University Daily Kansan, March 8. 1983
Page 3
USFL recruiting vexes KU officials
By ANDREW HARTLEY Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Los Angeles Coliseum was less than half-filled Sunday when Herschel Walker made his debut with the New York Generals of the United States Football League.
But the KU athletic department is still interested in the issues brought up by Walker's move. He signed a deal with Nike to deliver dollar contract two weeks ago.
Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Georgia, had another year of eligibility before he was named to the College All-American national a tutor in college athletics.
KU HEAD FOOTBALL coach Mike Gottfred said yesterday, "I have to stress that I don't think it is wrong for a player to leave in his junior year.
"However, I do think it is unfortunate. But it's also been unfortunate in basketball and baseball American sports for over 10 years."
Gottfried, who had five players at the University of Cincinnati sign last fall with USF1 teams, said his greatest concern was not the superstar athletes he believed to have with marginal talent who were recruited and then cut from the team.
"I don't worry about the Herschel
Walkers," Gottfried said. "I worry about the guys who get offered $1,300 and then get cut the next week and can't return to school."
HE SAID ONE of the football players from Cincinnati who signed with the USFL got cut, but he could not return to school because the semester had started and the player's eligibility and scholarship had been annulled.
Mike Fisher, academic adviser to the athletic department, said he did not fault Walker for taking the $6.2 million to play professional football. He said he thought it was sometimes right for a college athlete to first worry about making a living and then educate himself.
Fisher said he also worried about players who were wired by the money and then were cut from the team. But he said he thought athletes should have the right to decide what they wanted to do.
"I think it's a matter of individual freedom," he said. "Every young man should be offered the opportunity to play professionally.
"HOWEVER, I do think it is wrong to promise to an athlete and then break it."
franchises to look at tapes of the players.
The week after Walker signed with the USFL team, many coaches expressed outrage by saying they would ban USFL recruiters and not allow the
But Gottfried said, "I would be very receptive to the USFL. I would be making a choice for the athlete if I wanted it." It's the athlete's decision to make.
Monte Johnson, athletic director,
said, "I think you will find there's concern any time an athlete is spirited away from a college before he graduates."
But he said Walker's move did not warrant as much attention as it did to the other
"The USFL is on record with colleges and universities as saying that Walker was an exception." Johnson said. "There is no reason why colleges should not take the word of the USFL commissioners that they will not take any more players before they complete their senior year."
Sid. Wilson, sports information director who left Friday to work for the University of South Carolina, said, "I'll tell you about this who scared me a great deal."
He said he thought the USFL and the National Football League could become locked into competition and begin drafting more college players before
Norm Yetman, professor of sociology and a teacher of the sociology of sports, was born in St. Louis in 1920.
issue was the power structure of professional and college football.
WHEN WALKER signed after his junior year, Yetman said, it revealed a relationship between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the NFL that was stripping the players of their rights.
The result of that relationship, Yetman said, was that the athletes were powerless to decide their own destinies.
He said that as an educator, he thought education was in the best interest of most athletes. However, for some college athletes, he said, employment for thousands of dollars was more beneficial than the education
He said the college and professional leagues had an unwritten rule that the NFL would not draft underclassmen if they were playing in a low-cost minor league farm system.
YETMAN SAID he saw irony in the University of Georgia's criticism of President Obama.
Last year, Georgia, along with the University of Oklahoma, sued the NCAA for the right to negotiate their contracts, calling the NCAA a cartel.
Yetman said the motivation behind that suit was only greed for money. He said that Georgia was setting a double standard, in contrast to television while also criticizing Walker.
Group says 2,500 remain in Vietnam
Staff Reporter
By DIANE LUBER Staff Reporter
About 400 eyewitness reports claim that Americans are still imprisoned in Vietnam, a spokesman for a national movement said Wednesday. American servicemen said yesterday.
U. S. involvement in the war in Vietnam officially ended more than 10 years ago. One of the conditions for the withdrawal of 24,000 American troops was the release of all American prisoners in Hanoi and South Vietnam.
"There is increasing evidence that some men are still held," said Carol Bates, public affairs director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.
prisoners and to account for those missing or unaccounted for in Vietn
"We wee it to the MIAs to check it out." said Laird.
PATTI SHERIDAN, state coordinator of the League, said 2,500 Americans were still unaccounted for in the state and 40 of them were from Kansas.
Sheridan said she was thrilled that the Legislature had passed the resolution.
In response to the increasing number of eyewitness reports, State Rep. Charles Laird, D-Topeka, sponsored a protest against Gov. Kate Hause passed yesterday, that asked Congress to take whatever action necessary to bring back any remaining
"We have always felt that if the American people knew what was going on, they would know it."
BATES SAID renewed interest in Americans who were missing in Vietnam had coincided with the hostage crisis in Iran.
The eyewitness reports made during the last two or three years had come in response to ads the League had placed in magazines and newspapers that circulated in Vietnamese refugee communities and camps, she said.
"The President is supportive," she said, "and the State Department and the Defense Department have stepped up their efforts."
The League has been trying since 1970 to raise public awareness about Americans imprisoned or missing in Vietnam. Bates said.
During the late 1960s, the federal government had urged the families of those Americans in prison or missing in action to take steps to ensure the safety of U.S. servicemen, she said. But
by the early 1970s many of these families had made contact with each other and were going public.
HERIDAN SAID that a letter-writing campaign to Hanoi initiated by the League in the early 1970s had been successful and that improvements for prisoners of war there.
Although 555 prisoners were released from jails in Hanoi and South Vietnam in 1973, members of the League suspected that some Americans remained in prison, she said. And in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, the League received many reports of American men who were still alive.
The League, which has always been primarily made up of family members of Americans still considered missing in Vietnam, now has 1,000 members.
Sheridan, who has been in the League for 13 years, said she was not related to him.
"But so many of our friends were lost," she said.
Chief counsel seeks pardon for Pvt. Slovik
By United Press International
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. — The chief counsel for the only U.S. soldier executed for desertion during World War II may sue the government to win a presidential pardon for Pvt. Eddie Slovik, it was reported yesterday.
Retired Army Maj, Edward P. Woods, who represented Slovak at his court martial nearly 40 years ago, told the Macbom Daily the government's response to a host of attacks on Slovak 'amounts to a coverup' by the Army and the Department of Defense.
Slovik, of Hamtramck, Mich., was executed by a firing squad in France on November 26. The body was buried in an unmarked grave for executed killers and rapists.
Senate endorses plan to protect visitations
By JEFF TAYLOR Staff Reporter
Divorced parents awarded custody of their children must obtain written consent from the other parent or request court approval before moving the children out-of-state for more than 90 days, under a bill the Senate tentatively approved yesterday.
The Senate will take a final vote today and will send the measure to the House.
ALSO, IF A hearing was required, a judge could require that the parent with custody pay the lawyer's fees and assert that the parent paying child support.
In a hearing, the parent paying child support could ask that the costs involved in traveling out-of-state to visit a child, or in bringing the child to Kansas for a visit, be provided from child support payments.
Hess said the parent awarded custody, most often the mother, had sometimes decided to leave the state and move there. The other parent about visitation rights.
State Sen. Paul Hess, R-Wichita, who introduced the measure, told the Senate that the bill would protect parents from being sent to a parent during a divorce trial.
THE PROBLEM should be addressed before the parent with custody moved, he said.
The bill gives a judge the option of decreasing child support payments if a child was moved illegally out-of-state. Child support payments could also be increased, if the expense of living in another state was determined to be more expensive than living in Kansas.
"If a person is going to move a child out-of-state, there has to be a reasonable effort to work that out, rather than call up one week and say 'Hey, I'm moving out of the state next week, come see the kids when you can afford an airline ticket,' " he said.
Hess said that after a request the hearing could be scheduled within 10 to 14 days, and that the hearing would take about 30 minutes of a judge's time.
State Sen. Paul Feleciano, D-Wichita, said the proposal went too far in saying that child support could
be reduced if the children were illegally moved.
"I WANT TO make absolutely sure a child doesn't get caught in a Catch-22 position, because the child support expense is defrayed for mom or died," he said. "Who gets the end of the stick? The child."
During the session, the Senate adopted an amendment that would require a judge to adhere strictly to the Child Protection Act, which would require a judge to base his opinions on the best interests of the child.
Hoss offered the amendment and said that the change would prevent child support payments from being used as a weapon to secure visitation rights.
But Feleciano said he did not want child support payments to be changed at all by judges.
"We need to protect the integrity of the child support of that child, to provide food and shelter and clothing for the child should be caught in the middle."
STATE SEN. Nancy Parrish, D-Topeka, agreed that visitation rights should remain a separate issue from child support payments, even if the children were move to another state.
She said she was concerned that the bill would hinder a divorced person with child custody from leaving the state for a different job.
However, Hess said that parents sometimes moved to another state with their children without considering the rights of the other parent. And he said a parent has the right to have the right to have a judge determine whether the move was in the best interests of the child.
"MET NOT TRYING to prevent any custodial parent from taking a different job out-of-state," he said. "This is a tremendously wrenching experience to move a child away, without anyone knowing, without any time to work it out."
State Sen. Elwaine Pomeroy, R-Topeka, said the courts had historically separated child support from visitation rights and that most divorce agreements included a provision that prevented children from being moved, unless a judge was consulted.
ATTENTION!!!
STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
Applications for Student Senate funding are now available in the Student Senate Office, B105 Kansas Union. Completed applications are due by 4:00 p.m. March 10, 1983 in the Senate Office. No late applications will be accepted. If you have any questions, contact the Student Senate Office, 864-3710.
Paid for by Student Activity Fee.
MONDAY THRU WEDNESDAY
Annual Job Seminar Tonight — March 8
WOMEN IN COMMUNICATIONS, INC. has rescheduled
Get advice from Kansas City and Topeka professionals in broadcasting & print fields.
Learn
- interviewing techniques
- how to write a resume
There will be
• two sample job interviews
• speakers in hiring positions
- Seminars in advertising/public relations, magazine, newspaper, and radio-television broadcasting.
Refreshments served
7-9 p.m.
100 Flint Hall
GRAND OPENING
THE 1983 SR'S ARE HERE!
- Register for FREE $50 Gift Certificate
- Campus Sport $219.95
—Alloy Frame, Rims & Handlebars
—Only weighs 26 lbs.
- Free bag of Pistachio Nuts with every test ride!
1337 Massachusetts · 749:0636 (next to Mick's)