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Namath: Jets would have beaten Colts in 9 of 10

By Dwight Perry
The Seattle Times

Gary Sheffield has the secrets to Yankees' success.

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Dan Marino, doing a quarterbacking Q&A for HBO with Joe Namath, got around to the subject of Namath's famous pregame guarantee before his New York Jets upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl.

Marino: "If the Jets played the Colts in the Super Bowl 10 times, how many times would the Jets have won?" Namath: "They were a great team. No doubt at that. And really, I honest-to-gosh felt this way: If we had played 10 times, the Colts might've won one."

Zinging for the fences

Among the top 10 Yankees strategies for winning the World Series, as read by outfielder Gary Sheffield on "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS:

• "Here's a secret I used when I won the World Series with Florida in '97: in the postseason, give 112 percent.

• "Hideki Matsui taught us some crazy Kung Fu.

• "Hit a home run, and Oprah buys you a new car.

• "Convince Mr. Steinbrenner to spend a little money on this team, for once."
 
It's getting unberrable

Yogi Berra's spirit is alive in the NFL — and it resides in the body of Cosey Coleman, a guard for the 0-3 Buccaneers.

"There's a lot of football left," Coleman told the Tampa Tribune, "but we can't keep coming in here week after week saying, 'There's a lot of football left.' "

Paper quips

• Brooks Melchior of www.sportsbybrooks.com, on NBC's "The Biggest Loser," a proposed reality show in which severely overweight contestants compete to drop the most pounds: "Why don't they combine this show and the beach volleyball reality series and call it 'Beached Volleyball'?

• Steve Schrader of the Detroit Free Press, after Tony Siragusa, Fox Sports' corpulent sideline reporter, called Lions QB Joey Harrington a "champagne and caviar" kind of guy: "Not that we've ever met him, but Tony looks like he might be a beer and pretzels, meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, turkey and dressing, surf and turf, pizza and pasta, nachos and wings, chips and dip, macaroni and cheese, cake and ice cream kind of guy."

• CBS's David Letterman, with a special announcement for Britney Spears fans: "There will be no wedding on Saturday. It's a bye week."

Youth is swerved

The Phoenix-area Pop Warner League, which includes 220 youth football teams and 10,000 players, has canceled its playoffs because of violations of residency and other eligibility rules, the Arizona Republic reported.

Rumor has it that one coach, calling the accusations ludicrous, said he would reserve further comment until after his weekly team meeting at the quarterback's house in Albuquerque.

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com