Of Bert Blyleven, Randy Johnson, Matt Holliday, Bear Bryant and more.

Bert Blyleven, nicknamed Bert “Be Home” Blyleven by ESPN’s pun-loving Chris Berman, might actually have to wait until the eleventh hour to gain entrance to the Hall of Fame. . . .

The former Garden Grove Santiago High star, fifth on the all-time strikeout list, should have been voted in long ago. . . .

Randy Johnson, whose Cooperstown bust must include his signature mullet, will have a much shorter wait. . . .

If NBA teams could still draft players straight out of high school, O.J. Mayo never would have even visited USC, Tim Floyd might still be pulling his hair out in front of the Galen Center scorer’s table and the unfairly punished current team wouldn’t have had the rug pulled out from under its promising season. . . .

For $120 million over seven years, Matt Holliday will be expected to catch sinking, potentially game-ending line drives during playoff games at Dodger Stadium. . . .

The last time Alabama played a game in the Rose Bowl with a national championship on the line, on Jan. 1, 1935, its roster included a junior end named Paul “Bear” Bryant. . . .

Bryant later recalled scooping up loose change off the grass during the game -- Stanford fans had littered the field with coins to express their displeasure with Alabama’s runaway victory -- but having to drop it to make a play. . . .

“It was,” he noted, “the only decent tackle I made all day.” ...

Musical Texas defensive back Earl Thomas, who in high school shed his pads at halftime to join the school band, might remind longtime USC fans of the late Tommy Walker. . . .

A Trojans drum major nicknamed “Tommy the Toe,” Walker would tear off his uniform jacket, throw his baton to the ground and rush from the stands to kick extra points for USC in the 1940s. . . .

His more lasting contribution was this: Walker composed a six-note fanfare for the trumpet section -- Da da da DUT da DUH -- after which Trojans fans would scream, “Charge!” ...

Later, it caught on big with Dodgers fans. . . .

The bowl season loses momentum after New Year’s Day. . . .

Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans, the NFL’s sixth 2,000-yard rusher, is only the second to miss the playoffs in his watershed season, the other being O.J. Simpson in 1973. . . .

Only Terrell Davis, with the Denver Broncos in 1998, led his team to a Super Bowl championship. . . .

Andrew Bynum, in his fifth season with the Lakers, is still younger than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was when the ex-UCLA center, as Lew Alcindor, made his NBA debut in 1969. . . .

Boise State Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier, who has overseen the remarkable rise of the Broncos football program in the last decade, is a former UCLA tight end who grew up in San Pedro before graduating from a high school in Boise. . . .

The next time an NFL coach is questioned about benching players in all but meaningless late-season games, he’ll have to utter only two words to justify the move: Wes Welker. . . .

The Super Bowl, naturally, was the event that the highest percentage of sports business executives were looking forward to this year, according to the Turnkey Sports Poll. . . .

Rounding out the top five in a survey taken last month: the Winter Olympics, the World Cup, the Final Four and, in a surprise, last Friday’s NHL Winter Classic game between the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers at Fenway Park. . . .

Matt Kemp reportedly is dating the pop star Rihanna, recalling the 1980s romance between then-Dodgers outfielder Mike Marshall and Go-Go’s singer Belinda Carlisle. . . .

Bobsledding, notes Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, is “like riding downhill in an open casket.” ...

Donald Trump says that Tiger Woods will come back “bigger than ever,” Buzz Bissinger notes in a Vanity Fair cover story about the golfer, “a sure sign that the opposite will happen.” ...

Long Beach State basketball Coach Dan Monson called his team’s nonconference schedule, which included an 0-6 run against Notre Dame, Texas, Kentucky, Duke, West Virginia and Clemson, his “Washington Generals tour.” ...

“It wasn’t that long ago that the Washington Wizards were known as the Bullets,” reader Ken Feldman of Porter Ranch e-mails to note, “but I don’t believe Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes ever drew guns on each other.” ...

Times have changed.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com