He Can Throw for Touchbacks or Touchdowns

By MAL FLORENCE

Jan. 18, 1998 12 AM PT

New York Giant Coach Jim Fassel is a former Stanford quarterback coach who recruited John Elway at Granada Hills High in the late 1970s.

Harvey Araton of the New York Times wrote that once, when Elway was a Stanford freshman, George Seifert, then a Stanford assistant coach, used Elway to simulate kickoffs.

“Elway threw the ball to the five-yard line. Not deep enough, said Seifert. ‘How far can you throw it?’ said Fassel. Elway shrugged and said, ‘A ways.’

“ ‘I told him to throw it as far as he could,’ said Fassel. ‘He threw it out of the end zone, over the fence and past the trees.’ ”

So if you’re in the Denver huddle and Elway says, “Go long,” don’t stop running.

Trivia time: Who holds the Super Bowl record for the longest field goal?

What’s for dessert: Tony Kornheiser in the Washington Post: “The Broncos’ offensive line is giving away significant tonnage to the Packers. Gilbert Brown alone weighs more than half of downtown Denver.

“You knows the Coors ads where you’re instructed to say, ‘Hey, beer man?’ Gilbert Brown could eat the beer man and still have room for the nachos man.”

Sound familiar? “I can make shots, but I can’t sustain a round of golf. I do pretty well on the practice tee, but I can’t take my game from the practice tee to the course.”

An average hacker talking? No, that was 68-year-old Arnold Palmer.

Good thinking: Denver running back Derek Loville on friends and relatives asking him for Super Bowl tickets:

“I have to pay for those tickets, and I think they’re about $275 apiece. So maybe they’ll have a better angle just watching the game at home.”

Just like L.A.: A reader asked this question in the San Francisco Chronicle: “What do NBC and the city of Oakland have in common? Neither has professional football.”

Cheap shot: Jay Leno on the marriage of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn: “He’s 62 and she’s 27. 62-27. Sounds like halftime at a Clipper game.”

Trivia answer: Steve Christie of Buffalo, 54 yards against Dallas in 1994.

And finally: Dan Shaughnessy in the Boston Globe: “Thank God for the Red Sox. Ever cheerless. And now beer-less.

“The Sox open their 1998 season on the West Coast, then come home for the grand Fenway lidlifter on Friday, April 10, against the Seattle Mariners. Since this date represents both Good Friday and the eve of Passover, the Sox have delayed the start of the game until 3:05 p.m. and decreed that there will be no alcoholic beverages sold at Fenway.

“No beer at Fenway? In the words of the immortal Butch from the Cape, ‘The only thing worse than watching these Red Sox is watching them sober.’ ”