He took it to heart
Talk about a heart-stopping game between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. Steelers fan Terry O’Neill, 50, was watching last Sunday’s game at a bar and had a heart attack seconds after Jerome Bettis fumbled trying to score late in the fourth quarter.
O’Neill, who was recovering at a hospital, credits two firefighters with saving him.
The Steelers hung on for a 21-18 victory.
“The Steelers won the game and I’m still alive, so I guess I’m doing pretty good,” he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
O’Neill said Bettis is his hero.
“I wasn’t upset that the Steelers might lose,” he said. “I was upset because I didn’t want to see him end his career like that.
“A guy like that deserves better. I guess it was a little too much for me to handle.”
They’re clutch players
Syndicated columnist Tom FitzGerald pointed out that when ESPN announcer Mike Tirico informed viewers to pick up their remotes and switch channels for continued coverage of a golf tournament, colleague Ian Baker-Finch said, “A real man doesn’t put down his remote.”
He was boxed in
TNT commentator Steve Kerr was talking about the altercation that took place earlier this month between Seattle’s Ray Allen and Orlando’s Keyon Dooling.
Kerr said that sometimes even teammates get into it.
He said he once got into a fight with Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan at training camp.
“I hit him in the fist with my eye,” Kerr said.
Cutting off hand that feeds him
Skier Bode Miller told Newsweek’s Devin Gordon, “The U.S. skiing folks have really done a lot for me.”
But that doesn’t mean he is particularly fond of them. He describes them as “rich, cocky, wicked, conceited, super right-wing Republicans.”
But, he adds, “The things they’ve done for me warrant respect.”
A real dressing down
Here’s a new way for a coach to make his point.
Randy Monroe, the men’s basketball coach at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, was so upset after his team lost to New Hampshire earlier this month that he banned the players from using their locker room and forbade the wearing of apparel bearing the school’s name.
For a game against Hartford, the team dressed in a media workroom and also held their halftime meeting there.
The ploy worked – for a while. Maryland Baltimore County led Hartford 25-11 in the first half but lost 74-73 to fall to 6-9 overall.
A real cereal star
USC men’s basketball coach Tim Floyd, formerly of the University of Idaho, told the Los Angeles Times’ Ben Bolch that Don Haskins, his former boss at Texas El Paso (formerly Texas Western), was happier about his 1966 national championship team’s appearance on a Wheaties cereal box than in the film “Glory Road.”
Said Floyd: “That was such a big deal to him growing up, the athletes who were on the box.”