They Can’t Let Commerce Be Their Guides

Ever vigilant, the NCAA has cited the University of Texas Arlington for publishing improper media guides in men’s and women’s basketball.

The NCAA has instructed the school to destroy all remaining covers of the media guides because they appear to show student-athletes endorsing certain products.

The cover of the women’s media guide shows players posed in front of a moving van, its company logo clearly visible. The cover of the men’s guide shows four players on horseback in front of a Ft. Worth-area racetrack, Trinity Meadows.

Steve Weller, the school’s sports information director, said he simply was trying to capture the two teams’ respective themes: “Moving in a new brand of Lady Mavericks basketball” and “We’re off and running.”

“I’m certainly going to learn from this,” Weller told the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

What Weller has learned is that ingenuity apparently is a no-no.

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Trivia time: Who is the NFL record-holder for punting average in a season?

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A real drag: Alan Greenberg of the Hartford Courant writes that watching New York Giant Coach Ray Handley answer questions after a 28-10 loss to the Washington Redskins was “painful, sort of like watching Jack Webb in ‘Dragnet.’ ”

A sampling:

Question: Do you have the sense that some of your players wish the season was already over?

Answer: I don’t have that sense.

Q: What was your defense not doing?

A: A variety of things.

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Goose-egg groove: The New England Patriots have been shut out in their last two games, by Atlanta, 34-0, and Indianapolis, 6-0.

“It seems like we’re consistent in the wrong way,” observed Patriot offensive lineman Pat Harlow, a former USC player.

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Faint praise: Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Barry Fry, manager of the Barnet Club in English soccer, once said of club chairman Stan Flashman: “If you didn’t know him, you’d think he was an ignorant pig. He is, in many ways, but he does care for the club.”

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Underachiever: Bill van Breda Kolff, who coached U.S. Senator Bill Bradley at Princeton, was asked if he was pleased with Bradley’s political career. “No,” he said. “I thought he’d be President by now.”

AFC is MIA: San Francisco Examiner columnist Ray Ratto, commenting on the NFC’s domination of *

AFC teams this season: “If the NFL’s competition committee had any guts, it would make the AFC a sort of mutant Division I-AA, and let the two best teams play in, say, the Freedom Bowl.”

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Chill factor: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have an 0-13 record in games played in temperatures at 40 degrees or below.

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FYI: There were 36 former USC players on opening day rosters of NFL teams in 1992, the most of any school in the country. The Trojans were followed by Notre Dame and UCLA, with 35 and 34, respectively.

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Trivia answer: Sammy Baugh, of the Washington Redskins, 51.40 yards, 1940.

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Quotebook: Boston College quarterback Glenn Foley, on why the team wasn’t more successful under former Coach Jack Bicknell: “He treated us like adults.”