He Will Root, Root, Root for the Home Field

Amid all the farms along Georgia’s Highway 231, Phillip Jennings’ 3,000-acre spread near Riddleville is, well, in a field of its own this month.

Jennings makes his money growing grass -- the legal kind -- and for almost a year, one four-acre stretch, sewn with a mix of Bermuda grass, perennial ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass, has been given the most preferential of treatment.

According to the Detroit News, the field has been mowed daily to a precise height, liberally treated with fertilizers and scoured for such pests as mole crickets and army worms.

On Thursday, the pampered pampas will be cut into sheets, rolled up, loaded on trucks and transported to Jacksonville, Fla.

The Feb. 6 Super Bowl is more than a month away, but the field is on its way.

Trivia time: Only two NFL quarterbacks have thrown every pass their teams have attempted this season. Who are they?

Off to the races: Kelly Holmes, the women’s 800-meter and 1,500-meter gold-medal winner at the Athens Olympics, was made a dame Friday in Britain’s New Year’s honors list. Earlier, Marina Hyde of the Guardian newspaper learned where she got her start.

“According to Holmes’ dad, she got all her running talent from him,” Hyde wrote. “And who could argue, Mr. Holmes having done a runner on the double Olympic champion and her mother when she was 1?”

Aerial game: Greg Cote of the Miami Herald apparently is spending way too much time in the air. Commenting on the end of the NFL regular season, Cote wrote: “The 12 playoff teams will be seated in first class, sipping champagne.

“The 20 eliminated teams will trudge ashamedly past them into coach, carrying a bawling infant and rolling a suitcase that won’t fit into the overhead bin, and headed for an assigned middle seat between an old lady complaining of nausea and a snoring 473-pound man in a tank-top.”

Hideous development: Buck-toothed Brazilian magician Ronaldinho has Barcelona in first place in the Spanish soccer league, has totally eclipsed David Beckham in popularity and a couple of weeks ago was named FIFA’s world player of the year for 2004.

All of which has Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Perez, ruing the day he listened to this recommendation from one of his advisors:

“How ugly is Ronaldinho? There was no point in buying him, it wasn’t worth it. He’s so ugly that he’d sink you as a brand. Between Ronaldinho and Beckham, I’d go for Beckham a hundred times. Just look at how handsome Beckham is, the class he has, the image. The whole of Asia has fallen in love with us because of Beckham. Ronaldinho is too ugly.”

Trivia answer: Aaron Brooks of the New Orleans Saints and Jake Plummer of the Denver Broncos.

And finally: Noting that Santiago University in Chile is offering a course on UFOs titled “Unexplainable Air Phenomena,” Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times wrote, “School officials are so excited about the course that they’ve even offered to waive out-of-state tuition fees for Dennis Rodman.”