Keeping Score

The Holiday Inn chain in Britain is offering a human bed-warming service at three of its hotels. Tiger Woods is believed to have booked one floor in each place for British Open week . . . Saskatoon StarPhoenix reader TC Chong: “At rehab, when asked what monogamy was, Tiger said, 'Hey, I’ve got some furniture made out of that stuff'.” . . . The Left Coast Sports Babe wonders “if there's any truth to the rumour that Greg Oden and Gilbert Arenas are teaming up for yet another sequel to Naked Gun?” . . . As we first told you in these pages on Dec. 24, the B.C. Lions will hold their CFL training camp at Hillside Stadium prior to each of the next four seasons. This year’s main camp will open here on Sunday, June 6. The Lions open their preseason schedule in Regina against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on June 13. . . .

You may have heard about St. Louis Cardinals fans giving Mark McGwire a standing ovation a few days after his teary confession to using steroids. "Sports fans are incredible,” wrote Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. “They'd cheer for the shark in Jaws to eat the skinny-dipping girl if the shark were wearing their uniform." . . . You have to think that the only person really, really happy to see Toyota in the headlines these days is Tiger Woods. . . . Comedy writer Alan Ray likes the Indianapolis Colts in Sunday’s big game. As he puts it, the Colts are “the Toyota of professional football — no one has been able to stop them." . . .

After the NFL made the claim that it and the New Orleans Saints own the marketing rights to the phrase ‘Who Dat?’, Greg Cote wrote in the Miami Herald: “I am hereby advocating that Warner Communications Inc., parent of DC Comics, sue the NFL because ‘Super Bowl’ infringes on the Superman trademark. Also, Rome called. They want their numerals back.” . . . More from Cote: “Carrie Underwood will perform the national anthem Super Bowl Sunday and Queen Latifah will sing America the Beautiful. How come you never hear anything about King Latifah?” . . . Yes, Ottawa Senators centre Mike Fisher was at the Grammy Awards with Underwood on Sunday. But he didn’t do the red-carpet thing with her because, according to her, she didn't want to "feed him to the wolves this early in the engagement.” Too bad she didn’t let Fisher bring Chris Neil with him. Neil would have taken care of the wolves. . . .

Finally, something about which Warren Cameron and members of the Toronto Maple Leafs Fan Club can get excited. Watch for Dion Phaneuf, now that he has escaped the heavy hand of Calgary Flames head coach Brent Sutter, to turn into a horse on the Toronto blue line. . . . And the Leafs didn’t give up a top six forward or a top two defenceman to get him. . . . By the way, earlier in January, when quizzed about potential trades, here’s what Flames GM Darryl Sutter had to say: “Everything is false. Whoever makes up that stuff is not doing anything. We've worked really hard at building a top young defence in the league and our intention is to keep them so (the rumours are) just from somebody who didn't have anything to do on that day. All that stuff is crap." . . . Of course, it was only a couple of weeks ago when Columbus Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson gave head coach Ken Hitchcock the old vote of confidence. . . .
Rich Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News may be the best football writer on the planet. He did some figuring involving Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre after the NFC championship game and came up with this: “Counting playoffs, Favre has started 309 NFL games. He has avoided interceptions in 111 of them, and his teams won 99 of those games. His winning clip when he doesn’t throw an interception is 89.1 per cent. But Favre threw at least one interception in his other 198 starts. His record in those games is 94-104, a 47.4 per cent clip.” . . . Ouch! . . . First, NBC-TV chose to pay Conan O’Brien something more than US$40 million to disappear for a while. Then, NBC-TV announced it expects to lose more than $200 million on the Vancouver Olympics. To which Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes: "That's why parent company General Electric will be charging $237 for a toaster come March." . . .

It sounds as though Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette isn’t a fan of Hockey Night in Canada’s dog-and-pony show, starring Don Cherry and Ron MacLean. “When Cherry spouts off, everyone knows it's one dunce's opinion,” Todd writes. “MacLean tries to slip his opinions through in the most weasely way, when no one is looking.” . . . After the NBA suspended Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton of the Washington Wizards, TNT analyst Kenny Smith admitted that he wasn’t the least bit surprised. As Smith put it: "The only time you're supposed to bring a gun to the workplace is if you're a police officer or a crook." . . . Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “Scott McCarron calling Phil Mickelson a ‘cheater’ because of the old square-grooved Ping wedges he's using is like one ballplayer calling another one out as a juicer.” . . .

Jeff Blair of The Globe and Mail, wondering who will do the honours at the Vancouver Games: “Rick Hansen or Betty Fox are the obvious choices, if we’re stuck on the insipid notion that, as Canada’s Olympic ambassador, Nancy Greene Raine can’t light the cauldron. So what if she will have already carried the flame? The majority of Canadians appear to have carried the flame at some point.” . . . So I’m thinking that the traffic restrictions that are in place in the Big Smoke for the Olympic Winter Games should just be left as is until the Stanley Cup parade is over. . . . In case you missed it, spring arrived earlier this week. Yes, it did. It got here when I spotted the first Major League Baseball preview magazine in the rack at the grocery store. . . . And, as Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post noted, the New York Yankees soon will be showing up in Florida. "Only two more weeks,” Armstrong wrote, “before pitchers, catchers and butlers report."

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca and gdrinnan.blogspot.com. Keeping Score appears Saturdays.