Text messages from press row ...

As evidenced by Wednesday night’s second-half meltdown at San Antonio, this could be a rough patch for Lamar Odom and the Lakers. . . .

L.O. goes AWOL too often. . . .

That could become especially troublesome for Phil Jackson and the Lakers, who play only eight of their next 22 games at Staples Center before Andrew Bynum’s expected return in the second week of March. . . .

Longtime Clippers followers, by the way, don’t believe that Donald Sterling will jettison Mike Dunleavy any time soon because the owner couldn’t stomach shelling out millions to have Dunleavy not coach, plus have to pay a replacement. . . .

Dunleavy is in the first year of a four-year, $22-million deal. . . .

Color him safe. . . .

And that’s no lie. . . .

By stopping Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, Eli Manning and the New York Giants spoiled what would have been a rare Super Bowl matchup of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks between Favre and Tom Brady. . . .

Not since 1984, when Jim Plunkett and the Los Angeles Raiders outscored Joe Theismann and the Washington Redskins, 38-9, have two quarterbacks who had previously won Super Bowls squared off in the championship game. . . .

Such a matchup has occurred only two other times -- in 1976, when Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys met after each had won a previous Super Bowl title, and again in 1979, when Bradshaw and Staubach each had won two. . . .

The Steelers won both times. . . .

What’s become of Randy Moss? . . .

USC fans who swore they saw embattled former Trojans defensive tackle Manuel Wright in the Giants’ locker room Sunday, your eyes weren’t playing tricks. . . .

Wright, once considered an NFL washout before overcoming weight issues and the embarrassment of breaking down in tears after a practice scolding from then-Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban, could win a Super Bowl ring before his more celebrated former teammates Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, etc. . . .

Tiki Barber retired a year too soon. . . .

The South Course at Torrey Pines, site of this weekend’s Buick Invitational in La Jolla, also will play host to the U.S. Open in June. . . .

The last time a course held a regular PGA Tour event and a major championship in the same year was in 2000, when Tiger Woods -- who else? -- won the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am and the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. . . .

USC’s O.J. Mayo, in Oregon this week as he makes his first and presumably only pass through the Pacific 10 Conference, is the Pac-10’s No. 1 pro prospect and should be a lottery pick in June, an NBA talent evaluator says. . . .

Rounding out a list of the conference’s top five NBA prospects, according to the same executive, are Jerryd Bayless of Arizona, Chase Budinger of Arizona, Brook Lopez of Stanford and James Harden of Arizona State. . . .

Kevin Love, the exec says, is only the sixth-best prospect in the conference and probably won’t be drafted until midway through the first round. . . .

Was it only a coincidence that the National Ski Areas Assn. scheduled its annual National Safety Awareness Week the same week as the Winter X Games, where competitors routinely wind up in hospitals? . . .

By the way, who coined the term “action sports,” which loosely translates to “competitions in which uniquely skilled adrenaline junkies risk life and limb while trying to successfully execute incredibly dangerous stunts that more reasonable (and usually much older) persons would never dream of attempting”? . . .

Is football not an action sport? . . .

Hockey? . . .

Congratulations to Pete Carroll for landing an oral commitment from yet another Gatorade national player of the year, junior quarterback Matt Barkley of Santa Ana Mater Dei, but as Ben Howland could tell the USC coach, oral commitments sometimes don’t amount to much more than hot air. . . .

Taylor King, a former Mater Dei basketball player, pledged his allegiance to UCLA as a ninth-grader, later reconsidered and landed at Duke. . . .

If USC is sanctioned by the NCAA in the Reggie Bush case, say, or if UCLA reaches a Bowl Championship Series bowl game next fall, Barkley could reverse himself too. . . .

Nothing is binding until Barkley puts pen to paper in 2009.

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jerome.crowe@latimes.com