Still Different, Even His Eating and Sleeping

Defensive end Art Still of the Buffalo Bills doesn’t eat meat or sugar. He subsists on granola, nuts, fruits, vegetables and 60 vitamins a day.

He and his wife, Lizabeth, and their five children--Afa, Niko, Aquina, Meleana and Luka--all sleep in one room, on the floor.

“It’s a Samoan thing he picked up from former Kansas City Chiefs teammate and friend Frank Manumaleuga,” the Boston Globe reported.

Said Still: “We all sleep together because we like it. It’s pretty cheap. You don’t need any beds. You don’t have to worry about the little ones climbing out of the crib or rolling off the bed. The only thing you have to worry about is at night when you go to the bathroom. You have to watch your step.”

Says Buffalo teammate Fred Smerlas: “Art Still came in on a spaceship with a ray gun. He’s a very odd man.”

Add Bills: Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post on Cornelius Bennett: “He’s a 235-pound linebacker who hits like Lawrence Taylor and runs like Carl Lewis. He had 8 1/2 sacks in 8 games as a rookie, including 4 in the season finale against the Philadelphia Eagles. One time he picked up quarterback Randall Cunningham and said, ‘You’d better get somebody to block for you, or I’m going to kill you today.’ ”

Trivia Time: What do Ron Duguay of the Kings, Guy Lafleur of the New York Rangers and Craig MacTavish of the Edmonton Oilers have in common? (Answer to follow.)

From Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, saying there are too many bowl games: “You could probably take all the Patriot Theme Bowls--Independence, All-American, Liberty and Freedom--wrap them in star-spangled paper and dump them in the river without disturbing anyone’s sleep.”

He added: “Bowls wield far too much influence on the college season. From the fifth week of the season, self-inflated bowl representatives in their silly colored blazers are skulking around stadiums, doing a kind of striptease with their bowl bids. (You never find a bowl rep unwilling to be interviewed. A sportswriter’s vision of hell is to be stuck on a desert island with any two NFL strength and conditioning coaches and a bowl representative.)”

Wrote Wallace Matthews of Newsday after Robin Givens had filed a $125-million defamation suit against Mike Tyson: “According to Howard Weitzman, Tyson’s attorney, Givens’ public pronouncement a few weeks ago that she did not want any money from Tyson was at odds with a phone call Weitzman received a day earlier from her lawyer, Raoul Felder, during which Felder demanded an $8-million settlement.

“Later, Givens changed her demand to just the money in her possession--between $1.5 million and $2 million, according to Felder--but refused to allow Weitzman to have her accounts audited. Tyson has said Givens shifted more than $5 million earned by him from his accounts to hers. And, Weitzman said, Givens tried to seize Tyson’s Lamborghini in Los Angeles by loading it onto a flatbed truck and having it stashed in a garage.”

Trivia Answer: They don’t wear helmets.

Quotebook

Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, on the Glasnost Bowl between USC and Illinois next season in the Soviet Union: “So now Moscow, Dublin, Tokyo, London and Sweden have football. Is there no place left on earth to get away from Keith Jackson?”