10B the university daily kansan
wednesdav. april,14, 2004
sports
Wildcat pushed for award
The Associated Press
By promoting Sproles for Heisman, Snyder bucks his past approach
MANHATTAN — E-mails and postcards may not sound like much to anybody, except a Heisman Trophy contender at Kansas State.
These will be going out of Manhattan this fall on behalf of Darren Sproles, Kansas State's record-breaking running back.
It's a radical departure of policy for coach Bill Snyder. When quarterback Michael Bishop was drawing national attention in 1999, Snyder infuriated critics by often keeping him at arms length from the media. There were some games Bishop didn't appear before reporters at all. He finished a distant second in the Heisman voting.
Sproles has posted more than 100 yards of all-purpose yardage in 25 of his last 28 games, including a school-record 345-yard performance against Oklahoma in the Big 12 Conference title game that gave Kansas State its first Big 12 Championship. Two of the three best all-purpose games in school history belong to the soft-spoken Olathe native.
Despite opening up, Snyder is certain, not to stray too far from his traditional approach of emphasizing the team and not the
"I think he's very capable of handling the publicity extremely well." Snvder said.
individual.
An even bigger adjustment for Sproles and his team will be dealing with the departure of quarterback Ell Roberson. A threat to both run and pass, Roberson gave the defense something to worry about other than Sproles.
But Snyder makes clear that Sproles won't bear too much of a load on his sturdy 5-foot-7, 180-pound frame.
Nevertheless, it will be tempting to overuse Sproles' various talents, which include catching passes and returning kicks.
"He does a lot of things," Snyder said. "It's not like he's just been back there and we hand the ball off."
"He would have it all if you let him," Snyder said. "But we're not going to scrimmage him as hard as we might somebody else. So he might get 60 percent of what the normal workload of a No. 1 would be."
Having a Heisman contender excites his teammates.
In the meantime, Sproles is being held out of a great deal of contact work during the spring. He has never been injury prone, but why take a chance?
"We're all pulling for Darren to get all the attention he deserves," center Mike Johnson said. "And besides, we know if we can just hold the block for a little bit, he can go all the way."
FUNDING: Revenue-sharing helps smaller schools
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1B
Marchiony said that the gap wasn't hurting the NCAA or creating unfair competitive advantages for some teams. He pointed to this year's NCAA Division One men's basketball tournament as an example.
The tournament's Sweet 16 included several small-conference schools, including the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the University of Nevada, Saint Joseph's University and Xavier. Marchiony said statistics like these indicated that the smaller schools could still compete with the larger ones.
Marchiony also said a system of revenue sharing was in place to help out the schools and conferences with smaller budgets. For instance, he said, the revenue earned from the men's basketball tournament goes to pay for every other sports championship in the NCAA.
Others say there needs to be more revenue sharing.
She said she understood the bigger conferences being reluctant to part with what it already had, but she believed everyone would realize it was for the greater good to share more of the wealth.
Dan Fulks, who contributed to the report, wasn't so confident that the imbalance would right itself.
Jennifer Henderson, associate commissioner for the Sun Belt Conference, said the BCS conferences should share more of the revenue it got from the BCS bowls.
Fulks said he wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA Division One split up sometime in the future with the richer conferences and the poorer conferences parting ways.
He said the resources were out there for schools who wanted to build its programs up to the highest levels.
Henderson said the disparity in conference budgets did hurt competitive equality because the schools with more money could build better facilities and attract the better recruits.
"I think what has to happen is schools have to decide who they want to compete with and not try to be more than they are." Fulks said.
The schools just needed to find the community support to accomplish it.
"It's a possibility." Henderson said. "But I think reasonable minds will prevail."
Henderson said she realized there had been talk of the NCAA Division One splitting up, but she didn't think it would really happen.
— Edited by Robert Perkins
ROBERTS Assistant coach returns home to lead St. John's
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1B
The Red Storm fired Mike Jarvis on Dec. 19, and the team limped to a 6-21 record, including a 1-15 mark in conference.
The Red Storm finished deadlast in the 14-team Big East conference.
Losses on the court were underscored by problems off the court.
One player was kicked out of school, one withdrew from classes and four others were suspended from the team after breaking curfew to go to a strip club after a loss to Pittsburgh in January.
The players met a woman at the club who told police they raped her.
No charges were filed against the players and the woman later said she made the story up because the players refused to pay her $1,000 for sex, according to court documents.
In addition to the incident after the loss to Pittsburgh, senior captain Andre Stanley was suspended because of academic troubles and senior guard Willie Shaw was dismissed from the team after he was arrested for possession of marijuana with former St. John's star Marcus Hatten.
The biggest sign of a downfall came as St. John's standing as New York City's basketball king began to deteriorate.
That distinction was taken away by the Manhattan Jaspers, which went 25-6, made its second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and even pulled off an upset of No. 4-seeded Florida in the first round.
- The Associated Press contributed to this story.
— Edited by Paul Kramer