SCORECARD

DOING ZIP AT OKLAHOMA
It turns out that before taking a powder altogether last week, Oklahoma Running Back Marcus Dupree had done "Zip, nothing" in the classroom this year, as the Sooners' academic adviser put it (page 50). Dupree had, in fact, skipped virtually all of his classes. However, it was only after he failed to show up for football practice that Coach Barry Switzer saw fit to suspend him from the team. Switzer, of course, is more responsible for what happens on the gridiron than in the classroom, but it seems to us that if the University of Oklahoma had its priorities straight, Switzer would have already suspended this student-athlete for having done zip in his classes.

STYLE, SUBSTANCE AND CHANGE

President Reagan's selection of National Security Adviser William P. Clark to be Secretary of the Interior is as worrisome as it is surprising. Clark has no obvious qualifications for the position, and his record during the eight years he served on the California Supreme Court, to which he was appointed by Reagan in 1973 when the latter was that state's governor, had a strong anti-environmental tinge. A number of cases involving environmental issues came before the court during that period, and in virtually every one of them Clark took a position in favor of development and against environmental controls; in most of those cases, he dissented from the majority.

Considering Clark's lack of credentials to head Interior, will he be any improvement over James Watt, who was forced out of the job? In his Oct. 9 resignation letter to the President, Watt said he was leaving behind the "people and programs" that would carry on his policies. He may well be right. When William Ruckelshaus succeeded Anne Burford as head of the Environmental Protection Agency last May, he inherited an agency whose hierarchy had been all but wiped out by firings and resignations. Ruckelshaus also faced—and still faces—a lot of tough decisions in such areas as acid rain and toxic substances. Assuming that Clark's nomination as Interior Secretary is confirmed, he will have few new issues to deal with right away. The Interior Department's budget has passed Congress, and Watt's coal-leasing program, a subject of recent controversy, is now on hold until next spring. Because of his own lack of expertise, Clark will be tempted to rely heavily on the loyal Watt aides who remain on the job. Clark could thus differ from Watt less in substance than in style; generally considered to be a more conciliatory figure than Watt, he's likely to try to avoid the controversies and confrontations that marred his predecessor's stay in office.

None of this is to downplay the importance of style, though. If Clark were to do no more than sit down with environmentalists now and then, it would be a welcome departure from Watt's approach, which was to bait them at every turn. And since hope springs eternal, it's possible to wish for changes that go beyond the merely symbolic. Despite his lack of specific qualifications for the Interior job, Clark is a confidant of the President and one of Washington's most powerful figures, and he ought to be able to read the political realities of the office. One of those realities is that a majority of Americans found Watt's anti-environmental policies wholly objectionable. As Interior Secretary, Clark would be doing himself, the President and the country a favor by reversing those policies.

FOOTBALL BABIES

Exactly nine months after both Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of the Korean War, the national birthrate increased dramatically. Nine months after the New York City blackout of 1965, there was a great upsurge of births in that metropolis. Could there have been a similar increase in births associated with last year's NFL strike, also a stressful time in American life? Officials at Tucson Medical Center, that city's biggest maternity hospital, think so. The NFL strike lasted from Sept. 20 to Nov. 16, and the number of births at the Tucson facility nine months later—covering the period from June 20 to Aug. 16—was at least 200 greater than the total over the same span in 1982, itself a record year for births at the hospital. Tucson obstetricians are referring to the infants born during those eight weeks as "football babies."

But Tucson appears to be an anomaly. A random check of obstetrical records for the June 20 to Aug. 16 period in 1983 shows no significant increase in births over the same dates a year earlier at hospitals in Seattle, Portland and New Orleans, and a decline in both Atlanta and Butte, Mont. Although the birthrate was up at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, it was down across the river at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center. It was also lower at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton. Flatly rejecting the suggestion of the Tucson doctors that the absence of NFL football may have heightened mating instincts, a spokesman at Miami Valley suggested that, on the contrary, people may have been too "frustrated" by the strike to be much interested in fertility rites.

A SPREADING CLASS SYSTEM

The trend in high school basketball over the years has been toward the alignment of state tournaments into classes according to student-body size. The latest state to organize its tournament into classes is Alaska, which this season will crown champions for the first time in Classes 4A (401 students and more), 3A (101-400) and 2A and 1A (smaller schools, to be divided on the basis of both size and geography). Now that the least populous state has adopted classes, the only states that still hold class-free tournaments are those two neighboring basketball hotbeds, Indiana and Kentucky.

A class system in high school tournaments makes for more equitable competition and results in more schools winning state titles. But it also eliminates the sort of stirring drama that occurred in Illinois in 1952, when little Hebron, with an enrollment of just 99 students, captured the imagination of the whole state by beating Quincy, which had more than 1,000 students, for the state title. Alas, Illinois realigned its tournament into two classes in 1972. In Indiana, however, hoops fans can still hope for a repetition of the 1982 tournament in which Plymouth, with an enrollment of 877, scored a 75-74 double overtime upset of Gary Roosevelt High, which had a student body nearly three times larger.

Let's hear it, all you Hoosier and Wildcat fans: Go David, beat Goliath.

OLYMPIC TRUCES, THEN AND NOW

By far the most important of the games took place every four years at Olympia, a shrine of Zeus in the western Peloponnesus, beginning, according to legend, in 776 B.C....Participants came from all over the Greek world, including the colonies; to enable them to travel safely, the warring city-states observed a truce long enough to cover the time required to journey to and from the festival....
—A History of Civilization,
Vol. 1 (Prentice-Hall, 1968)

Los ANGELES—Some rival street gangs are sitting down to plan a "cease-fire" for next year's Olympics, scheduled from July 28 to Aug. 12, so they can cross territorial boundaries and prey on the thousands of tourists expected, Lieut. Chuck Bradley of the sheriff's street-gang detail said in an interview published yesterday....
—Associated Press story,
Oct. 14, 1983

THE GREAT GAME FILM CAPER

In the days before the two teams played to a 14-14 tie on Sept. 24, Bob Cortese, the football coach at Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colo., told reporters that Southern Colorado had the "best team speed" in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. But how could he know for sure? As a courtesy, the two schools had exchanged game films before their showdown, and Cortese was shocked to discover that the footage Southern Colorado sent him had been doctored. "It wasn't unviewable but you couldn't get a lot out of it," Cortese said later. "You couldn't see the formations and coverages. And the string got in the way of a bootleg play and you couldn't see who they were throwing to."

The string? After the game, word of the tampering reached Southern Colorado Athletic Director Robert Mullen, who ordered an investigation. He learned that his school's coach, Mike Friedman, and an assistant, John Boswell, had intentionally reshot a film of their team's action and placed a number of objects, including string, pieces of carpet and strips of celluloid, in front of the camera. Friedman admitted doctoring the film to "harass" Cortese, but tried to make light of the whole thing. "I've gotten worse game films," he said. Southern Colorado higher-ups took the matter more seriously. At the request of school officials, Friedman and Boswell submitted their resignations, effective at the end of the season.

THE TEAM THAT WASN'T THERE

Northwestern's 35-0 loss to Michigan on Saturday marked the third time the Wildcats have been shut out this season, and it left their record at 1-5. In those six games, Northwestern has scored 31 points and given up 173. But Coach Dennis Green's team may have suffered its greatest indignity when ABC-TV's college football halftime show inadvertently omitted the school's name in giving Saturday's results. The message on the screen read simply:

MICHIGAN 35

PENN STATE'S CHARMED FIELD

This is a plan of the football field at Perm State's Beaver Stadium. You may notice that a strange cavity has been gouged out of one end zone and that there's an equally curious protuberance along the left sideline. An explanation for the disfigurations, which first appeared in a rendering of the Nittany Lions' field that mysteriously materialized last week on the blackboard of an assistant coach at archrival Pitt, is provided below.

ILLUSTRATION

1

2

ILLUSTRATION

1)—The spot at Nebraska's three-yard line where Penn State's Mike McCloskey caught a 15-yard pass from Todd Blackledge on Sept. 25, 1982 to set up the decisive touchdown in a 27-24 win over unbeaten Nebraska. TV replays showed that McCloskey was out or bounds when he caught the ball.

2)—The spot in the Penn State end zone where Alabama's Preston Gothard caught a pass from Walter Lewis in the waning seconds on Oct. 8, 1983 that officials disallowed in the belief that Gothard was out of bounds, preserving a 34-28 Penn State victory over unbeaten 'Bama. TV replays seemed to show that Gothard had possession in bounds and that the touchdown should have counted.

THEY SAID IT

•Dan Dierdorf, St. Louis Cardinals offensive lineman, announcing that he intends to retire at the end of this season: "Ninety-five percent of me is very sad that I'm retiring. But my knees are very, very happy."

•Chico Resch, New Jersey Devils goalie, asked where his hometown of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is located: "Four feet away from the moose's butt."

•Billy Casper, discussing the senior golf circuit on which he now plays: "Like a lot of fellows around here, I have a furniture problem. My chest has fallen into my drawers."

•Chuck Doyle, Holy Cross fullback, asked what he ran the 40 in: "Shorts."

•Pete Rose, shrugging off his subpar performance this season: "All I know is that I've won every award there is to win in this game except comeback player of the year—which I'll get next year."