The Next Question Is Tough

Voting by university presidents at the NCAA convention was done by computer, so they were required to mark each card by darkening squares labeled Yes, No or Abstain.

In giving instructions for voting, Oregon State President John Davis

said: “Please do not mark in the square labeled Example. “

After the first vote was tallied, Davis announced: “I am informed that some people marked the Example. Those votes will not be counted.”

After the third vote, Davis said, “I am informed that some of you are still marking in the area labeled Example.”

Among the recommendations approved at the convention was that prospective athletes be required to score at least 700 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Question: Could the presidents pass their own test?

Add NCAA: Indiana University President John Ryan told the convention that chief executive officers are responsible for the actions of their coaches, just as they are for dining hall administrators and librarians, and if those people don’t follow university policy, they should be fired.

Someone asked, “Isn’t it a whole lot easier to fire a librarian than to fire Bobby Knight?”

“No,” Ryan said. “Librarians have tenure.”

Trivia Time: The Chicago Cubs, with 12 straight losses, still are far short of the National League record. The 1961 Philadelphia Phillies set the modern record with 23 straight losses. The 1969 Montreal Expos had the next longest streak at 20. What did those two teams have in common? (Answer below.)

That was a remarkable performance by Arnold Palmer, winning Sunday’s seniors tournament by 11 strokes, but how about Mike Austin of Studio City?

Austin, who never played on the PGA tour, finished in a tie for 45th, along with such names as Lionel Hebert and Mike Souchak.

Palmer is 55 years old. Hebert is 57. Souchak is 58.

Austin is 75.

If you’re wondering what happened to that proposed fight Sunday between Joe Frazier, 41, and former Canadian champion Robert Cleroux, 46, in Montreal, it was called off because it failed to win the sanction of the Canadian Boxing Federation.

Promoter Regis Levesque, who claims to have invested $200,000 in the fight, said he hasn’t given up. He said he is negotiating with the chief of the Kanawakhe reservation outside Montreal to stage the bout there on Indian land. Otherwise, he said, he would charter a plane and hold the fight 10,000 feet in the air.

“It’ll be Kanawakhe or the 747,” he said.

Trivia Answer: Both teams were managed by Gene Mauch.

Quotebook

Former Memphis State basketball coach Wayne Yates, on academics: “I believe academic counselors honestly want athletes to graduate. But I’ve heard an academic counselor say he could keep a cockroach eligible for two years. That’s true.”