Thursday, August 19, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section B·Page 11
Missouri loses Dausman for season
The Associated Press
LEXINGTON, Mo. — The Missouri Tigers aren't even halfway through their preseason practice schedule yet, and already they are taking hits as if they were facing Nebraska without wearing pads.
The latest blow to Missouri coach Larry Smith's program came Tuesday, when he announced that junior wide receiver John Dausman had a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He will miss the entire season. Dausman suffered the injury during a non-contact drill on Monday.
"You never replace guys like John," Smith said. "We go from three veteran receivers to two, and it means that (somebody has) to fill the void."
Last season, it was Dausman, 6-feet
1 and 182 pounds, who filled the void for the Tigers, who entered the year with just one proven starter at wide
receiver. A walk-on transfer from Northwest Missouri State, Dausman started five games for Missouri, catching 18 passes for 364 yards and three touchdowns. Against Kansas State in the final game of the regular season, Dausman caught six balls for 169 yards.
rotation. Smith also has two tight ends with game experi-
senior Kareem Wise, who started eight games last year, will join Layman to form a new four-man receiver
This year, with Dausman listed as No.1 on the depth chart and senior Kent Layman, the Tigers had expected wide receiver to be their deepest position.
otation. Smith also has two tight ends with game experience, sonhomores Dwayne
tight ends with game experience, sophomores Dwayne Blakley and Brandon Ford
We've got a lot of experience and there's a variety of guys who can do different things." wide receivers coach Andy Hill said. "And most of them are complete players."
it probably still is. Freshman Travis Garvin, sophomore Eric Spencer and
At least Dausman will be back, although not until next year. But 15 other Tigers who were expected to be on the fall roster are not with the team. Six players have left in the past
week, including starting offensive lineman Jeff Hellerstedt.
"I can't explain it," Smith said. "I see that as a trend. More and more athletes aren't quite able to handle the pressure or handle the (demands) of academics and school. Maybe they're burned out. I don't know."
If you include the injured Dausman and fullback Rob West, who has a hairline fracture in his left foot, that's a loss of 17 Tigers. West had a screw inserted into his foot on Tuesday and will be back in two to four weeks.
The Tigers still have three days of two-a-day practice at Camp Wentworth in Lexington, Mo., left before returning to Columbia. Missouri opens its season at home Sept. 4 against University of Alabama-Birmingham.
K-State player takes hit, gives thanks for recovery
The Associated Press
MANHATTAN, Kan. — When Jarrod Cooper opens his mouth around journalists, the notebooks come out and the tape rolls. Nobody's sure what he'll say next, only that it will probably be entertaining.
Kansas State University's annual media day was no exception, as the Wildcats' junior strong safety regaled one crowd of reporters after another with a story of how he beat running back Frank Murphy in a video-game bet and got him to dye his hair sunflower-yellow.
Typical Cooper — but that he even felt like talking about anything Saturday was the real story. Cooper, who carries a well-deserved reputation as a hard hitter, had taken the hardest hit of his life a little more than two weeks before.
On July 31, while Cooper was standing at a pay telephone outside a Manhattan convenience store, a car jumped the curb and pinned him against a brick wall. Police arrested the driver on suspicion of drunken driving.
"We went to the gas station to get a bag of chips," Cooper said. "I had a whole handful of quarters. I went to make a phone call, and the next thing you know all of my quarters fell on the ground."
Cooper didn't even see the car coming.
"I didn't see anything," he said. "My team
mate Turelle Williams told me to watch out at the last minute. I turned around, and it was right there."
The impact caused severe bruising, pulled muscles and cuts, Cooper said, but no broken bones.
"He was back the next day," said free safety Lamar Chapman. "That couldn't happen to anybody but Cooper. Anybody else might just have laid there, maybe even retired, but not Coop."
The accident left him with a good deal of lingering soreness, Cooper said, and he was unable to run until Saturday.
"I just thank God I can walk," said Cooper, who recorded 86 tackles — 56 unassisted last season for a team that ranked third nationally in total defense at 268.3 yards per game.
"I got hit extremely hard," he said. "I got smashed on a brick wall. Every time I think, 'OK, am I going to be able to start the season?' I just thank God I can walk. It's a miracle that I'm able to stand here talking to you guys."
The incident was not the Wildcats' only recent brush with a life-threatening situation. Last week, defensive coordinator Phil Bennett's wife, Nancy, was hit by lightning during a morning jog. She remained in critical condition yesterday at the intensive care unit in a Manhattan hospital.
The Associated Press
PHOENIX — Since last January, when they won their first playoff game in more than half a century, very little has gone right for the Arizona Cardinals.
First came the usual injuries and contract disputes.
But the latest blow is the worst— an auto accident that injured starters Lester Holmes and Carl Simpson
and left doctors trying save the right arm of backup offensive lineman Ernest Dye.
This was supposed to be a season of great expectations.
Brown and linebacker Jamir Miller, left via free agency, then the Cardinals angered fans by cutting back Larry Centers, who had toilled without complaint through the years of losing only to become expensive excess baggage to the front office.
Last year, the Cardinals were 9-7, their first winning season since
Then, on the first day of camp, came another public relations disaster, the release of tight end Chris Gedney, who had undergone surgery to remove his colon.
But things turned in the off-season, as they have so often for this franchise.
they moved from St. Louis, and they won a playoff game for the first time in 51 years. They also developed an emerging star at quarterback in charismatic Jake Plummer.
Voters in Mesa, Ariz., defeated a plan to finally build the Cardinals a stadium of their own. Two of last season's leaders, offensive tackle Lomas
eam signed its top draft pick, wide receiver David Boston, but its other first- round choice offensive
Nearly a week into camp,the
in to the trend of voidable years and incentive clauses.
Wide receiver Rob Moore, miffed at being tagged the team's franchise player, stayed away from camp. So did defensive tackle Mark Smith, who insists he is worth at least twice the $50,000 the Cardinals are offering.
"It's hard to put a team together when you have some key parts missing," said Coach Vince Tobin.
Hussein's son tortures team, newspaper says
The Associated Press
LONDON—A former Iraqi soccer star said that he and other players were tortured when they played badly, by order of President Saddam Hussein's son, The Sunday Times reported.
The claims by former Olympic competitor Sharar Haydar Mohamad al Hadithi support repeated allegations by Iraqi dissidents that Hussein's son, Odal, ordered players to be imprisoned and tortured and to have their hair and mustaches shaved off after losing matches.
In 1997, FIFA, the game's international governing body, investigated reports that Odai had the Iraqi team whipped with canes after it was eliminated from the World Cup qualifying competition. FIFA cleared Iraq's football federation of the charges.
Odal, 35, runs the Iraqi football federation and the country's Olympic committee, in addition to owning Iraq's most influential newspaper as well as radio and television stations.
He is also head of the paramilitary Saddam Fedayeen commando units. Odal killed his father's bodyguard during a 1988 banquet for Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's wife, after a fight. And in 1996, he was seriously injured in an assassination attempt by Saddam's opponents.
The Sunday Times article was based on interviews with al Hadithi and Abbas Janabi, Odal's former private secretary and press spokesman for 15 years, both of whom have left Iraq.
The article said that after Iraq lost an exhibition match against Jordan in 1993, al Haditih was taken to Al Radwaniya prison with three other players and mistreated for three days before being released.
When al Hadithi tried to resign in 1994, the article said, he again was taken to the prison, 30 miles from Baghdad, and was repeatedly hit on the soles of his feet, dragged on his bare back through a gravel pit and then forced to jump into a tank of sewage so the wounds would become infected.
After his release, he was banned from soccer for life and told that he might be killed if he was seen so much as kicking a ball in the street, the newspaper said. Al Hadithi now lives in hiding abroad.
Janabi corroborated the allegations of torture and said he and more than 20 officials from the Iraqi Olympic committee witnessed the team being forced to kick a concrete ball around a field at the prison after they failed in a World Cup qualifying round in Qatar in 1993.
Odal believed aggressiveness against sportsmen made them try harder, Janabi told the newspaper.
"He thought they would be so frightened by the punishments that they would be encouraged to give a better performance," Janabi was quoted as saying. "He became senseless and cruel until he arrived at a stage when he sent players to prison, not only incarcerating them but putting them through a course of torture which was almost unbearable."