October 2007 Archives

(David Crane/Daily News Staff Photographer)

An update on your Los Angeles Amazons, the local entry in the Women's Professional Football League that we featured in late September:

The gridiron girls finished the regular season as the American Conference West Division champions with a 7-1 mark, capped off by a 28-0 win at the Las Vegas Showgirlz on Saturday. They'll next take on the rival So Cal Scorpions in the playoff opener Saturday at 7 p.m. on the Bassett High field in La Puente. The Scorpions, based in La Jolla, handed the Amazons their only loss of the season, 23-12, in week 6 (Sept. 22). Coach Aubrey Duncan's Amazons beat the Scorpions in week 3, 15-13, at home (Sept. 1).
"We, as coaches, have done everything we could with the amount of time we have to practice each day -- about three hours, two days a week," Duncan said. "We're fundamentally sound and healthy right now.
"We'll just have to stop making some mistakesthat we did last time to win this game. It's do or die for both teams.
"As for Saturday's game, we're probably one of the best teams in the league defensively and we should win this game just on our defensive play. The mistakes we've been making are on offense, and fixing that, such as protecting the football, will be the key to our success."
The winner faces the American Conference East Division champ Empire State Roar (8-0) in the conference championship on Nov. 17, with the WPFL title game set for Dec. 1.
Two teams ended up disbanding during the season, including the New Mexico Burn, which gave the Amazons a forfeit victory in week 8. The Amazons traveled to Albuquerque to defeat the Burn, 64-0, in the season opener.
The Connecticut Cyclones also pulled out, which helped the Roar gain a forfeit win in the final week of the regular season. The Roar also beat the Cyclones, 61-0, in the season opener.

To clarify what's going on with Pac-10 college football coverage this weekend: ESPN made a deal with Fox Sports Net to take Saturday's between No. 4 Arizona State and No. 5 Oregon and show it nationally at 3:30 p.m. with Mike Patrick, Todd Blackledge and Holly Rowe. Originally, that game was only going to be shown in Oregon, Arizona and California. Now it's a national broadcaast.
Uh, except in Oregon, Arizona and Southern California. We will see the Sun Devils-Ducks game as originally intended on FSN West and ESPN will be blacked out.
USC's home game against Oregon State remains one of the four ABC regional telecasts on Channel 7 at 5 p.m., opposite Boston College-Florida State and Texas A&M-Oklahoma. The South Carolina-Arkansas game is on ESPN2 at 5 p.m.

It's hardly an original thought, this idea of transforming a sumo wrestler into an NHL goalie, as we put forth in Sunday's Daily News column that focused on the new book by Todd Gallagher called "Andy Roddick Beat Me With a Frying Pan." Suiting up a college goalie with foam padding, Gallagher tried to see what would happen if he made a morbedly obese man play goalie (see above) against an NHL team (in this case, it was members of the Washington Capitals during a practice). He also had sumo wrestlers take part in drills with the L.A. Avengers of the Arena Football League to see if they had a future as an offensive lineman.
As for sumos as NHL goalies, we recall an episode of “West Wing” back in 2001, where Sam (Rob Lowe) was blathering on to Josh (Bradley Whitford) after watching the Washington Capitals lose that “if I owned a hockey team . . . I’d hire a sumo wrestler. I’d give him a uniform, transportation, 500 bucks a week to sit in the goal, eat a ham sandwich, and enjoy the game. My team would never get scored on.”
That’s right about the time Charles Wang bought the New York Islanders. Wang, who moved to Queens in New York from Beijing when he was 8, suggested to then team-general manager Mike Milbury upon buying the team in 2000 that he look into finding a sumo to play goalie. Milbury’s response was to take 6-foot-1, 210-pound Rick DiPietro with the first pick of the ’00 NHL draft and eventually sign him to a $67.5 million contract that takes him through – seriously – 2021.
When we asked around to some of our hockey people around town their thoughs on whether a sumo could make it as a goalie, the reaction was predictably sour. Most said they thought it would affect the integrity of the game.
Bob Miller, the Kings' Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer, is one who's open minded about it.
"Perhaps you've hit on a wonderful idea for the Kings' problems in goal," he wrote back in an email. "I agree, I don't know why a team doesnt just put someone the size of a sumo wrestler in front of the net and tell him to stay put....don't leave that net to play the puck. Talk about having nowhere to shoot."
We'll give Gallagher the last word. Again.
"Some sumo wrestlers are incredibly quick," he said. "But no matter how big a person is, you're probably still better off with someone smaller and quicker."
Then again, with all the sumo scandals going in Japan these days ... read about it yourself.

By DAVE GOLDBERG
Associated Press
Commissioner Roger Goodell and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spent 20 minutes or so this week trying to sell an idea that the NFL hasn’t had to try and sell for almost 40 years: that it has a product worth televising.
In this case, the subject is the Culver City-based NFL Network, which four years into its existence is about 30 percent behind where it thought it would be when it began operations. It’s in 35 million homes nationwide instead of the 50 million Goodell acknowledges the NFL thought it would have at this point.
Why? Because some of the nation’s largest cable companies continue to balk at the league’s request that they show it on their basic tier.

Hollywood has always had its hands in making sports films, going back to when Harold Lloyd was doing crazy things with nutty props, through a bunch of crazies trying to pass off themselves as "The Comebacks." Many of the teams are based on real-life squads, but the characters portraying the athlete are usually fictional, and thus, are a product of the Southern California creative minds. And, they each have their own numbers connected to them.
As a post-script to the series on the All-Time Southern California sports roster, we have an additional ist of numbers that are most connected to movie characters created by people living among us (some, real players, of course, played by actors):

Our pick of all the movie numbers:

It's officially over: Double zero to ninety nine have been chosen. Now, please, state your case as to who was more deserving and who wasn't. Results will be included in a future column:

No. 99:
Our pick:
==Wayne Gretzky, Kings (1988-'96)

No. 98:
Our pick:
==Parnelli Jones, motorsports

No. 97:
Our pick:
==Jeremy Roenick, Kings (2005-06)

No. 96:
Our pick:
==Darrell Russell, USC football (1994-'96)

No. 95:
Our pick:
==Jamir Miller, UCLA football (1991-93)

No. 94:
Our pick:
==Kenechi Udeze, USC football ('00-'03)

No. 93:
Our pick:
==Greg Townsend, Raiders (1983-'93)

No. 92:
Our pick:
==Rick Tocchet, Kings (1994-'96)

No. 91:
Our pick:
== Kevin Greene, Rams (1985-'92)

No. 90:
Our pick:
==Larry Brooks, Rams (1972-'82)

No. 89:
Our pick:
==Fred Dryer, Rams (1972-'81)

No. 88 :
Our pick:
==Pat Curran, Rams (1969-'74)

No. 87:
Our pick:
==Danny Farmer, UCLA football (1995-'99)

No. 86:
Our pick:
==Marlin McKeever, USC football (1958-'60), Rams ('61-'66, '71-'72)

No. 85:
Our pick:
==Jack Youngblood, Rams (1971-'84)

No. 84:
Our pick:
==Jerry Robinson, UCLA football (1975-'78)

No. 83:
Our pick:
==Ted Hendricks, Raiders (1982-'83, wearing it in Oakland since 1975)

No. 82:
Our pick:
==Greg Hopkins, Avengers (2002-'06)

No. 81:
Our pick:
==Tim Brown, Raiders ('88-'95, continued wearing number in Oakland through '03)

No. 80:
Our pick:
==Donn Moomaw, UCLA football (1950-'52)

No. 79:
Our pick:
==Jonathan Ogden, UCLA football (1992-'95)

No. 78:
Our pick:
==Jackie Slater, Rams (1976-'94)

No. 77:
Our pick:
==Anthony Munoz, USC football (1976-'79)

No. 76:
Our pick:
==Rosey Grier, Rams (1963-'66)

No. 75:
Our pick:
==Deacon Jones, Rams (1961-'71)

No. 74:
Our pick:
==Merlin Olsen, Rams (1962-'76)

No. 73:
Our pick:
==Dennis Rodman, Lakers (1999)

No. 72:
Our pick:
==Don Mosebar, USC football (1979-'82), Raiders (1983-'95)

No. 71:
Our pick:
==Joe Scibelli, Rams (1961-'75)

No. 70:
Our pick:
==Harry Smith, USC football (1937-'39)

No. 69:
Our pick:
==Chad Overhauser, UCLA football (1994-'97)

No. 68:
Our pick:
==Mike McKeever, USC football (1958-'60)

No. 67:
Our pick:
==Duval Love, UCLA football (1981-'84), Rams ('85-'91)

No. 66:
Our pick:
==Bruce Matthews, USC football (1980-'82)

No. 65:
Our pick:
==Tom Mack, Rams (1966-'78)

No. 64:
Our pick:
==Jack Reynolds, Rams (1970-'80, also wore No. 54)

No. 63:
Our pick:
==Mike McDonald Rams ('83-'84, '86-'91)

No. 62:
Our pick:
==Bill Bain, Rams (1979-'85)

No. 61:
Our pick:
==Rich Saul, Rams (1970-'81)

No. 60:
Our pick:
==Clay Matthews, USC football (1974-'77)

No. 59:
Our pick:
==Bob Brudzinski, Rams, (1977-80)

No. 58:
Our pick:
==Isiah Robertson, Rams (1971-78)

No. 57:
Our pick:
==Francisco Rodriguez, Angels ('02- )

No. 56:
Our pick:
==Jarrod Washburn, Angels (1998-'05)

No. 55:
Our pick:
==Orel Hershiser, Dodgers (1983-'94, 2000)

No. 54:
Our pick:
==Marques Johnson, UCLA basketball (1973-'77)

No. 53:
Our pick:
==Don Drysdale, Dodgers (1958-'69, with his first two seasons in Brooklyn)

No. 52:
Our pick:
==Keith Wilkes, UCLA basketball (1971-'74); Jamaal Wilkes, Lakers (1977-'85), Clippers ('85-'86)

No. 51:
Our pick:
==Randy Cross, UCLA football (1972-75)

No. 50:
Our pick:
==Jimmie Reese, Angels coach (1974-'94), PCL Los Angeles Angels ('33-'36)

Here are links to our individual number debates we've posted so far, with our choice for ownership:

No. 49:
Our pick:
==Tom Niedenfuer, Dodgers (1981-'87)

No. 48:
Our pick:
==Ramon Martinez, Dodgers (1988-'98)

No. 47:
Our pick:
==LeRoy Irvin, Rams (1980-'89)

No. 46:
Our pick:
==Todd Christensen, Raiders (1982-'88, started wearing it in Oakland in '79)

No. 45:
Our pick:
==A.C. Green, Lakers (1985-'93, '99-'00)

No. 44:
Our pick:
==Jerry West, Lakers (1960-'74 as a player; '76-'79 as a coach, '82-'01 as the general manager)

No. 43:
Our pick:
==Troy Palamalu, USC football ('99-'02)

No. 42:
Our pick:
==James Worthy, Lakers (1982-'94)

No. 41:
Our pick:
==Glenn Davis, Rams (1950-'51)

No. 40:
Our pick:
==Elroy Hirsch, Rams ('49-'57)

No. 39:
Our pick:
==Sam Cunningham, USC football (1970-'72)

No. 38:
Our pick:
==Eric Gagne, Dodgers (2001-06) (also wore No. 48 in '99-'00)

No. 37:
Our pick:
==Lester Hayes, Raiders ('82-'86, started in Oakland in '77)

No. 36:
Our pick:
==Bo Belinsky, Angels ('62-'64)

No. 35:
Our pick:
==Sidney Wicks, UCLA basketball ('68-'71)

No. 34:
Our pick:
==Fernando Valenzuela, Dodgers (1980-'90)

No. 33:
Our pick:
==Lew Alcindor, UCLA basketball (1966-'69), Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Lakers (1975-'89)

No. 32:
Our pick:
==Magic Johnson, Lakers (1979-'91, '96 as a player, '94 as a coach)

No. 31:
Our pick:
==Mike Piazza, Dodgers ('93-'98, also wore No. 25 in '92)

No. 30:
Our pick:
==Nolan Ryan, Angels (1972-'79)

No. 29:
Our pick:
==Eric Dickerson, Rams (1983-'87), Raiders ('92)

No. 28:
Our pick:
==Anthony Davis, USC football ('72-'74), Southern California Sun ('75), USFL Express ('83)

No. 27:
Our pick:
==Vladimir Guerrero, Angels (2003- )

No. 26:
Our pick:
==Jon Arnett, USC football (1954-'56), Rams ('57-'63)

No. 25:
Our pick:
==Gail Goodrich, UCLA basketball ("63-'65), Lakers ('66-'68, '71-'76)

No. 24:
Our pick:
==Kobe Bryant, Lakers (2006- )

No. 23:
Our pick:
==Eric Karros, Dodgers (1991-'02)

No. 22:
Our pick:
==Elgin Baylor, Lakers (1961-'72)

No. 21:
Our pick:
==Michael Cooper, Lakers (1978-'90)

No. 20:
Our pick:
==Luc Robitaille, Kings (1986-'94, 1997-'01, 2003-'06)

No. 19:
Our pick:
==Jim Gilliam, Dodgers (1958-'78, including five prior years in Brooklyn)

No. 18:
Our pick:
==Dave Taylor, Kings (1977-'94)

No. 17:
Our pick:
==Billy Kilmer, UCLA football (1958-'60)

No. 16:
Our pick:
==Gary Beban, UCLA football (1965-'67)

No. 15
Our pick:
==Ann Meyers, UCLA basketball (1976-'79)

No. 14:
Our pick:
==Mike Scioscia, Dodgers (1980-'92) Dodgers coach ('97-'98) and Angels manager (2000- )

No. 13:
Our pick:
==Wilt Chamberlain, Lakers (1968-'73)

No. 12:
Our pick:
==Charles White, USC football (1976-'79), Rams (1985-88)

No. 11:
Our pick:
==Matt Leinart, USC football (2002-05)

No. 10:
Our pick:
==Ron Cey, Dodgers (1971-'82)

No. 9:
Our pick:
==Lisa Leslie, Sparks (1997- )

No. 8:
Our pick:
==Kobe Bryant, Lakers (1996 to 2006)

No. 7:
Our pick:
==Bob Waterfield, UCLA football and basketball (1941, '42, '44); Rams (1946-'51)

No. 6:
Our pick:
==Steve Garvey, Dodgers (1969-'82)

No. 5:
Our pick:
==Reggie Bush, USC football (2003-'05)

No. 4:
Our pick:
==Rob Blake, Kings (1989-01, 2006- )

No. 3:
Our pick:
==Carson Palmer, USC football (’98-’02)

No. 2:
Our pick:
==Tommy Lasorda, Dodgers manager (1977-'96)

Who's No. 1? Our choice is pretty simple:

No. 1:
Our pick:
==Rod Dedeaux, USC baseball coach (1942-'86)

As we stated our goal in today's Daily News column about trying to compile the all-time roster of Southern California athletes, it's not always clear who has ownership to a particular number until you see the list of candidates over the years.

To start this project off, you need to hit rock bottom.
The candidates for the numbers that are low as you can get:

No. 00:
Our pick:
==Benoit Benjamin, Clippers ('85-'91) and Lakers (28 games in '93).

A sidebar to Sunday's column on the All-Time Southern California sports roster is the mystery surrounding Jackie Robinson's career at UCLA:

Jackie Robinson's No. 42 might be the most well-known number in American sports. But since his Dodgers' career was confined all to Brooklyn, what digits are most attached to him while playing in Southern California?

At UCLA, where he attended from 1939 to the spring of 1941, he wore No. 18 in basketball, No. 28 in football and in baseball ... no one's quite sure.

He only played baseball one season - 1940 - sporting a .097batting average. There are photos of him in uniform, but nothing to show his number.

UCLA's sports information department can't find any evidence of it. The Dodgers, and Baseball Hall of Fame's research department in Cooperstown, N.Y., didn't produce anything. Neither did a dig through the Amateur Athletic Foundation nor the Pasadena City library archives.

Employees at the Jackie Robinson Foundation finally were asked to quiz Rachel Robinson on it. She replied: I don't know.

For now, it remains an iconic, and ironic, mystery.

The column from Sunday's Daily News to launch the question to find the all-time Southern California sports roster (because you know it'll be deleted or lost on the website somewhere within days:

PLAY THE NUMBERS GAME: Who in Southern California sports history has ownership to the numbers 00 through 99? Name your picks at our Reader Response blog, and see how they stack up againsts ours at Tom Hoffarth's Farther Off the Wall!

One of the first things O.J. Mayo did when he committed to attending USC on a basketball scholarship was ask for No. 32.

It was available.

"My favorite player was Magic Johnson and I've always worn it," said Mayo, who took the floor for his first official practice at Midnight Madness at the Galen Center on Friday. "He's probably the best player ever to play the game. He could do everything on the court and made his teammates better."

One of the first things Kevin Love did when he committed to attending UCLA on a basketball scholarship was ask for No. 42.

"Growing up I always loved the number because my dad (Stan) was best friends with Connie Hawkins when he played on the Lakers (in the mid-'70s)," said Love, who spent his early morning hours last Friday at Pauley Pavilion. "I have been wearing the number as early as middle school and continued to wear it throughout high school."

It wasn't readily available.

At the intersection of sports and entertainment, Joe Buck is signaling for a left hand turn. He has to wait. Dennis Miller is trying to make it through the yellow light in an unmarked car.
Fox, the network that once gave Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers and Magic Johnson a short-lived talk show vehicle that predictably couldn’t turn into the spin as it crashed and burned, will get the first look at Buck’s pilot to host a weekly chat series that he says he can do when he’s not busy doing play-by-play on baseball or football or (remember?) bass fishing. There’s some skit material already.
“It’s an unsupervised show that we’ve put together and we’re really happy with it, and want to see if anybody else is,” Buck told the St. Louis Dispatch. The show will be “a little bit of everything, from sketch comedy to interviews.” Some of the comedy has already been fleshed out of Buck’s appearances on Budweiser TV spots with Leon, the ego-maniac athlete.
Buck, who’s always said that Johnny Carson was his real TV hero, co-produced the pilot with former “Saturday Night Live” writer Matt Piedmont. Paul Rudd and David Spade are the guests, and a New York cab driver named Abebe from Ethiopia serves as the sidekick. Buck, back doing baseball on tonight’s Game 1 of the ALCS with Tim McCarver from Boston that leads into Fox’s coverage of the World Series, is waiting to show it to Fox Entertainment division execs in hope of landing it somewhere, sometime, some how.
Meanwhile, Miller, the former “Saturday Night Live” player who when last seen in sports circles was trying to figure out how to draw circles on the “Monday Night Football” telestrator for two seasons prior to John Madden’s arrival, has been given the green light for a show on Versus called “Sports Unfiltered with Dennis Miller,” debuting Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. right after the network’s NHL telecast.
Built much like the show he once did for HBO and then later tried again on CNBC, the unfiltered Miller hopes he doesn’t come out as Miller Lite in this genre again.
“I’ll call ‘em as I see ‘em and hopefully I’ll see ‘em better than the home plate ump in the San Diego Padres-Colorado Rockies tiebreaker game,” Miller said in a statement.
Arthur Smith’s production company, A. Smith & Co., will do the show from Santa Barbara, Miller’s home base. Miller currently hosts a daily, three-hour radio show syndicated by Westwood One (aired locally on KRLA-AM 870 at 6 p.m.). He also started co-hosting a show “Grand Slam” on the Game Show Network last month.
"The nice thing about Dennis is that his name alone should drive a lot of eyeballs," said Versus senior VP of programming and production Marc Fein.
The template for the show is to include his trademark “rant” monologue, interviews and a mock sportscast.
“This is a great complement to our live sports productions and is a major step toward the next level of our original programming evolution,” said Versus president Gavin Harvey.

Following up to today's Daily News media column on NFL pregame showsand sidebar on Dan Fouts, the rest of the stuff:

You think the folks in Rancho Palos Verdes who've been driven nuts by Donald Trump's illegal flag pole and hedges around a driving range that blocks the ocean view at his Trump National Golf Club/Los Angeles feel any connection to those in Scotland who don't understand yet how he operates:

By BEN McCONVILLE
Associated Press Writer
EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Donald Trump's plans to build "the worlds greatest golf course" on a stretch of remote and stunning Scottish coastline are drawing opposition because the land is home to some of the country's rarest birds.
The billionaire property developer aims to turn sand dunes at the Menie Estate, 15 miles north of Aberdeen, into a $2 billion golf resort with a pair of 18-hole courses, a luxurious 450-bedroom hotel, 950 vacation homes, 36 golf villas and 500 upscale homes.
Standing in his way are the feathered residents of the beach and rolling dunes — seven species of endangered rare birds including Skylarks and breeding waders, particularly Lapwings and Redshank.
Local residents in the quiet nearby village of Balmedie are also up in arms at the proposed resort, branding it a "gated community" with too many houses which would spoil the bucolic atmosphere of the area.
Concerned that his investment is about to be pitched into the rough, Trump flew into Scotland this week to set out his plans ahead of a crunch meeting later this month by local council members. He warned he would drop the project if the houses were rejected and claimed the course would improve the local environment.
"Each and every golf course I have built has got awards for environmental protection, and I do not think anyone has got as many awards as we have." Trump told reporters at a press conference on the estate. "I believe environmentally, when we are finished, the course will be better environmentally than before we started.
"It's possible I could lose a great deal of money. It would cost a lot less money if we did not care about the environment."

The Gretzkys are moving out of Thousand Oaks, and isn't that a bummer for the local economy.
Wayne and Janet sold their roomy 10,800-square-foot Lake Sherwood home, along with the two guest houses and a carriage house with a great view of the Sherwood Country Club course, for about $18.5 million the other day and say they want to move the family near his new winery in Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. He also keeps a residence in Arizona since he does coach and co-own the Phoenix Coyotes for the time being. That's the principal residence for him, the wife and the five kids.
As for the buyer? That'd be Lenny Dykstra, the former Mets and Phillies center fielder, who nailed his a car wash in Simi Valley that must be doing well with his investments. As well as the stock swapping advice he gives regularily on TheStreet.com.
Anyway, the Gretzkys need to get rid of a bunch of stuff that filled the rooms. What better way than to donate it to charity. And Oaks Christian School's baseball team will benefit.
On Saturday, Oct. 27, at 7 a.m. at the school's Bedrosian Pavilion (31749 La Tienda Drive, Westlake Village) , the Wayne and Janet Gretzky estate sale takes place -- featuring home furnishings, clothes, off-road vehicles, plus some memorabilia they had laying around the house. All proceeds go to building a new 300-seat baseball stadium (to be shared with the Westlake High team), plus funding programs at Carden Conjeo School.

So who's stupidier now?
Question 4 in last night's "The Challenge" by Fred Roggin on KNBC-Channel 4 asked which former Kings goalie was a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
There were two right answers.
Terry Sawchuk and Grant Fuhr were given as two of the four choices. I took Sawchuck, who played 36 games for the '67-'68 Kings and was inducted in '71. The "right" answer was Fuhr, who played 14 games in '94-95 and was inducted in '03.
So far, I've not received any notification of correction or recourse.
Not that it would have mattered much in my final score. I was given a measly 135 points for last night's game, not making the Top 100. I fell from 19th to 23rd with 845 points, still ahead of Richel Roggin (72nd with 710 points).
Here's what I'll do with Richel: I'm taking next Sunday off. Going out of town. See if you can catch up to me. I'll take a goose egg to make things fair.
And here's what I'll do with Fred: Give me the right answer and the points.

UPDATE:
Show producer Steve Leveton reports at 2 p.m. Monday:
There has been a resolution to Question 4. Since there were two right answers, those players who answered C - Terry Sawchuk will be awarded the correct amount of points based on the time they responded to the question. Those players who answered D - Grant Fuhr have already received their points for a correct response.
Points still haven't been updated. Stay tuned.

FINAL UPDATE:
New points have been awarded. I picked up an extra 35, so my total from this was 170, which still didn't get me in the Top 100 for the week, but I moved up to a tie for 20th on the leaderboard with 880, increasing my lead over Mrs. Roggin by 170 points.

Meanwhile, here's how it went down:

I'm not good at pimping myself, and this may be the only time you see me mention it, but if you happen to be in the bookstores this month and see the new "Tom Kelly's Tales from the USC Trojans" that I co-authored (really, transcribed and organized), give it a read. Right there in the store. Then put it back so someone else can read it.
My only regret is there isn't a CD included because to hear Tom's voice tell these stories of his career, his recollections of Trojan history, and all the other stuff he did was pretty cool. The photos that Tom supplied for the book are priceless.
Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com have it listed as coming out in November, which technically is true as far as wide distribution, but it's already in the USC bookstore on campus, and copies were sold (and autographed) before the USC-Washington State game two weeks ago. Upcoming book signings include before the USC games on Nov. 3 and Dec. 1 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. outside the Coliseum in the 710 Experience area (where the radio show goes live and ex-players do signings). There's also a bunch at some Barnes and Noble stores set from Nov. to Dec. in time for Christmas, and Tom has committed to speaking at some various Trojan Clubs around the area, where he'll bring copies of the book to sign.
Sorry, no Pete Arbogast book coming out in the near future, but someone could do a "best of" blog collections if they're able to collect the really, really funny ones and ... wait, I got an idea here...

I also noticed in the editing process of Kelly's book that some chapters were cut out for space reasons.
In the chapter where collegues, friends and family do kind of a "celebrity roast" of Kelly, telling their stories of him, three entries were snipped. My apologizies, but I didn't realize it until after the fact.
Below, they're included. Print 'em out and tuck 'em inside the chapter when you put it back on the store shelf:

(Tina Birch/Daily News Staff Photographer)

“The good thing about doing a show in L.A. is that I’m done at 9 a.m.,” Dan Patrick was telling his audience on Tuesday morning, the second day he’d been on the new job of his 6-to-9 a.m. show emanating this week from the Clear Channel studios of KLAC-AM (570) in Burbank.
“The bad thing about doing a show in L.A. is that I’m done at 9 a.m., and you don’t know what to do,” he continued.
Roaming the streets of Burbank looking to get something done, he wandered into a SuperCuts next to a Vons super market.
“I sat in the chair and I told this Russian woman, ‘aw, just take a little bit off.’ And she just started going. I said, ‘wait, wait, wait,’ and she said, ‘you will like.’ I said, ‘uh, I don’t know about this.’ She’d already done half my head.”
As he retold the story Wednesday, he took off his golf cap to show – yes, it was cut pretty short. And the cap was probably a good idea.
Lucky for him, it was radio.
“I couldn’t walk out without tipping her, but I knew someone might recognize me,” he finished the story on the radio. “But I lied and said, ‘I’m Bob Costas.”
Following up on our interview with Patrick in today’s Daily News, here’s more outtakes from his latest adventure in to radioland, a little more than a month after he’d signed off from ESPN Radio and an 18-year career at the giant satellite dish farm in Bristol, Conn.:

Q: On Monday's first show, you got scolded a bit by Phil Jackson for interrupting him. Is that an omen for how this show is going?
A: "I was talking to him about relating to his players as he gets older and the separation lenghtens. He started talking and it dawned on me that he has kids about the ages of his players and I wondered if that helped, and I interjected, and he came back and said, ‘before you interrupted me,’ and I was like, ‘well, I just lost some playing time.’ But I feel I've had a good relationship with Phil, as well as Pete (Carroll) and (Mike) Scioscia. If you’re friendly with them and you get something out of somebody, that's good, but if there’s a little friction or tension, that's also good. People this early in the morning listen closer to the radio. If’ it’s chummy and you’re great, I have to push some buttons… I want to get opinions out of you maybe others aren’t getting, but I'm getting it in a different way."

Q: What's the benefit of starting the show in L.A. this week?
A: "This was sort of a way to recriprocate to KLAC and let them know I value this market, as well as the topics here. When I was doing the show opposite Jim Rome and the mindset is that you have to be local, our ratings were better than Jim’s but this is a city that loves stars. You include them in the story but acknowledge they love star power. That’s how I view this city. Always great storylines, but they like to be in other storylines."

Q: In the past, your trips to L.A. were spurred on by appearances in an Adam Sandler movie. None of that this time?
A: "I've been pretty low key. Sandler wanted to watch football on Sunday, but I had too much to worry about for the first show. I did meet up with Chi McBride, the actor now in "Pushing Dasies." He's a great guy to hang out with. The problem I'm having on this trip to L.A. is that I'll go to Mortons at 5:45 and ask, 'Can we be done by 7:30?' It’s weird with time element. I'm killing time watching Springer, Oprah, Brett Michaels' show on VH1, 'Rock of Love.' I didn't realize Springer's bodyguard Steve had his own show now."

Moving on:

Save the date: On Thursday, Oct. 18 at 11 p.m., Spike TV will carry the Joey Chestnut vs. Kobayashi (plus other gluttons) match in the Major League Eating chicken wing and potato wedge consuption contest that'll happen Tuesday in Las Vegas from the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas. How Spike wrestled this from ESPN defies explanation, although Spike did carry the St. Patrick's Day Chowdown last March 17, which featured corn beef and cabbage, green donuts and jalapenos on the menu.
Meanwhile, Rick Reilly’s column in the current (Oct. 8) issue of Sports Illustrated centers around him taking Chestnut to Dodger Stadium to sit in the right-field "All You Can Eat" pavilion. Reilly says Chestnut was able to fire down 25 hot dogs, but he apologized because the day before, he ate 19 pounds of grits in another contest in Louisiana.
Still Chestnut ate what would have amounted to $151 of food had it not been included in the $35 ticket.
The headline on Reilly's column about Chestnut: "The Sinatra of Franks."

The certificate came in the mail probably Tuesday, to redeem for a pair of tickets to the Clippers' Oct. 18 exhibition game against ... does it really matter? It's the reward for a top 10 finish in last week's "The Challenge" interactive trivia game that Fred Roggin throws up on the KNBC Channel 4 screen for an hour after the NFL game.
The certificate from Barry's Tickets has no cash value. I'm supposed to call and have them shipped to me when they become available.
Turns out, I can't go to the game anyway. Does anyone want the tickets? Free admission to Staples Center for a meaningless NBA game.
Email me and we'll make arrangements.
I had no interest in the Giants-Eagles game on Channel 4 Sunday night either. We TiVo'd the HBO East Coast feed of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at 7 p.m., then watched it at about 8 o'clock. I was almost finished with the latest episode where Larry has this problem with his bathroom breaks and Richard Lewis' girlfriend and getting wacked with a towel by his barber for being insensative when I flipped over to see that the game had ended, and yadda, yadda, yadda, I couldn't get my computer up and running fast enough before Fred's version of sports "Jeopardy!" got fired up.
I saw Petros rockin' his Aquaman shirt underneath a blazer as I tried to reboot the Internet machine. No good. Tried again. Something's goofy. Wouldn't kick over. I needed jumper cables or something.
It was unfolding like an episode of "Curb." My language was about as clean as Jeff's wife. The neighbors might have thought I was doing demowork on a Sunday night.
I finally got it going as the first question came on the screen. Hit the pavement running and, in true Larry David fashion, had a miserable time, finishing 4 for 8 (with only really one I knew for sure and got full credit) for a career-low 80 points and didn't even make the top 100.
I felt like Brent Tomko heading into the bedroom for the night.
For the season, I've fallen from seventh to 19th place with 710 points, 175 points out of first but still comfortably ahead of Richel Roggin.
So it goes: