Moral Is: Be Nice, or Someone Will Deliver Bad News

Will Bush used to deliver the morning newspaper to former Georgetown coach John Thompson. Now Bush is a Big East official.

Before Thompson resigned as coach recently, Bush ejected him with two technical fouls.

Said Thompson, “Will was my paperboy at one time. I think familiarity creates a problem sometimes. You go out of your way to show you’re grown up.”

Just asking, John, but did you ever tip Will?

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Trivia time: On Jan. 2, Cal State Northridge rallied against Northern Arizona at Flagstaff only to lose by 17 points in overtime.

What is the NCAA Division I record for the widest winning margin in an overtime game?

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New image: Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post on the wholesale changes affecting the defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls:

“The Bulls will end up dismantled so badly, they ought to hoist a Marlins’ banner to the top of United Center.”

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Can’t get rid of ‘em: With new salary limits in the NBA, Atlanta Hawk President Stan Kasten says, “I’d like to think agents are no longer useful, but that’s not the case.”

Agent Keith Glass agrees: “We’re like rats; we adapt.”

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No-respect spin: Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe: “There is a phenomenon in sport known as the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome, and the newly crowned champions of the National Football Conference are right now its official poster boy.

” . . . Get ready for two weeks of venting on the part of the Atlanta Falcons. A team proclaiming to the world that it has been subject to outrageous disrespect and lack of appreciation has been pretty much business as usual for about two decades now, and most of the time the accusations are bogus.

“This may be the one time the team in question has a point.”

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Incentives: From comedy writer Earl Hochman: “Miami Dolphin Coach Jimmy Johnson agreed to stay on for two reasons: the hiring of assistant coach Dave Wannstedt, and the promise of a year’s supply of hair spray.”

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Ah, the field edge: Jerry Magee in the San Diego Union-Tribune: “As for the Super Bowl, what I’m thinking is horses for courses. The Falcons have been styled for artificial surfaces. They’ve been treading on almost nothing else, having gone 12-0 in domes [8-0 at home, 4-0 on the road].

“In Miami on Jan. 31, in the Denver Broncos they’re going to be engaging a grass team on a grass field. Give me the horses, meaning the Broncos, big.”

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Trivia answer: Nebraska defeated Iowa State, 85-67, a spread of 18 points, on Dec. 30, 1949.

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And finally: Ray Ratto in the San Francisco Examiner on Super Bowl hype:

“There will be daily watches to see whether Shannon Sharpe or Jamal Anderson can say more plainly silly things, and in case you have to be somewhere for the next two weeks, with so many cameras from so many nations poised in their faces each day, we can declare it a tie now, so let’s drop it, OK?”