Dorrell Can See What Will and Won’t Hurt

UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell, the guest speaker Friday at the Pasadena Quarterbacks Club luncheon, took questions from the audience.

The first one was: “Are those cramps that Maurice Drew was suffering against Washington going to come back?�

Said Dorrell: “I hope he has those cramps every week, if that’s how he is going to play.�

Trivia time: In 1982, UCLA won a recruiting battle with what school for Dorrell’s services as a wide receiver?

Obvious answer: Dorrell, asked if UCLA’s defensive line would improve and mature as the season progressed, said, “That’s the plan.�

High stepping: Drew, who ran for 322 yards and five touchdowns against Washington, has let it be known that he took ballet lessons as a youngster.

If Mikhail Baryshnikov wasn’t in his mid-50s, who knows, maybe he’d be getting some football scholarship offers.

Housecleaning: Iowa plays at Michigan today, and when the Hawkeyes played there two years ago, they won, 34-9.

Iowa linebacker Chad Greenway remembers a mostly empty Michigan Stadium at the end of the game.

“It’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in anything I’ve done -- seeing the Big House completely empty except for Hawkeye fans,� he said. “It was just amazing to see how we cleaned that place out.�

Sad but true: Boxing promoter Bob Arum, as quoted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal about all the NBA stars who showed up at the MGM Grand Garden Arena to see the Bernard Hopkins-Oscar De La Hoya fight: “I had a better basketball team at the fight than they had in Athens.�

Looking back: On this day in 1974, Mike Austin, 64, hit the longest golf drive ever recorded -- 515 yards. It came on the 450-yard, par-four fifth hole at the Winterwood Golf Course in Las Vegas during the U.S. National Seniors Open. Austin, a longtime teaching pro in Studio City, is 94 and living in Woodland Hills.

Add long drive: Skeptics say a 515-yard drive is impossible. But it is in the Guinness Book of World Records and is also verified in a recently published book by Phil Reed, “In Search of the Greatest Golf Swing,� which profiles Austin.

In Reed’s book, Chandler Harper, who was a playing partner of Austin’s when he hit his monster drive, says he has no doubt about it being that far. It ended up on a tee box 65 yards past the pin.

“We stepped it off, and took big steps back to the center of the green,� Harper says.

Trivia answer: San Diego State, which is UCLA’s next opponent a week from today. Dorrell was a star wide receiver at Helix High in La Mesa.

And finally: San Francisco reader Janice Hough, noting that Shawn Green is not playing today against the San Francisco Giants because of Yom Kippur, says, “In related news, the Dodgers have announced that after extensive research they have discovered Barry Bonds is Jewish.�

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Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].