For The Record

Received a taste of what it would be like to be covered by the
English press, Metrostars and U.S. national team goalkeeper Tim
Howard. Last week Manchester United made an inquiry to MLS about
signing the 24-year-old, who has allowed just four goals in seven
games this season--and who also has been diagnosed with
Tourette's syndrome. The headline writers on Fleet Street, who
delight in taking potshots at the Premier League champs, had a
field day. UNITED WANT AMERICAN WITH BRAIN DISORDER said The
Guardian of London; The Independent wrote MANCHESTER UNITED
TRYING TO SIGN DISABLED GOALKEEPER. The always tasteful Mirror
went with TICK FOR TIM.

Resigned after six seasons in Philadelphia, 76ers coach Larry
Brown. Since the Sixers were eliminated by Detroit in the second
round of the playoffs, Brown, 62, had talked of the possibility
of stepping down. In 31 years of coaching seven pro teams and two
colleges--including the University of Kansas, where he won an
NCAA championship in 1988--the peripatetic Brown never stayed in
one place longer than he did in Philadelphia, where he coached
the Sixers to five straight postseason appearances. "We had a
good run," said Brown. "I think it's time to get somebody else in
here to maybe give a fresh look." Brown will be a candidate to
fill head coaching jobs in Cleveland and in Houston, where Rudy
Tomjanovich resigned earlier in the week.

Astounded doctors for former Louisiana State basketball coach
Dale Brown, 67, who suffered a stroke on April 24. The colorful
Brown, who after he retired in 1997 made two trips to Canada to
find Bigfoot and who was planning to travel to Turkey to search
for Noah's Ark, was at his home in Baton Rouge when a sharp pain
in his back drove him to his knees. Brown was rushed to the
hospital, where doctors told his wife, Vonnie, and his daughter,
Robyn, that his right carotid artery was 95% blocked. Doctors put
Brown, who was slurring his speech and had weakness in his left
arm and leg and drooping on the left side of his face, on blood
thinners and expected his condition to become permanent. "In 99
percent of the cases the artery totally closes up and the patient
can no longer move their entire side," says Brown's cardiologist,
Dr. Carl Luikart. Within a few days, however, the artery had
cleared and Brown's condition had returned to normal. Says
Luikart, "I have never heard of a case like this." Brown can't
explain it either. "There's no way," he says, "that it wasn't a
miracle."

Died of natural causes, Frank Ivy, 87, the only man to serve as a
head coach in the NFL, the AFL and the CFL. As a prematurely
balding All-America end at Oklahoma in the late 1930s, Ivy was
given the nickname he would keep throughout his career: Pop. He
began coaching in 1948 as an assistant at Oklahoma and earned a
reputation as an offensive innovator with formations such as the
Lonesome Quarterback, a forerunner of the shotgun. As head coach
of the Edmonton Eskimos in the 1950s, he won three straight Grey
Cups running the triple wing T, a variation of Oklahoma's vaunted
split T. Ivy left in 1958 to coach the Chicago Cardinals, but a
suspect defense kept him from success. His final head coaching
job was with the Houston Oilers, whom he led to the 1963 AFL
title game, only to lose to the Dallas Texans in double overtime.

COLOR PHOTO: ELIOT J. SCHECHTER/GETTY IMAGES (HOWARD) Howard

COLOR PHOTO: ITAR-TASS/AP (YELTSIN) HOOPS CLONE Maverick leader and Cuban ally Boris Yeltsin

COLOR PHOTO: DONNA MCWILLIAM/AP (NELSON) [See caption above]

B/W PHOTO: JACQUELINE DORMER-THE POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN/AP MAROONED The '25 Pottsville team is back in the hunt for the title.

Rewriting History

Petitioned the NFL, to award the 1925 league championship to the
Pottsville Maroons, by Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell. Until
1933 the NFL had no postseason and simply conferred its
championship upon the team with the best winning percentage. The
Maroons were in the thick of the 1925 title hunt until Dec. 12,
when they played a team of Notre Dame all-stars in Philadelphia.
League president Joe Carr, who had warned the Maroons not to play
the game, ruled that the team had violated the territorial rights
of the Frankford Yellowjackets, who played in suburban
Philadelphia, and suspended the Maroons from the six-year-old
league. That made the Chicago Cardinals--a team the Maroons had
routed 21-7 a week earlier--the champs by default. In March,
Rendell, who moonlights as an Eagles postgame TV commentator,
launched his crusade to have the title returned to Pottsville, a
town of 15,000 in the eastern part of the state, on the grounds
that the punishment didn't fit the crime and that there were no
written rules governing where games could be played. "It's
crucial to the psyche of all Pottsvillians," he said. Last week
he made a presentation at the NFL meetings in Philadelphia, and
commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he would look into the matter.