Letters

"Unless sweeping changes are made in the system, instead of merely slapping schools on the wrist, the corruption of college athletes will continue."
JAY BATTLE, LAS VEGAS

Florida State Football
Regarding the scandal at Florida State (Anatomy of a Scandal, May 16), cornerback Corey Sawyer is quoted as saying, "At Florida State you work so hard to give to that program and get nothing out of it. The most you can get out of it is a trip to the NFL. I felt I was entitled to money or clothing." Did any of the recruiters or coaches inform Sawyer that the primary benefit of a football scholarship is supposed to be a free college education?
STEVE ROGERS, Norfolk, Va.

Sawyer's comments are nauseating. Plenty of young men would have suffered his horrible fate in exchange for four years of free college education. Incidentally, four years of "nothing" at Florida State for an out-of-state student runs about $45,000.
ROBERT G. KALER, Washington, D.C.

It makes me angry that my daughter, a varsity swimmer at a Division I university, has to work six days a week every summer and have a second job at night to help pay for her education, while this guy with an attitude gets a free ride and still thinks he's entitled to handouts.
JEANNE RICKERT, Marmora, N.J.

While my roommate and I pay off college loans incurred at Florida State, we read that Corey Sawyer feels he is "owed" clothes and shoes. He gets free tuition, books, room and board (Burt Reynolds Hall has a pool; the dorm we lived in didn't), as well as trips all over the country as a football player. Seminole football players also receive free tutoring, and I would have liked to have been able to register early for classes, as they do, so that courses I wanted to take wouldn't have been filled when my turn came.
CAROLINE BIEHL, Coral Gables, Fla.

I've almost given up watching college sports in favor of the pros. At least the pros are up front about their greed.
DAVID D. GOODYEAR, Watervliet, Mich.

As a former Florida State player, I found your article disturbing. I transferred to Florida State from Texas A&M because coach Bobby Bowden had one of the cleanest and most successful programs in the country, and he still does. It would be a pity if this isolated incident takes anything from Florida State's first national title.
DAVID ALVAREZ, Jupiter, Fla.

Nicknames
Although your item on politically incorrect team nicknames (SCORECARD, May 16) was written tongue in cheek, there is one team nickname that I find particularly offensive but which I have not heard challenged: the Bullets. How, in Washington, a city proclaimed to be the murder capital of the U.S., can such a nickname be considered appropriate? Especially in a town where one U.S. senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D., Colo.), recently got his knickers in such a bind over the nickname of the local NFL team that he introduced legislation to prohibit it from using government land unless it changed its nickname.
DON LOPEZ, Parker, Colo.

The initial shock has faded as I begin to accept that the NBA's expansion team in Toronto will be called the Raptors, a nickname spawned by last year's blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. I am disappointed that the commercialization of sports has reached the process of naming teams. I thought movies were supposed to be made about sports people and teams, not the other way around. The Mighty Ducks was bad enough.
MATT SANDERSON, Playa del Rey, Calif.

Ayrton Senna
Those of us fortunate enough to have seen Ayrton Senna drive can attest to his brilliance (The Last Ride, May 9). Few people can say that they love what they do. Even fewer can say that they do it with passion. Senna's consuming passion to be the best showed in every corner he drove through. But, as for others before him who lived close to the edge, passion and courage are easily exchanged for life.
GARRETT W. ELLWOOD, Santa Monica, Calif.

The suggestion that Senna's last thought could have been one of "utter indignation that the concrete wall that was about to kill him had not, in deference to the great man, moved aside to let him through" is insulting to every Senna fan. You should have paid more attention to Senna's brilliance as a Formula One driver. Instead you chose sarcasm to depict Senna, one of the greatest sports figures of all time, as imperious and arrogant.
SOLANO ROOS, Norfolk, Va.

ILLUSTRATION

COURTESY NBA PROPERTIES, INC.

Like the NHL's Mighty Ducks, an NBA expansion team is indebted to a movie for its nickname.

Letters to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED should include the name, address and home telephone number of the writer and should be addressed to The Editor, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. 10020-1393.