Under the radar
Forbes.com has published a list of "10 Most Miserable Sports Cities" and guess what?
Salt Lake isn't among them, even though it has gone without a national championship in college football, basketball or an NBA title for decades.
At the same time, Denver — which won two Super Bowls in the '90s — did make the list of miserable cities. Also on the list was Houston, which won back-to-back NBA titles in the '90s, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, which won the World Series in 1987 and 1991.
Which can mean only one thing: Sometimes you're not on the list only because they don't know you're there.
Shocking news
First came the assertion by former Dodger great Maury Wills that he had a 1960s fling with Doris Day — a claim she said was untrue.
Now the first lady of wholesome is the subject of another love rumor, this one with Mickey Mantle.
In a soon-to-be-released book called "Doris Day: the Untold Story of the Girl Next Door," author David Kaufman claims the actress met the Mick on the set of the 1962 film "That Touch of Mink."
Quickly they were an item.
Rock On is appalled by this revelation/allegation. And a bit disillusioned. Doris Day!
Next thing you know, we'll be hearing track and field sweetheart Marion Jones took steroids to win races!
Covering up
Six Masai warriors ran in Monday's London Marathon wearing traditional red robes while carrying shields and sticks, hoping to raise money to dig water wells in their homeland of Tanzania.
According to the London Daily Mail, the warriors were issued a four-page briefing of race protocols, such as not urinating in public, and this: It is illegal "to show certain parts of the body and for this reason it is important that you wear underpants if you are wearing your blanket."
Underpants are pretty important in Western culture.
Unless, of course, you're a twentysomething paparazzi star like Paris, Britney or Lindsay.
In that case, never mind.
Scorer's mentality
Asked by HBO's "Real Sports" host Bryant Gumbel if a man's character can be learned from watching him play basketball, Barak Obama replied: "No. But I do think that you can tell something about people from how they play basketball. For example, people who keep on shooting even though they have no jump shot, you can tell that there's a certain self-delusional aspect to their game, right, that says something about who they are."
You mean like Andrei Kirilenko?
Sticker shock
There was considerable concern last week when North Carolina coach Roy Williams showed up at the NCAA championship game with a Kansas Jayhawk sticker on his shirt.
Williams, who previously coached at Kansas, was only trying to show support. But a lot of Carolina fans took offense.
Here's a good rule of thumb for any coach to follow: Logo shirts never look good. But if you must wear one, make sure it's not the logo of a team that just beat you in the Final Four.
E-mail: rock@desnews.com