Instead of a Pacifier, a Mouthpiece
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Once upon a time, parents wanted their children to become lawyers, doctors, engineers. Now it might be wise if they slipped a football into the crib.
“We’ll have a $10-million quarterback in the next three-four years,” agent Leigh Steinberg, who represents a few of the best, has been quoted as saying. “Football will become a sport comparable with basketball and baseball. There’s going to be the biggest salary explosion football ever had.
“I see double television revenues for the next four years and an explosion in salaries. Fox set the standard and everyone will emulate it. There are all of these television entities hoping to make a TV splash.”
Trivia time: How many major league players have hit two home runs and two triples in the same game?
Looking ahead: Ya Ya Dia came from Senegal to play basketball for Georgetown, and Coach John Thompson says it has been his leadership that carried the Hoyas to the NCAA tournament.
“I’ll say it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again,” Thompson said. “We couldn’t have done it without Ya Ya. He reinforced most of the things that I have done. He’s going to be a leader in his own country one day. Remember me telling you that.”
Dia couldn’t keep the Hoyas from losing their first-round game Friday to North Carolina Charlotte, 79-67.
What’s your guess? What’s the sport in this excerpt from the Times of London:
“Quinten Hann, a volatile character during his amateur career, whose present concession to the unconventional is short cropped, bleached-white hair, won the fifth frame on the pink, maintained his recovery with breaks of 72 and 59 and took the eighth by clearing up from the last red.”
Snooker.
Mickey Mouse: What’s Disney coming to? One of its latest ventures is “ESPN--The Store,” a collection of sports gifts in what Disney and ESPN call an “interactive retail environment.”
Fine, but among the items are a Chris Berman bob-head and a talking Keith Olbermann doll.
Can you imagine a child of yours cradling a Keith Olbermann doll in her arms?
No charity here: When Michigan sophomore Tom Malchow won a silver medal in the Atlanta Olympics, he became eligible to receive a $35,000 bonus from U.S. Swimming. Because he wanted to retain college eligibility, Malchow wouldn’t take the money but, according to Swimming World and Junior Swimmer, asked if he could endow a scholarship for needy scholar-athletes at his high school in Mendota Heights, Minn.
Mercy, no, said the always helpful NCAA.
Hometown hero: Gov. Roy Schneider of the Virgin Islands wants the legislature to confer the islands’ highest honor on Wake Forest All-American basketball player Tim Duncan.
If approved, the 20-year-old senior would be the youngest Virgin Islander ever awarded the Medal of Honor. Schneider said the St. Croix native was a “real role model” to Virgin Islands youth.
Trivia answer: Three--Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays and Lew Fonseca.
And finally: The New York Knicks’ John Starks wasn’t happy when his team’s seven-game winning streak was stopped by the lowly Dallas Mavericks, whom the Knicks had beaten by 30 points earlier in the season.
“I hope it’s a good lesson for us,” he said. “We have to jump on teams like this and tear their throats out.”
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