Pearl’s first job didn’t take flight

It’s hard to imagine Bruce Pearl, the flamboyant men’s basketball coach at Tennessee, ever lacking passion. This is a guy who last season attended a Lady Vols game with his bare chest painted orange.

However, Pearl tells Andrea Kremer on tonight’s edition of HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” that he “didn’t have enough passion” to get the job as the Eddie the Eagle mascot while in school at Boston College.

But he also offers a more logical explanation for failing the audition.

“Perhaps [I] didn’t have enough athleticism,” he says. “Couldn’t flap my wings fast enough.”

--

Creating a flap

Pearl ended up becoming the Boston College team manager, but he did fill in as Eddie the Eagle when the student who got the mascot job was sick during the 1981 NCAA tournament.

“I’ve got no training,” he tells Kremer. “I didn’t go to mascot school. I don’t know what to do. So I’m flapping my wings around the court, trying to interact with the other mascot, like mascots are supposed to do. We’re playing Ball State.”

Ball State’s Ray McCallum is having a big game and is at the foul line.

“I look around and there’s a ladder,” Pearl continues. “I get the ladder out. I set it up behind the backboard. I climb up the ladder and I start flapping my wings. Ray McCallum misses a free throw. We win the ball game and the NCAA has a meeting the next day. They’re about to throw the mascot from Boston College out. That was me.”

--

Trivia time

Rick Neuheisel, UCLA’s new football coach, has a law degree from USC. What former UCLA basketball coach got a master’s degree from USC?

--

A brief stay

After Pearl’s team beat No. 1 Memphis Feb. 23, it was ranked No. 1 Feb. 25. But the Volunteers lost to Vanderbilt Feb. 26.

Dan Patrick, who last week had Pearl as a guest on his national radio show carried by AM 570, asked, “Do you put on your resume the days or hours that you’re No. 1?”

Pearl, laughed, then said: “You can make fun of it. But if you’re North Carolina, you’re Duke, you’re Pat Summitt, you’re there all the time. This is uncharted territory [for us.] So you be grateful, you enjoy it. And now let’s see if we can get back there.”

Tennessee, which defeated South Carolina, 89-56, Sunday, is 28-3, ranked No. 4, and is the outright Southeastern Conference champion for the first time since 1967.

--

A Pearl pearl

At the end of his interview with Pearl, Patrick asked, “When is the last time you accidentally broke an NCAA rule?”

Pearl: “Probably sometime in this conversation.”

--

Thought counts

North Carolina Coach Roy Williams, another guest on Patrick’s radio show last week, talked about his relationship with Michael Jordan, whom he coached when he was an assistant to Dean Smith.

Patrick asked Williams about the time at a Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic when Jordan gave a motorcycle to Williams’ wife Wanda.

Said Williams: “When the item came up, my wife said to Michael, ‘Now that’s what I could use to go to the store.’ So he bid on it and gave it to her.”

Asked if his wife had ever ridden the motorcycle, Williams said she hadn’t and added: “I think she plans to someday turn it into a coffee table.”

That could be an interesting project.

--

Trivia answer

Jim Harrick.

--

And finally

Comedian Argus Hamilton, on last weekend’s L.A. Marathon: “The finishing times were a bit slow this year. Half the competitors stopped to pick up their dry cleaning and their kids just to save the gas.”

--

larry.stewart@latimes.com