The Smart Money Will Be Put on MIT

After an 87-year absence, Massachusetts Institute of Technology will return to college football Saturday with a Division III game against Stonehill College. This could take a little getting used to, around the campus in Cambridge, Mass., and the sport as a whole.

“It’s not like a big thing to go to football games,” said Andy Fish, editor of the student newspaper, the Tech. “They have a homecoming weekend, and no one really knows what it is.”

MIT went 4-5 last season in club football. This year, the Beavers will play seven games against five teams--Stonehill twice, Assumption twice, Bentley, Providence and Merrimack. So there’s plenty of time to memorize the old school cheer:

“E to the U, DU-DX; E to the X, DX; cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159; integral, radical, U DV; slipstick, slide rule, MIT.”

Add MIT: Wrote Malcom Moran of the New York Times, noting that the football program had completed 10 years as a club team last year:

“The team is still funded by the athletic department. Recruiting takes place on the telephone and via the mail after an applicant to the institution indicates he is interested in football. The marching band, complete with kazoo section and its complex dollar-sign, pi and infinity formations, is again expected to vary in size from week to week.”

Trivia Time: Matt Biondi won his fourth medal of the week Thursday in swimming. Mark Spitz won seven golds for the United States in 1972. Spitz also holds the record for most medals in an Olympic career. How many did he win?

The 10s are rolling up in the gymnastics competition at Seoul. The Soviet Union’s men’s team picked up seven perfect scores en route to a gold medal Tuesday, and two Japanese have scored perfect marks in the pommel horse. It has become a glut of perfection.

Things got so out of hand at one point during the men’s events that even South Koreans in the crowd--usually neutral, but almost always polite--joined in the booing after East German Andreas Wecker took the slightest hippity-hop after landing a triple somersault off the high bar and had to live with a 9.9.

Said Hardy Fink of Canada, a judge for 19 years with Olympic experience dating back to the 1976 Montreal Games: “To some extent, a lot of 10s make crowds in gymnastics halls behave like people at a stock-car race who go to see the crashes.

“Everybody wants to be there when it happens,” he added. “They feel disappointed when it doesn’t.”

Johnny Carson was sitting in his front-row seats, watching the Volvo/Los Angeles tennis tournament Wednesday at the L.A. Tennis Center at UCLA, when Merv Griffin, the entertainer who has gained a heady reputation of late for major purchases, arrived.

“Sorry, Merv,” Carson said. “The tennis center is not for sale. Forget it.”

Two years ago today: Rookie left-hander Jim Deshaies of the Houston Astros, pitching against the Dodgers, set a major league record by striking out 8 batters to start the game. He finished with a 2-hitter and 10 strikeouts in a 4-0 victory.

Trivia Answer: Spitz won 11 medals in 2 Olympics, the first 4 at Mexico City in 1968.

Quotebook

Mickey Mantle, commenting during a recent New York Yankees telecast on Jose Canseco’s bid to reach the 40-40 club: “If I’d have known it was going to be such a big deal, I’d have done it.”