SCORECARD

SPORTS EQUITY

Reports from Washington say that a complicated new education bill includes a section that—for better or worse—could emasculate college sport. The bill is said to require equity between men's and women's activities. If the men's basketball coach is paid $23,000, then the coach of women's basketball must be paid $23,000. If the football team has nine coaches, then the same number of coaches must be provided in women's sports. Most significantly, half of all athletic scholarships must go to women; if a school has 150 athletic scholarships to disburse, 75 of them go to women.

The colleges would have five years to comply with the new regulations but must show signs of progress in that direction before the five years are up. If they do not, sanctions would be invoked. Federal funds for the school—for buildings, special projects, ROTC and the like—would be cut off.

The proposal seems extreme, considering the prominence that men's sports have in intercollegiate competition, but the other extreme is what prompts such legislation. For example, at the University of Oklahoma, currently on probation because of football recruiting violations, a women's group asked the athletic department for a financial report. The athletics business manager said that long-range obligations for capital improvements came to $4,277,475 and that current obligations for the football field, the track and a combination dormitory and golf facility totaled $611,417. Even so, he said, and despite losses over a three-year period of $62,000, $97,000 and $22,000, he would be able to make budget adjustments that could provide $1,500 for women's athletics during the second semester.

AND INEQUITY

Women's place in sport may be gaining wider and wider recognition, but not in the dog-show world, even though the majority of people who show dogs are women. At a recent meeting the 90-year-old American Kennel Club cautiously rejected an amendment to its constitution that would have allowed women to be AKC delegates. The greater part of the 202 delegates present (itself a record attendance) voted in favor of deleting the word "male" from the rule that reads, "The voting power of each member club or association can and shall be exercised only by a male delegate," but the 127-74 vote (there was one illegal ballot) was 25 votes short of the three-fourths required to pass.

Not that the AKC is a stodgy, stick-in-the-mud organization. The question of women's rights has come up before—21 years ago, to be specific—and was much more soundly defeated. Next time maybe women will break through. And perhaps next time will be sometime this year rather than, say, 1995, another 21 years in the future.

ST. LOUIS OF ST. LOUIS
Unlike pro football's annual draft of college players, major league baseball's draft of free agents excites relatively little interest. A shame, too, for this year's produced three name ballplayers. The California Angels came up with Daniel Boone, a sharpshooting lefthander, while the Cleveland Indians picked a genuine bonus baby in James Baby. The Cardinals could have had the best of all, but missed the boat. They let the Montreal Expos grab Pitcher Michael St. Louis.

UP HERE IN THE BOOTH
The biggest football news of the 1974 season was made last week when ABC-TV announced that Don Gifford or Frank Meredith, one of those fellows, will be back on the Monday evening talkathon again next year. The other chap will be there, too, the one who sells the underwear. Roone Arledge, the ABC-TV sports chief, also admitted what everybody had already noticed: the genial Duffy Daugherty, master of the post-game quip when he was coaching Michigan State, was "disappointing" as a color commentator on college football games. Arledge said, "Duffy's greatest contribution was to make Bud Wilkinson look better. Duffy is great at dinners and banquets, but he hasn't yet mastered the art of getting on and off the mike during a game broadcast. He'll be back next year in some capacity, but we'll have to see where."

OLE, BYU

For some time now the Bonneville International Corporation, a Utah company, has been sending 16-mm. prints of Brigham Young University's basketball games to TV stations in Central and South America. The films, which have commentary in Spanish, Portuguese and English, are shown on more than 150 stations in a dozen countries. The reaction has been astonishing. More than 700 letters from Spanish-and Portuguese-speaking fans have come to BYU during recent weeks, one saying, "If Brigham Young ever visits Peru, it will be considered the home team. The Cougar games are the No. 1 sports program on television in this country." A Cougar Club has been formed in Guatemala City. Another fan group calls itself the "Brighamyoungs," pronounced breegamions.

Walter Canals, who announces the games in Spanish and directs their marketing in Spanish-speaking areas, says. "They consider American basketball the best in the world, and they're anxious to study our techniques. Community and school teams ask for the films after the TV stations are finished with them."

FOR ST. PETE'S SAKE

You all know St. Petersburg, Fla., the staid city of the South? The place that's filled with emporiums advertising blood-pressure readings and high colonics, where the liveliest activity for resident oldsters, according to the cruel quipsters of the night-club circuit, is to sit around and listen to their arteries harden?

Don't believe it. What St. Petersburg is filled with is daredevils. What other city has produced a rocket-powered go-kart capable of faster-than-dragster speeds, a motorcyclist (not Evel Knievel) who has jumped a canyon, and a human kite who flies over and under bridges?

Details: Jack McClure of St. Pete has reached 221.21 mph in a quarter-mile run in his rocket go-kart. (Will your kids be the first on their block to do 200 mph in their karts?) Bob Gill of St. Pete successfully jumped his motorcycle 152 feet across Cajun Canyon in Louisiana last year before thousands of spectators. And a couple of weeks ago Hal Elgin, a St. Petersburg fireman, cut loose his tow rope at an altitude of 1,200 feet and flew his delta-wing kite over the Sunshine Skyway bridge not just once but twice, and then zipped under it, between the bottom of the roadbed and the swirling waters of Tampa Bay 150 feet below.

Maybe Ponce de Leon was looking for his fountain on the wrong side of the peninsula.

PEACE ON ICE

The big treaty between the National Hockey League and the World Hockey Association is a monument to practicality. The NHL agreed to recognize the new league, pay it $1,750,000 to cover legal fees the WHA amassed in court battles and play a series of preseason inter-league exhibitions next fall. All it gets in return is an agreement by the WHA to respect the NHL's one-year option clause in the players' contracts. Still, this means that after Aug. 1, 1974, there will be no more raiding of NHL rosters. There are some other clauses, but it all boils down to one word: peace.

There was some objection in the NHL to the settlement, "principally at the lower levels," according to League President Clarence Campbell, but it was not strong. Why did the older, richer league give in? As one NHL man explained: "It's simple. We're still doing all right on the ice, but we haven't been scoring much lately in the courts."

NO WINS, NO LOSSES
The peace movement invaded another area of hockey. The Canada Council, which encourages the arts, social sciences, literature and the like, has made funds available for an unusual hockey project in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. The hockey is a no-win game. According to Dr. James Duthie of the University of Windsor Sports Institute for Research, "The sport is being returned to the children" by taking the competitive aspect out of it. No points are awarded for won or lost, no goals are counted and there are no records of leading scorers. There are 28 teams in the noncompetitive league, and observers say the kids seem to have a lot of fun. Dr. Duthie claims their faces show "less frustration, anxiety and aggression."

ALI AND JOE AT HOME
When the first Ali-Frazier fight took place three years ago the promoter, Jerry Perenchio, said in publicity for the closed-circuit theater TV of the fight, "I have made a firm commitment to the closed-circuit exhibitors and customers that there will be NO home television—live or delayed. That commitment will be kept. There will be no home television—live or delayed." However, the clear-speaking Perenchio never spelled out just how long "delayed" meant. This Saturday the first fight will be on home television—over ABC's Wide World of Sports. Late, but not never.

END GAME
The Daytona International Speedway's announcement that it was complying with the Federal Energy Office's request for a reduction in the use of fuels brought a prompt, if confused, reaction from NASCAR fans. When it was announced that 50 miles would be lopped off the Feb. 17 Daytona 500, telephone calls inundated NASCAR headquarters in Daytona Beach. One ticket holder said he heard that the first 50 miles of the race had been eliminated, and he was furious. "It's the first 50 miles that are the best," he said, "because of all the jamming in traffic." Another caller (this all comes from track publicity and therefore is certainly true) congratulated management on chopping off the first 50 miles instead of the last 50. "If you chopped off the last 50," he said, "we'd never know for sure who won."

ILLUSTRATION

THEY SAID IT

•Don Shula, Miami Dolphin coach, after his team's second successive Super Bowl victory, when asked who had written the words "Best Ever" on a blackboard in the Dolphins' dressing room: "I think about 40 people."

•Ed Marinaro, Minnesota Viking running back: "I was a couple of years ahead of my time. The world wasn't ready for an Italian Heisman Trophy winner. I just blazed a trail for John Cappelletti."

•Fran Tarkenton, Viking quarterback, after donating his $7,500 loser's share of the Super Bowl purse to charity: "I only wish it could have been $15,000."

•Tad Potter, majority stockholder of the NHL's lowly Pittsburgh Penguins: "I got the feeling that the players think the energy crisis means them, so they're only giving 85%."