Campbell talks as tough as he played

Present-day NFL players, be warned: Stay off Earl Campbell’s lawn.

“We all know, now that we’re grown men, that wrestling’s fake,” the Hall of Fame running back, 61, told USA Today. “Well, football is not played like it was when I played.

“‘I can’t play because I’ve got a hangnail on my toe. I can’t play because I didn’t get a pedicure this week. … ’ That wouldn’t have got the job done back in my day.”

Paging Kent Dorfman

A truck lost its trailer on an Indiana highway, spilling 38,000 pounds of marbles.

Nevertheless, Faber College officials say, the homecoming parade will go off as scheduled.

Something Old Dept.

Valdemira Rodrigues de Oliveira of Prassununga, Brazil, announced she’s engaged to be married for the first time — at age 106.

Hey, if the Cubs can wait 108 years to get a ring, what’s a mere 106?

Bad news, Bears

Baylor fired newly hired assistant strength coach Brandon Washington after he was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute.

Or, as Waco apologists prefer to call it, “poor recruiting.”

Headlines

■ NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, on news that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will craft its medals from recycled cellphones: “Well, they’re going to make the Olympic torch out of a Samsung Galaxy.”

■ Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, to ESPN, on the Baylor football mess: “I think everybody’s pretty much in the barrel, but I don’t know if anybody knows where the bottom of the barrel is.”

■ At TheOnion.com: “Fans gather at airport to greet carry crates containing Puppy Bowl winners.”

This spells trouble

The Australian Open featured a match between Anastasia Sergeyevna Pavlyuchenkova and Natalia Konstantinovna Vikhlyantseva. The match was cheered by their fellow Russians and booed by the National Association of One-Column Headline Writers.

Word games

World Scrabble champion Brett Smitheram of England wants to get his specialty added as an Olympic event.

In keeping with the theme, instead of medals would winners be awarded varsity letters instead of letters?

Quote mark

■ Brad Dickson of the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, after star tight end Rob Gronkowski spiked a beer during the Patriots’ Super Bowl parade: “This is why I like football. You’d never see this at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony.”

■ NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, after a snowstorm closed Boston public schools: “Kids in Boston are like, ‘Are you kidding? We haven’t been in school since the Patriots won the Super Bowl!’”

Kicking himself

USC has suspended kicker Matt Boermeester amid an investigation of a “code of conduct issue.” Which brings to mind a kicker we once knew. His eyes went wideright during a midterm exam.