Ball, Players, Even Coaches, Have Taken Funny Bounces This Season

Lowlights, dark nights and weird sights of Football 1986, as culled from the Dead Season Scrolls:

HIGH SCHOOLS A 24-year-old undercover police officer, posing as a student at Claremont High, made the football team as a defensive end but quit after two weeks of preseason workouts so the school wouldn’t forfeit any games. The team coach, unaware of the ruse, later said sadly, “He’s the best I’d ever seen on the field.”

COLLEGES Talk about face-mask infractions: Oklahoma State running back Thurman Thomas was stung on the lip by a bee.

The chef was not held: Morehead State (Ky.) was stripped of three scholarships because more than the permissible 65 players received free meals the previous year.

Another break for the imports: Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth said that he installed stray bolts in cars while working for General Motors during the summer. Later, he retracted the remark (and the bolts?).

Tulane Coach Mack Brown, on how his players accepted drug tests: “They didn’t mind after they learned they didn’t have to study for them.”

Shouldn’t the press be insulted?: As a penalty for bad behavior, coaches Danny Ford (Clemson) and Bobby Ross (Maryland) were confined to the press box for one game.

Shouldn’t the Akron Zips be insulted?: Cal Coach Joe Kapp unzipped his pants to show his anger over a reporter’s question.

Keeping priorities straight: When some Sun Bowl-bound Washington players asked Coach Don James to curtail one practice so they could study for finals, he told them: No practice, no bowl trip.

The first bowl-recruiting scandal? Ten Alabama players were selected for the Senior Bowl--set in Mobile, Ala.

CBS will be right back to show the final play of the Notre Dame-USC game.

PROS Hinting that quarterback Ken O’Brien holds the ball too long, Jet offensive linemen showed up at training camp with T-shirts that said on the back: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THROW THE BALL.”

A Cincinnati disc jockey, posing as Green Bay Coach Forrest Gregg, contacted Commissioner Pete Rozelle on the phone. It’s no tribute to Gregg that Rozelle didn’t realize it was a joke, even after the caller suggested shortening the field to 50 yards.

Alumnus of the Year: Ex-49er halfback (and Los Angeles County Supervisor) Pete Schabarum was tagged out at the plate in a softball game by a 5-foot 1-inch grandmother, who held on to the ball despite the fact that he knocked her down.

The locker-room attendant was not held: Green Bay defensive end Charles Martin, suspended for roughing up Bear quarterback Jim McMahon, was found in possession of a towel that bore the numbers of four Chicago offensive stars.

San Francisco quarterback Joe Montana lost thousands of fans at midseason--all the men who had been telling their wives they couldn’t do any work around the house because of bad backs.

Best announcement at a game, from referee Ben Dreith, explaining a personal foul: “He was down there, giving the quarterback the business.”

Members of the highest-paid list in the NFL included (1) Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly ($1.5 million per year); 3. Houston quarterback Warren Moon ($1.1 million); 7. (tie) Raider quarterback Marc Wilson ($900,000); and Tampa quarterback Steve Young ($900,000).

Dallas Coach Tom Landry was one of the rap-singers on the team’s video. And the Cowboys (7-9) lost seven of their last eight games to have their name etched on the trophy at the Bottom Ten Hall of Fame, located in the back of Duke’s Tatoo Parlor* in Muscle Beach, Calif.

*A promotional fee has been paid to the Bottom Ten by Duke’s Tatoo Parlor.