19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER
PASS OR FLUNK?
Sirs:
Congratulations on your article on college basketball recruiting (A Ruse Flushes Some Eager Recruiters, May 29). We nonathletic students with a C high school average had to "sweat blood and tears" to gain admission to the University of Detroit.
NAMES WITHHELD
Detroit
Sirs:
Let us all know what Thomas Affinito gets on this wonderful paper. He deserves no lower than A!
ROBERT KUSLANSKY
Stafford Springs, Conn.
•No news yet—NYU takes a little longer to make up its mind than some of the schools "Tom Fini" wrote to.—ED.
Sirs:
Give 'im an A! Hell, they ought to flunk that smart punk kid out of school. The instigator of the hoax was not the 11 colleges and universities but one lying, cheating, double-dealing student who would use any means to get a good mark on his term paper.
You bet there's something wrong with our schools when an irresponsible student, just to get a mark on a paper, can embarrass 11 fine colleges and universities.
CHARLES A. JOHNSON
Los Angeles
Sirs:
Your article has created a lot of talk, pro and con. In all fairness to Memphis State University, I would like to see you complete the story as it concerns our recruiting procedure.
You stated that I wired Fini, which I did, twice. This is normal procedure. I will receive 50 to 100 such letters from boys around the country each year. My procedure when receiving such a letter is to contact the boy by letter, wire or telephone, first to find out how interested he is in our university. The most important reason for this contact, however, is to get the names of his high school principal and coach, plus the names of coaches of some of the teams he has played against. From these people we can then get a character recommendation, some notion of his academic ability as well as athletic ability. We will also request a film of one of the boy's games, if that school takes films.
The above is only the first step in our recruiting program. We then ask the boy to fill out a basketball data sheet, if we are interested. This sheet contains space for questions such as his height, weight, scoring average, graduation date, type of course he has taken in high school, rank in his class, what he wishes to study in college, etc.
If the boy is still interested in our university and we are still interested in the boy, we will invite him to visit our campus, meet some of our faculty, the players here, and, in general, see what campus life is like at our university.
If the boy wants to come to our school after this procedure, he then fills out an application for admission. He has to pass the entrance exam, and the scholarship committee has to make final judgment, or approval, before the boy is "in."
In other words, the university cannot grant a scholarship to a boy until he has gone through the procedure outlined here.
I think this information would be of great interest to your readers, because it brings out the other side of the story.
ROBERT VANATTA
Basketball coach
Memphis State University
Memphis
HONESTLY!
Sirs:
In the article Fifty Percent of Harry (Part II of Don't Call Me Honest, May 22), is the picture on page 96 correctly captioned? You say Marciano catches Matthews with a left hook. It looks to me like Marciano is wearing the black trunks. Am I right?
GARV MEYERS
Festus, Mo.
•Wrong. Marciano is in white. See pictures below.—ED.
OVERSIGHT
Sirs:
I thought the drawings used in your Indianapolis race story (SI, June 12) were terrific—but who was the artist?
TULLY RECTOR
Westport, Conn.
•Bernard Fuchs, the same talented young artist who made such a hit with his paintings of the Masters golf tournament (SI, April 3).—ED.
TWO PHOTOS