Executive Action in NHL Office: Put Foot in Mouth

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has made impressive strides, such as getting his league back on network television, but suffers from a widely held assumption by the old hands:

They think Bettman, a former NBA counsel, and his people don’t know much about hockey.

Wrote the New York Times’ Joe Lapointe, after would-be Islander owner John Spano couldn’t come up with the money:

“In a league headquarters increasingly populated with officious lawyers, high-salaried bean-counters and heavy-handed spin doctors, who in Harold Ballard’s name performed ‘due diligence’ on John Spano’s finances?

“[For those NHL executives who have never heard of him, Ballard was the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose career included a stint in prison in the 1970s].”

Trivia time: Which Dodger pitcher led the league in strikeouts seven seasons in a row?

Public Enemy No. 1: No agent was more hated by NFL owners than hard-bitten Howard Slusher, who held clients out for an entire season if crossed.

Imagine the establishment’s glee when recent Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Mike Haynes named Slusher as his presenter.

“I felt very proud,” Slusher says. “Shocked and very proud.”

Every other former Raider who entered the Hall of Fame had asked Al Davis to present him, some, such as Fred Biletnikoff, reportedly after pleas to the players by Raider officials.

You don’t think Al was upset at being beaten out by a five-percenter, do you?

Tip money: A college basketball coach’s salary these days won’t pay the taxes on the rest of his package.

Take Kentucky’s Tubby Smith. He’s getting base pay of $150,000. He’ll earn $1 million from radio and TV shows and the school’s new agreement with Nike. He’ll also get prime-location tickets to home games and the use of two cars.

Should Kentucky win the Southeastern Conference championship or qualify for the NCAA tournament, Smith will get a bonus equal to a month’s pay.

Pass or play? NFL films recently did a feature on Ronald Curry, a Hampton, Va., prep quarterback.

“His footage from last year is the most incredible jaw-dropping film I’ve ever seen on a high school player,” NFL Films vice president Bob Ryan told USA Today. “It’s clear he could be a phenomenon, a once-in-a-generation quarterback.”

That’s assuming he plays football.

The 6-foot-3, 192-pound Curry is also a basketball star, ranked as the nation’s best prep point guard by Hoop Scoop magazine.

Trivia answer: Dazzy Vance, who did it from 1922 through ’28.

And finally: ABC golf producer Jack Graham says there’s a reason the network followed also-ran Tiger Woods at the British Open, and it isn’t journalism.

“He’s worth two, three, four ratings points,” Graham told the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir.

Wrote Sandomir: “Somehow, golfcasters will find a way to follow Woods when he misses a cut, figuring that one shot of Tiger playing pinochle is worth 100 shots of Billy Andrade putting.”