Totally Random

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Detroit Lions fans watching NBC’s ‘Football Night in America’ coverage over the weekend didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the team’s former general manager, Matt Millen, was interviewed by Dan Patrick.

‘Would you have fired you?’ Patrick asked Millen (pictured at right while serving as a referee in a preseason game in 2000).

‘I would have, actually,” Millen replied.

Lions fans wondered why Millen wasn’t so proactive when he was employed by the team.

‘Probably not this year,’ Millen added, ‘until after the season.’

Lions fans say that’s one thing the team got right this season.

Trivia time

How many Super Bowl rings did Millen win as a player?

Audio hazard

Important medical note to all golfers: Some doctors in England say the noise made by titanium clubs could be hazardous to your health.

According to a story in the Daily Mail, the noise generated by a titanium club when striking a golf ball approximates a gun shot or ‘a sonic boom’ and can damage a golfer’s hearing. Some doctors have advised golfers to wear earplugs while playing, but professional golfer Andrew Coltart found at least one problem with that.

‘If you are wearing earplugs you might not hear shouts of ‘fore,’ be hit by a ball on the head and get brain damage,’ Coltart said.

Ringing endorsement

Dikembe Mutombo owns several cellphones, using different ones for basketball contacts, friends and celebrities. Before being lured out of retirement by the Houston Rockets, the 42-year-old center said he was tempted to turn them all off because he was being pestered by Yao Ming to return.

‘He has so many cellphones,’ Yao told the Houston Chronicle. ‘But I know every one.

‘He couldn’t turn them all off.’

Trivia answer

Four. Two with the Raiders, one with the San Francisco 49ers and one with the Washington Redskins.

And finally

Asked by Sporting News to fill in the blanks to a few half-sentences, Chicago Bulls and White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf handled one response this way:

If I were king for a day, I’d ... ‘’Send Don Fehr [head of the baseball players association] to Siberia.’’

-- Mike Penner