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Thursday, January 30, 1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Sports fund debate
Tonight the Student Senate will vote on whether to cut its financial allocation to the women's athletic program. Last year's allocation was $63,860.09. It has been proposed to reduce it this year to $47,819.
Last week when I discovered that the Senate was planning to reduce the allocation, I thought I would write an editorial about the unfairness of the reduction. In doing so, I could show everyone what an open-minded, liberal, middle-class male I was.
The arguments against a reduction were excellent. Women's athletics is a young organization that was getting off to a good start.
The director of women's athletics was helpful. She supplied the necessary figures and she also gave the names of several women athletes who had information about the program.
As a result I discovered that in some areas the women's athletics program has been very successful and brought honors to the University. The KU women's swim team is undefeated and shows signs of becoming one of the best in the Midwest. The women's softball team also has great potential. In addition, enough women have become involved in the program to double the number of teams for most sports.
After receiving this information, I proceeded to write an editorial in support of the women's athletic program. Then came the bombshell.
I was informed that although the Student Senate was reducing its
If the governor's recommendation goes through, women's athletics at the University will receive greater funding. If unfunded, apparently, few people realize this.
allocation, Gov. Bennett has recommended an increase in the state subsidy for women's athletics of $30,000. Instead of having less money to work with, the organization would have more than $14,000 more.
Neither the women's athletic director nor the women athletes mentioned that the governor had asked the state to increase its allocation. Some of them, in some believed that it wasn't necessary. In truth, there was no reason why they should have—except maybe as a matter of ethics.
As a result I find myself unable to support the women's athletic program. This doesn't mean, however, that I oppose it. The question of whether the Student Senate should reduce the funds remains up in the air. It is quite possible that women's athletics deserves a large increase.
To most women the matter of greater funding for university athletics means their acceptance by men within the field of sports. This is because many colleges require they must fight on their road to equality. Perhaps they must.
Equality is a matter of the highest priority. However, it shouldn't be furthered through unethical devices such as withholding information. If ethical ethics are considered, ethics, they will discover that they have also sacrificed their goal.
—Kenn Louden
Continue clemency
The nine-member Presidential Clemency Board, which processes convicted Vietnam war deserters and draft dodgers for alternate work service and presidential pardon, has wisely recommended that President Ford extend his amnesty program, because it is more difficult. It is incumbent for President Ford to grant the recommended extension for another six months.
When the Presidential Clemency Board launched a campaign last week to spread the word nationwide about the amnesty program, board chairman Charles E. Goodell discovered why there had been such a bleak response to the President's program.
Goodell stated recently, "We have been overwhelmed by calls from in almost every state indicating that they just heard about the program."
Based on the most recent figures, of the 100,000 to 120,000 men estimated to have been convicted of draft evasion and desertion during the Vietnam era, approximately 2,000 have signed up for the President's amnesty program. The Justice Department and the Pentagon operate separate amnesty programs that deal with uninvoked draft evaders and uninvoked deserters. There are 6,200 in the Justice Department program with 221 signed up and 13,000 in the Pentagon program with 3,334 processed.
The basis for the board's recommendation to extend the program was an upsurge in applications after Goodell launched a new program. 6. The success of this venture resulted in the board's recent
campaign that began Jan. 20 in 15 cities across the nation.
The success of such a campaign was revealed when applications for the Presidium amnesty program were made during the period during the middle of January.
The board makes recommendations to the President to grant outright pardons or pardons after a specified number of months in public service. The convicted criminals also get "elemency discharged" because the discharge that brought their dismissal from service.
The clemency board's recommendation has one basic flaw that provides the President with the option to include extension of only the President's program, but not the two other programs. The extension should definitely be made for all three programs.
From the influx of applicants in recent weeks in all three programs it can be readily seen that an extension is in order. It isn't fair that men eligible for these programs be denied their right to clemency because of the government's inability to inform deserters and draft dodgers, convicted or unconvicted, about these programs.
President Ford should follow the recommendations of Goodell to not only extend the Clemency Board program but the two others as well. Rather than defeat the purpose of his own amnesty program and the others, Ford should grant the extension to enhance the opportunity for eligible men to participate in programs designed to heal the wounds inflicted on this country by the Vietnam war.
—Stephen Buser
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KANSAN
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Who or what is Howard Cosell?
By GLENN MEYER
Honors Staff Reports
"Howard Cosell is the conscience of sports," says one ABC executive. "If there's something rotten in the state of Denmark, he's there to expose it."
Cosell supercilious showman
That's one opinion. He has also been called "the Martha Mitchell of sportscasting," "the hungling judge," "the 20th century historian," "the personified," "show biz—an AJolson and George M. Cohen rolled into one," "the original Mike Wallace," "a hundred Mark Rudds at once," "the mouth that bored," "the man with the non-stop movie of seventies," "the Pill of Seventies," "the auditory toothache," and "nigger-loving Jew bastard."
In light of Cosell's recent achievements, his notoriety is understandable. He is the unquestioned star of "Monday Night Football," a show that demonstrates that competing shows have one after another, been driven off the air.
His book, "Cosell," has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover, and was on the best seller list for more than six months. He has recently written another book, "Like It Is."
On the banquet circuit, Cosell earns $500 for every after-
every appearance for every appearance with Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Flip Wilson and other comedians. His in-
formation as high as a film for $100,000 for 177
He has appeared successfully in comedy movies, including "Bananas" and "Sleeper" starring Woody Allen. Cosell, without text or notes (he has a photographic memory), does three radio interviews; his work is carried by several hundred ABC affiliates around the country.
He talks about being battle-weary. He wants to make a change. This year, he will decide whether to run for the U.S. Senate against New York incumbent James Buckley.
"It was the age of Hitler, and that hovered over anyone who was Jewish. And times were difficult for my dad."
IN "COSELL," he says that his childhood was responsible for much of his enormous drive:
"Surely a lot of my drive stems from the way I grew up—in Brooklyn, during the depression, Jewish, fighting a group of Stude Longiars and other minorities to school safely, to get home safely. That was part of life then.
Cosell was born March 25, 1920, in Brooklyn, the son of a Polish immigrant who worked as a grocery clerk and a credit clothing stores. Cosell wanted to be a reporter, but his parents urged him to study law. At New York University, he was Phi Beta Kappa and editor of The Army in 1941, working at the New York Port of Embarkment. By the time the war was over, he was the boy on the front line, marching and juggling a manpower pool of 50,000.
It was there that he met his wife, Mary-Edith (Emmy) Abrams. Her parents were children of the couple her over the objections of both their parents. From World War II to 1954, he worked as a labor lawyer. In 1954, he moderated a panel of Little Leaguers who interviewed professional news reporters a coast-to-coast radio show.
In 1962 and 1963, Cosell broadcast the New York Mets games, and immediately plunged into a campaign to drive Casey Stengel, the ball club's manager, out of town. The activity that made him famous, however, was his college work. He and the friendship this apparently developed between the two. When, in 1967, Al refused to be drafted because he was a Black Muslim, Cosell supported him. The outrage
IN 1956, ABC offered Cessell $250 to do ten five-minute sports videos in order to be decided to abandon his legal work. Myron Cope, writing for Sports Illustrated, described the country into sports broadcasting.
"Hustling to the scene wherever sports news was being made, Cosell sent chills up the spines of the working press as he trumpeted his way into press conferences and clubs because of what possibly could have happened before he got there," says one sport-swriter."
that legions of television viewers felt toward All also focused on Cosell. Cosell's infant, infamy, was now assured.
after Wright failed to get two of the sprinters to the stadium in time for their event: "Do you believe your young men can still incidence in you as your coach in view of what happened?" "**"
In "Cosell," Cosell says of himself: "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, persecuting, distasteful, verbose, a showoff, we have been called all of these. Of course, I am."
DESPITE Cosell's tough exterior, he can be very semi-criticism, as the following passages from "Cosell" show:
Cosell's unpopularity is that he has chosen the most unpopular stand in the sports world. From his 1962 team to his current sportscaster, Cosell has tried to change the very nature of sportscasting. In its first article on Cosell, Sports Illustrated wrote that Cosell was unlike other sportscasters:
living up to one third week
Monday Night Football—
at Detroit-I was really
"Here he is, the most controversial figure in the world," she said, wolf in a profession populated by pretty-faced athletes and
He has been called "the Martha Mitchell of sportscasting," "the mouth that bored," "an auditory toothbache," "the banging judge," "a hundred Mark Rudds at once" and "a 20th century Socrates." His book has sold more than 200,000 copies. His income was estimated as $500,000 for 1974. This year, he will decide whether to run for the U.S. Senate.
Sports Illustrated, explained Coselli's personal antimagnetism this way:
"Cosell can no keep me loose his mouth shut than a porcupine that is very plentiful of things to say that a lot of people don't want to bear. But one undeniable fact about him is that he helps help but notice his presence."
Cosell says a lot of things that bother people. Sometimes, however, it is hard to understand why they get so bothered. In a game between the New York Browns and the Detroit Browns, Cosell mentioned that Leroy Kelley, running back for the Browns, hadn't been "a compelling factor in this game."
down, more depressed,
professionally, than I have ever
been in my life. Everywhere I
builded ABC felt the tears of people.
I was imagining what abouts
riding of me.
fence-straddling play-by-play announcers who see angry sponsors under their beds.
COSELL describes the unease he felt at the opening ceremonies for the Twentieth Olympiad. He tells how he was unnerved when someone cracked Bavarian bullwhips as
"Most of all, Cosell's forward progress stems from the fact that he is one of national stature, he works at his trade. He goes out and looks for news and personalities, or of waiting for the gossip."
Cosell says he began sport-scoring in the years of the "ripp- and-reader," the sportscaster and reader. The sportscaster wired machine and read it verbatim. Cosell thought that the field was wide open for anyone who wanted to develop sources and explore the issues. That sportscaster needed much more detail, that sportscanning much, more depth.
"To aging quarterback John Unitas: 'People want to know if
"To Carmens Basilio, former wetterweight and middleweight champion of the world, winner of 56 bouts, all of which showed in his scar tissue: 'But Carmen, what about your face?'
Kelley's twenty-six carries had produced only forty-four yards. Because of that seemingly innocent statement, Cosell received hundreds of hate letters. One of them read "Get off the air." A second backward off the air. Football is an American game."
Not all of Cosell's comments have been so underserving of criticism. An article in the Sept. 1, 1974, issue of the New York Times Magazine listed some of Cosell's cruel statements:
part of the opening ceremonies.
Cosell described the events related to the kidnapping and the attack on the refugees and the horror and revulsion he felt. Finally, he described the outrage he felt when he learned that the Olympics officials had to halt the games immediately.
It was a view of Cosell that was totally unexpected, and totally human.
"For me," he said, "the Olympics died with the Israelis."
Another surprising aspect of Coelx is his home life. The man who shows almost unlimited drive and enthusiasm for his work is also independent; such a man, it is said, is married to his work and
2 They don't know the "nuts and bolts" of reporting: who, what, when, where, how and why.
qualifications for all-round announcing because:
1. They usually have no training in journalism.
3. Participation in one sport doesn't qualify a man for announcing in another sport.
4. The ex-eathite is, in a journalistic sense, hampered by divided loyalities: he has old ties to the management for which he worked, to the sport in which he participated and to all the enemies and commas who whom, and against whom, with played.
Cosell blames the broadcasting executives—who, he says, initiated the practice of
"The fan can be thoughtless, ignorant and cruel. He has never given up the right to strike and often does. When a ballplayer strikes, the effect upon the public health and safety is nil. Yet the ballplayer and the owner are called upon to each give up his individual bargaining rights because the fan wants baseball. Blame it on a group of baseball writers whose mental horizons are the dugout."
you can still throw the long ball.'
"To Brian London, who was about to be knocked stiff by Muhammad Bian, they say you're a pug, a patsy, a dirty fighter, that you have no class, that you're in just there for the ride, that you're going to have no chance against All. Now what do you say to that?"
"And, most famous of all, to Stan Wright, black sprint coach of the 1972 U.S. Olympic Team,
has no time for the "niecies" of life, such as a family. Ralph Nader is a good example of such a man.
THE BIGGEST reason for
Howard Cosell isn't. He is a homebody. His relationship with his wife, Emmy, has been great and he has "fair" by Walter Kennedy, president of the National Basketball League and Cosell's friend for twenty years. His son to his children is strong.
Such opinions alienate many sportscasters and executives. Cosell doesn't stop there, but he has a lot to say about sports fans.
hiring ex-athletes-for the current state of sportscasting.
"The fian' can be thoughtless, ignorant and cruel, and shouldn't be sanctified. Yet almost unfailingly he continues to be. The 'fian' is a telephone worker, a transit worker, a power-company worker, a steelworker, a teacher,
whatever. He has never given up the right to strike and often does. When he does the public is inconvenienced and sometimes the public health and safety is too struck, the effect upon the public health and safety is nil. Nor is the public convenience disturbed, for that matter. Yet the ballplayer and the owner are called upon to each give up a chance to play because the 'fan' wants baseball and is entitled to get it. You can't blame the fan for originating this type of thinking, though. Blame it on a group of baseball writers whose mental resources were whom all of life is the luxury of warm weather and spring training.
"When I think about the 'fan', I inevitably must think about the tens of thousands of letters directed to me, beginning with the general refrain, 'You nigger-diving Jew bawdied; and you nigger-diving Pharcone, which would begin, 'We're gonna get you. We know where you're out, and we're gonna get you.'"
COSELL thinks the fan is entitled to certain things: the assurance that, if the owner of a team shows a reasonable profit, he won't desert the fans by moving city; adequate sports facilities, an all-out effort on the part of own- and team to produce a "product of excellence;" the assurance that the sport-scasters will relay information from owners to journalists journalistically; and courtesy from owners, athletes and reporters.
Cosell views professional athletes as physically gifted but otherwise unexceptional people, to the horror of the die-hard athlete in his fight with his athletes described in heroic no matter what they do.
MORE horrifying to the diehard are Cosell's views on the importance of sports:
"At seven o'clock in the morning after Bobby Kennedy was shot, I had to do my regular show, an iPod radio show, 'Speaking of Sports.'
"So I went on the air that morning and said, 'This is Howard Cosell, but this morning I can't speak of sports.' Instead I talked of Robert Kennedy, of the three assassinations in a decade and why I had to think about what I should do," he suggested that it might be time for everyone to do just that because clearly there was a terrible sickness in the society.
"I never dreamed what the response would be. Hundreds of letters, many of them vicious, denouncing me for not giving the sports news. 'Don't tell me you said so,' said just one score. That's what you're paid for.' That was the theme of most, with protafines running through many of the letters.
"I was stunned. What mattered was that there was, obviously, a very large number of people in the United States who didn't want their normal account to interrupt on any account, for reasons whom hearing a baseball score was more important than some introspective thought about the state of the nation, about the kind of society in which children were growing up, about how three assassinations by American forces in the United States within five years and what what was wrong and what one could do about it.
"It's time that countries said,
'Let's go out and enjoy the game.'
But goddam it, there's a
transitory in life than the game.
"I would love to see some of this fervor placed into much broader channels of life; this is why today, however much I am in sports—and will be—I concentrate on how I'm doing on sports, and individual rights. That's what's important in sports today because sports is nothing more or less than big business."
IF ANYONE deserves to be described as controversial, it is Cosell. If the popularity of "Monday Night Football" has been any indication, this irritating Jew from New York brings to people who were never before interested in sports. Although Cosell seems to have many enemies, he also seems to have many admirers. In any case, he is the most talked about sportscaster as long as he was a sports fan, an avid fan, the team owner and the television executive, we can be sure that sports and sportscasting are under close scrutiny.