What about me?

Rodney Peete, one of the co-hosts on FSN’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” played for six teams in his 15-year NFL career, which ended in a mostly backup role with the Panthers. Peete is only 41, so why didn’t he get a call?

“I’m hurt,” he said on the show last week. “I played for Carolina. They didn’t even call me.”

Responded sidekick John Salley: “They didn’t call on you when you were there.”

Dictionary issue

In a discussion on the merits of Randy Moss and Terrell Owens on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,” analyst Tom Jackson said of Owens: “Questionable hands. If you sell dictionaries, that’s not an issue. But if you’re a professional wide receiver and you have questionable hands, then I can’t deal with you.”

Countered host Chris Berman: “If you sell dictionaries and you have questionable hands, you could drop the dictionaries and damage the edges.”

Missing delivery

CBS’ Shannon Sharpe on “The NFL Today” had this to say about the New York Jets’ quarterback: “The girl that delivers my newspaper has a stronger arm than Chad Pennington.”

Trivia answer

Testaverde’s previous teams were Tampa Bay, Cleveland, the Baltimore Ravens, the New York Jets, Dallas, and the New England Patriots, who released him before this season.

Little has changed

Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune made note that Sunday marked the 99th anniversary of the last time the Cubs won the World Series.

To mark the occasion, Downey resurrected this from I.E. Sanborn in the Oct. 15, 1908, editions of the Tribune: “What those gray-clad, modest young warriors have accomplished will be remembered longer than any of their lives.”

Added Downey: “You know those Tribune reporters, never ones to embellish or exaggerate.”

The Tribune Co. also still owns The Times.

And finally

This headline in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle said it all about California’s 31-28 loss to Oregon State that ended when Cal backup quarterback Kevin Riley tried unsuccessfully to run for the winning touchdown from the 12-yard line with 14 seconds left and his team out of timeouts: “Bad News, Bears: Shot at No. 1 Gone.”

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larry.stewart@latimes.com