Household name in two states

The possible headlines are enough to cause some Gamecock shock:

“Spurrier goes to Kentucky . . .

. . . Derby.”

Peachtree Stables President John Fort, a South Carolina alum, wanted to link a horse to his native state. What better way than to name it after Gamecocks football Coach Steve Spurrier?

And now the 3-year-old colt has an outside shot at running at Churchill Downs in the first race of the Triple Crown.

Still, Fort’s love-for-South-Carolina reasoning has a couple of flaws. He told the State newspaper, “I love Steve Spurrier the football coach. He won the Heisman Trophy . . .”

Yeah, while playing for Florida.

”. . . He’s a genius of a football coach . . .”

Yes, he even won a national championship -- at Florida.

Fort also calls Spurrier (the horse), “extremely laid back, kind of sleepy when we put him into training.”

Boy, John, have you got either the wrong horse or the wrong coach.

Trivia time

What schools have the most Final Four appearances without winning the national title?

Final Four detour

George Mason’s men’s basketball team traveled a hard road to the 2006 Final Four, but this season it may be on the wrong road altogether.

After winning the Colonial Athletic Assn. tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament this week, the university put “The Road to San Antonio” T-shirts on sale.

Unfortunately, the shirts had a drawing of the Louisiana Superdome on them, a Washington Post blog reported.

An honest mistake. Who can be expected to remember the Alamodome?

ESPN has learned . . .

Connecticut officials have had to respond to questions whether its women’s basketball program committed an NCAA violation by arranging a private tour of ESPN for a recruit, the Daily Tennessean reported.

No one is commenting publicly except for ESPN, of course, which confirmed it arranged the tour of its Bristol, Conn., facility for top recruit Maya Moore in 2005 after being contacted by the UConn women’s basketball office.

It raises intriguing questions. Can the NCAA ban ESPN from postseason play for a couple of seasons? As for sanctions against Moore, shouldn’t meeting Chris Berman be considered punishment enough?

Location, location, location

Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Kidd was in a what-if mood talking to New York reporters about the New Jersey Nets, saying that reaching consecutive NBA Finals a few seasons ago failed to cause a New York buzz because “we were on the wrong side of the Hudson.”

Knicks fans may point out that any side that doesn’t have Isiah Thomas is the right side. Still, Kidd believes that “the things we accomplished in that short amount of time would have been documented at a higher level” if the team’s home address were Madison Square Garden.

The problem might be more the name on the envelope. The New York Giants seemed to do OK in the swamps of Jersey.

Music’s man

The Macon Music, a baseball team in the independent South Coast League, is the first sports team to try to cash in on the prostitution scandal that devoured New York’s governor.

The Music will hold an Eliot Spitzer night on June 13, giving away a “one-night stand” at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., as well as offers such as $1 off to any fan who has ever resigned from a position.

The team, though, resisted changing its name to the Macon Whoopee for the game.

Trivia answer

Houston and Illinois, which have both come home empty five times.

And finally

The New York Yankees’ Shelley Duncan, on his slide into Tampa Bay’s Akinori Iwamura that started a bench-clearing brawl: “I’m pretty sure the spikes weren’t that high.”

The CSI evidence showed Duncan spiking him in the right thigh. Makes you wonder what he considers a high slide. One that performs cataract surgery?

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