Skating timers a bit edgy

Don’t ask me why, but whenever I read about a skater’s short program being too long, all I can think of is jumbo shrimp.

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Me, I’d handle the situation the way they do at the Academy Awards. If somebody exceeded the time limit, I’d start playing the theme from “Titanic” or something like that.

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Poor Michelle Kwan. Her program at the worlds ran over by, what, two seconds? If she’d done that at the Oscars, they would have given her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

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News item: NFL might start handing out 15-yard penalties for pre-planned end zone celebrations.

Comment: Worse, if another player tries to place a cell call after scoring a TD, he’ll be charged at operator-assisted rates.

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Former Redskins quarterback Eddie LeBaron, inducted last week into the Bay Area Hall of Fame (for his exploits at Pacific), told this story to Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle:

“I was 12 years old when I went to high school. They wouldn’t let you play until you were 15. That first year, I served as a tackling dummy. Over the summer, I gained 20 pounds, a couple of inches in height — and three years in age. I was the only kid who was 15 three straight years.”

That means — I just looked it up — LeBaron was a mere two weeks past his 20th birthday when the Redskins drafted him in the 10th round in 1950. He was younger, in other words, than Maurice Clarett will be when he’s drafted (presumably) next month — and yet, Clarett’s eligibility has stirred a national debate.

(LeBaron didn’t actually play for the Redskins until the 1952 season, when he was 22. He spent the intervening two years as a lieutenant with the Marines in Korea.)

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Story Continues →