Tony Parker and Eva Longoria’s split is latest athlete-celebrity casualty

Athlete-Hollywood celebrity couplings always seem doomed to fail, Tony Parker‘s impending divorce from starlet Eva Longoria only the latest casualty.…

Joe DiMaggio‘s marriage to Marilyn Monroe lasted 9 1/2 months, Mike Tyson‘s to Robin Givens not much longer.…

Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields were mismatched, nor could John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal, David Justice and Halle Berry or Rick Fox and Vanessa Williams make it last.…

Good luck, though, to Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly, Mike Comrie and Hilary Duff and, closer to home, Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian.…

They’ll probably need it.…

To see Shannon Brown blow up this season is to wonder why lesser teams than the Lakers gave up on him. …

In the Cam Newton affair, father knows best.…

But he’s not talking.…

With wins at Washington on Thursday and Arizona State next week, Richard Brehaut and UCLA could become bowl-eligible despite no victories against above-.500 opponents.…

Noting that an order of nuns in Baltimore sold a Honus Wagner baseball card for $262,000, reader Joe Kevany of Mt. Washington e-mails to say, “It makes me wonder whatever happened to my Willie Davis rookie card, confiscated by my sixth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Elizabeth, back in the ‘60s.” …

Until winger Dwight King made his NHL debut Wednesday night, the Kings had never had a player named King.…

In a Sports Illustrated poll of 282 NFL players, 62% identified Peyton Manning as the league’s smartest player.…

Maya Moore and the Connecticut women’s basketball team, eight victories short of matching the 88-game winning streak rung up by John Wooden‘s UCLA teams in the 1970s, won’t challenge the Bruins’ more impressive string.…

From 1964 to 1974, from Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich to Bill Walton and Keith Wilkes, the Bruins won an incredible 38 consecutive NCAA tournament games.…

Starting this season, the USC basketball player who makes the highest percentage of his free throws will be awarded a trophy named for ex-Trojans All-American Bill Sharman.…

Sharman, in 10 seasons with the Boston Celtics, led the NBA in free-throw percentage seven times, making 88% overall.…

Perhaps a more appropriate day for Allen Iverson to make his debut in Turkey would have been Thanksgiving.…

If the Official World Golf Ranking were based solely on this year’s play rather than a two-year rolling calendar, Sports Illustrated reports, Tiger Woods would be ranked 57th.…

Instead, he’s No. 2….

Al Michaels, the golden-voiced pride of Hamilton High, will receive the President’s Award from the Southern California Sports Broadcasters at their 20th annual awards luncheon Jan. 25 at Lakeside Golf Club in Toluca Lake.…

Ann Meyers Drysdale joins other celebrities Sunday in Pat Boone‘s charity bowling tournament at Irvine Lanes.…

Information: (949) 733-0044.…

Roy Halladay‘s winning the National League’s Cy Young Award by unanimous vote reminds that Sandy Koufax was a unanimous choice all three times he won.…

Probably no other major leaguer ever put together a greater final season than Koufax, who retired on this date in 1966.…

In his farewell season, the Dodgers left-hander won pitching’s Triple Crown for the third time in four years, compiling a 27-9 record, 1.73 earned-run average and 317 strikeouts.…

“I’ve had too many shots and taken too many pills because of my arm trouble,” Koufax told reporters at a goodbye news conference in Beverly Hills. “I don’t want to take a chance of disabling myself. I don’t regret for one minute the 12 years I spent in baseball, but I could regret one season too many.” …

He was 30.…

Before Chad Pennington and Chad Henne of the Miami Dolphins were injured Sunday, reader George Sands of Torrance e-mailed to ask, “Is it just coincidence that a team from Florida has two Chads playing quarterback?” …

The late, great Allan Malamud, whose breezy “Notes on a Scorecard” column delighted Southland readers for more than 20 years and served as the blueprint for “Text Messages From Press Row,” would have turned 69 on Nov. 19.…

He died Sept. 16, 1996.…

RIP, Mud.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com