Sideline chatter

Are you ready for some goofball?

It won't make anyone forget the Pentagon Papers, but Eric Immerman of ESPN.com claims he has laid his hands on the marketing slogans for all 32 NFL teams this season.

A few samples (and don't blame Daniel Ellsberg for this one):

Atlanta Falcons: "Helping Displaced Northerners Avoid Truck-Related Sports Since 1966."

Carolina Panthers: "Zero To 60 Points In 12 Games Flat!"

Denver Broncos: "Hey, Look, We've Got Plummer's Butt."

Green Bay Packers: "Millions Of Animals Were Harmed In The Making Of This Team Nickname."

Houston Texans: "We Still Have That New-Carr Smell."

New York Giants: "Snap. Tackle. Flop!"

Philadelphia Eagles: "Kids Under 12 Arraigned Free!"

Seattle Seahawks: "We're Okeafor Now, Thanks."

Washington Redskins: "J-E-T-S -- Jets, Jets, Jets!"

He's the Sultan of stat

Bill Arnold, the statistics guru, went to his basement and didn't come out until he came up with Bob Hope's lifetime linescore: In Hope's 100 years, major-league baseball totaled 157,536 regular-season games, 1,039 postseason games and 213,249 regular-season home runs.

Which begs the question: Doesn't this guy have a lawn to mow or something?

On the cutting edge

Speaking of which: In case you missed it over the weekend, Brinsbury College in West Sussex hosted the British Lawn Mower Racing Championships.

It might be the world's only sport in which it pays to cut corners.

That's our dinghy Dennis

Orange County sheriffs impounded Dennis Rodman's 47-foot speedboat after the former NBA star moored it at a private dock and refused to move it.

Defense attorneys are expected to argue that not only had Rodman established position but that when officers arrived he was merely waiting for an outlet pass.

Their cup runneth away

Panic broke out at the New Jersey Devils' offices last week, when the Stanley Cup went missing for nearly 24 hours.

A frantic call to Toronto did no good in the cup search, since the Maple Leafs were quick to point out that they hadn't seen the thing in 36 years.

"But maybe if you gave us a description ... "

Roll the audio

Canadian fencer Sherraine MacKay, to the Edmonton Sun, after succumbing to Cuba's Eimei Gomez -- and the Dominican heat -- in the Pan Am Games final: "To find my body temperature, you'd have to shove a turkey thermometer in my mouth."

Nancy Plant, aunt of British Open champ Ben Curtis, to The Associated Press on what to buy Curtis' fiancee for her bridal shower: "What do you get for someone who has just won $1.1 million? Do I still get them a gift certificate at Target?"

George Foreman, to the Washington Post, on why he named all six of his sons George: "Because if I was going to be a successful boxer, I might suffer from memory loss."

NBC's Jay Leno, on the 92-degree heat in Los Angeles: "It was so hot today Kobe Bryant bought his wife a $4 million air conditioner."

Going for the old

Seizing the opportunity to tap into the senior-citizen ticket-buying market, the Los Angeles Clippers have signed 38-year-old Olden Polynice. Phase 2, we hear, will be a move into the Mighty Ducks' arena.

And all because some genius in the team's marketing department dreamed up the slogan, "On Olden's Pond."

-- Dwight Perry, Seattle Times