4B
Mondav. September 23,1996
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Big 12 supports alliance
Alliance to unite six conferences
The Associated Press
8
The Super Alliance lives.
The Super Alliances
The Big 12 and the Big East agreed
Thursday to a format that will allow the
proposed seven-year bowl alliance to
begin as scheduled after the 1998 season.
Previously, the two questioned the
structure of the new football bowl alliance.
For the first time, the bowl alliance will bring the six major conferences and Notre Dame together in a bowl package. Approval from the other four conferences — ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Pac-10 — is expected at a commissioners' meeting tomorrow in Chicago.
"The Big 12 has voted to support the super alliance, pending notification of the chief operating officers of our schools," Steve Hatchell, Big 12 commissioner, said Thursday after two days of meetings in Atlanta. "We feel there were enough
changes in the meetings in Atlanta last week to make it work."
ABC and the bowl alliance reached a seven-year agreement in July that brought the Rose Bowl, Big Ten and Pac-10 into the alliance's postseason package.
The new plan is structured to make it even more likely that the No. 1 team in the nation will play the No.2 team in a national title game. The plan will go into effect after the 1998 season. The current bowl alliance deal will end after the 1997 postseason.
Once formally approved, here's how the new alliance will shape up.
The Rose Bowl will have the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions as long as the teams are not ranked No. 1 or 2.
The other bowls, most likely the Orange, Sugar and Flesta, will have the option of taking a conference champion as its anchor team.
The Big 12 anchor will be the Fiesta, the SEC will be the Sugar and the ACC and Big East will rotate with the Orange.
The Rose Bowl will be the host of the national title game in the fourth year of the deal, January 2002.
"There will still be some movement in trying to avoid rematches," Hatchell said, "but this helps build a local fan base with those tie-ins."
Hatchell said that the plan was not perfect, but that some parts were terrific and others just too complex.
"Everybody has said all along that the super alliance is not a perfect system, and we thought dissent was good in some cases. It's just the complexity of the whole thing that needs discussion," Hatchell said.
Another item under consideration, according to several news reports, is a new bowl selection process, using a combination of The Associated Press poll, USA Today/CNN poll, computer rankings and other factors to seed the eight teams. The alliance would create a selection committee consisting of athletic directors and conference commissioners who would meet at the end of the season.
Texas Rangers at end of their rope
The Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Texas — The '69 Cubs. The '78 Red Sox. The '64 Phillies. The '96 Rangers?
Baseball experts and former players on those teams say the Texas Rangers' collapse-in-progress, if it continue, would stand among the biggest in baseball history.
Insurmountable, right?
Scarcely more than a week ago, on Sept. 11, the Rangers' AL West lead over Seattle stood at nine games.
That's what pitcher Ferguson Jenkins thought. He pitched for the 1969 Chicago Cubs, who led the New York Mets by 9 1/2 games on Aug. 14. Then the Cubs went 8-17 in September and lost the divisional race to Tom Seaver's "Miracle Mets" by eight games.
"There's always one ballclub to go through it," said Jenkins, the Cubs' pitching coach.
The Rangers, hoping for the first playoff berth in franchise history, are on the verge
of folding the same way. After Friday night's game against the California Angels, they were 1-9 since Sept. 11, including an improbable four-game sweep in Seattle. Their lead had dwindled to one game with eight left to play.
"That's right up there with us," said Billy Williams, right fielder for the 69 Cubs. "In fact, this is bigger than ours. They don't have that much time."
Jenkins, also a member of the 1964 Philadelphia team that blew a 6 1/2-game lead to the Cardinals after Sept. 21, said the collapses have similarities.
"It's a similar pattern," he said. "The offense tails off and it just steam rolls the pitching. Then comes the defense with errors."
That's what appears to have happened to the Rangers. They're not hitting — a .187 average in the four-game Seattle series — the pitching has started to struggle, and formerly reliable defensive players are botching routine plays. Fielding errors played critical roles in three of the four Seattle losses.
"This is as much adversity as we've faced all year," said manager Johnny Oates.
There's no official ranking of the biggest chokes in playoff history, but a glance at
some historic collapses shows the Rangers would fit right in. In fact, no team has blown a bigger lead at a later date, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jack Lang, longtime New York baseball writer, said the Phillies' '64 fade was the worst he'd seen aside from the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers, who led the crosstown Giants by 131/2 games on Aug. 11.
The Giants ultimately won 16 consecutive games and landed in a two-game playoff that ended with Bobby Thomson's shot heard round the world.
if the Rangers can somehow hang in there, they'll prove more resilient than of their fans. Exuberant over an imminent division title two weeks ago, they're jumping off the bandwagon in droves.
"Look at the Rangers' history," one Dallas talk show caller said Friday. "They are losers. They have always been losers."
Others, meanwhile, remained faithful that Texas would hang on for the last week of the season.
"History's going to be made either way," said Jim Hargrove of Fort Worth, who was among dozens camped out at The Ballpark to buy the playoff tickets despite Texas' tenuous lead.
Tommy Morrison risks self and others Opponents ready to spar with boxer
dy Jim Litke
AP Sports Writer
Sometimes a good cause is not good enough. In Tommy Morrison's case, it's not even close.
Morrison is the former heavyweight boxer who retired in February, less than an hour after being confirmed HIV-positive. Seven months later, in the same town where he made that announcement, Morrison said he planned to box one more time, this time to raise money for children with AIDS.
Morrison may have learned most of what
he knows about the world in the fight racket, but there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. Just the opposite. What's wrong with his plan is not the end, but the means. Reformed smokers or drinkers or in Morrison's case, hell-raisers, often take up causes directed at
Tommy Morrison
their old vices with a passion few of us can match. So it appears in this case.
"I'm not now, nor have I ever been a good role model," Morrison said Thursday. "A lot of people are probably not going to like what I'm doing, but they will have to listen to what I have to say."
But listening and standing around idly while he endangers his own health, and quite possibly several others, are very different things. If Morrison wants to call attention to the plight of children with AIDS — something he did quite eloquently at the time of his retirement — there are plenty of ways to accomplish it. Climbing back into a ring to fight is by far the most sensational of the bunch. That hardly makes it the right one. Even though it's the same one that Morrison feels best suited to do.
"Being rejected is more emotional than having the virus itself," he said.
No one can argue with him there. Boxing and AIDS are as volatile a mix as any our
Even so, plenty of experts are on record already saying that chances the virus could be transmitted during a fight are infinitesimal. And they may be right. But even putting that issue to the side for a moment leaves the troubling question of how it will affect Morrison. His immune system already is compromised; it's hard to imagine the amount of battering a boxer absorbs between sparring and fighting wouldn't compromise it further.
And then there's the damage such a bout could cause to the sport itself. Most people think boxing can't sink any lower, but it can. The only way it has been allowed to continue this long is that it is accepted as an informed risk. Were Morrison to fight, that notion would be tested as never before.
The good news is that so far, he has no site for any match, no date, and not even a guarantee any state boxing commission would sanction a bout in which he took part. He remains on medical suspension in Nevada, where the HIV test routinely administered to fighters revealed Morrison's condition, and that could prove a sizable roadblock.
The bad news is that Morrison can afford good legal help, and there is no shortage of opponents willing to fight him.
a clever lawyer helped former world champion Aaron Pryor force Wisconsin to let him fight there a six years ago, even though he was three weeks out of drug rehab and legally blind in one eye.
When Morrison first announced his retirement, George Foreman, who lost a decision to Morrison for the WBO title in 1933, said he was ready for a rematch. And Foreman was hardly the exception. Robert Karns, chairman of the physicians' advisory committee of the California athletic commission, said at the time that Morrison could practically take his pick.
"Could I get a boxer to fight Morrison for 400 bucks at the Forum? Probably not," Kams said. "But if I pay him 50 grand, I'll find you 15."
No doubt. One fighter contacted already said, "I don't plan to have sex with the guy. If the money is right, I'll fight anybody."
His name? Try this: Ross Puritty.
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