Newswire : Rozelle, Usher Disagree at Hearing

National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle asked Congress to grant the National Fooball League limited protection from federal antitrust laws to allow the league to prevent teams from deserting cities.

However, United States Football League Commissioner Harry Usher told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he opposes all proposed legislation that would allow professional sports leagues to control team movement.

Both men testified at a hearing on two of four proposed bills designed to curb the ability of owners to move their teams in most professional sports.

NBC Radio has signed a one-year contract with the National Football League to carry regular-season games, playoff games and the Super Bowl next season.

NBC reportedly paid more than $5 million for the package. CBS Radio paid $3.7 million for a similar package last year. CBS carried NFL games for the past seven seasons. The network’s announcers, Jack Buck and Hank Stram, are expected to be replaced by announcers under contract to NBC.

Former welterweight champion Pipino Cuevas and Herman Montes will headline a boxing show at the Olympic Auditorium tonight. The match had been made last November and postponed twice.

Also on the card are bouts between Mario Martinez and Frank Newton and between Ruben Solario and Jorge Ramirez.

The defense rested four months into the racketeering trial of Denny McLain and three co-defendants after the ex-pitching star dismissed as lies testimony from a parade of government witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich set closing arguments for Monday and excused the 12-member jury until then. The judge set two days aside for final statements expecting to turn the case over to the jury on Wednesday.

The National Football League, hoping to speed up games and reverse a slide in television ratings, said Wednesday it is considering several rules changes, including reducing the number of pass-interference calls, shortening timeouts in the last two minutes of each half, and restarting the clock after some penalty calls.

Those and other changes are being considered by the NFL Competition Committee, which has been meeting for two weeks on the Hawaiian island of Maui to prepare for the owners’ meetings, which begin next Sunday at Phoenix.

The committee’s principal concern is cutting the length of games--considered a main reason for a 20% drop in network TV ratings the last two seasons. NFL games last season averaged 3 hours 9 minutes, nearly 15 minutes longer than a decade ago.

Former two-time world champion Bobby Chacon rebounded from two second-round knockdowns Tuesday night to decision Freddie Roach in a 10-round bout at Stockton’s Memorial Auditorium.

Both fighters weighed 134 3/4 pounds.

Chacon, 33, improved to 58-7-1 while Roach, 25, dropped to 36-7.

Chacon, fighting for the first time in nine months and recently jailed for a week in his hometown of Oroville, Calif., for beating his wife, went down twice in the second round.

Referee Hank Elespuru scored it a draw, 95-95. The two judges gave it to Chacon. Terry Smith had it 96-94, and Pros Montano had it 97-93.

Earl Monroe, who starred with the Baltimore Bullets and New York Knicks of the National Basketball Assn., was named the first commissioner of the United States Basketball League, which will begin play May 25.

The USBL, which plans to use players who don’t make the NBA, will have eight teams this season--Springfield, Mass; Providence, R.I.; New Haven, Conn.; Westchester County and Long Island, N.Y.; Wayne and Wildwood, N.J., and Boca Raton, Fla.

Former Raider defensive end John Matuszak has been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon in Milwaukee.

Matuszak, 33, was sentenced to spend three days in the Milwaukee County House of Correction and fined $250. But Circuit Judge William Gardner stayed the sentence pending an appeal.

ABC-TV reached agreement on a two-year exclusive contract with the College Football Assn., allowing the network to televise a minimum of 21 games during each of the 1985 and 1986 seasons.

No financial details of the package were disclosed. However, it was learned that ABC will pay close to $31 million over two years. ABC paid the CFA $13 million in 1984--the first year the CFA was allowed to negotiate its own television deal.

Iran will be banned from the 1986 soccer World Cup in Mexico because of its refusal to play qualifying games on neutral territory, competition officials said at Zurich.

The executive committee of the International Federation of Football Associations said its decision was final and not subject to appeal.

Names in the News

A.B. (Happy) Chandler, 86, former major-league baseball commissioner and twice governor of Kentucky, was in stable condition following three hours of spinal surgery at Lexington, Ky.

Czechoslovakian tennis star Ivan Lendl is suffering from an inflammation of the middle ear and will not play in a first-round Davis Cup match next week in the Soviet Union.