Scorecard

FUNERAL DELAYED

Representatives of the NCAA and assorted sports federations opposed to AAU control met last week in Chicago and, though they pretty much agreed that development of track and field, gymnastics, basketball and other sports would best be served by separate autonomous organizations, they decided to wait a while before acting on their belief.

Two reasons lay behind the postponement, though other reasons were given. The U.S. meets the Soviet Union in a dual track meet at Palo Alto this year and a struggle for power between the AAU and the rest of the track world could result in a weakened U.S. team. Not only that but Stanford University, sponsoring the meet, is on the hook to the USSR for a $100,000 guarantee.

NO HELP WANTED

A wistful Rocky Marciano said last week that if a federal boxing commissioner should be appointed he would like the job. His first act, Rocky said, would be to appoint "a board of boxing composed of ex-champions." Sorry—but what prizefighting needs least of all is control by prizefighting people. The sport's degradation has occurred because boxing people lack the moral fiber to maintain its integrity. What boxing needs is a tough and knowing head cop.

It is not, however, likely to get one very soon. In spite of Senator Estes Kefauver's fine exposition of boxing's underworld control, the corrective bill prepared by his Senate committee on antitrust and monopoly has little chance of passage. The Justice Department and Attorney General Bob Kennedy do not want a boxing commissioner in the Justice Department, since this would give it the aspect of a regulatory agency, quite a departure from its function as a law-enforcing agency. All other agencies of this nature, Kennedy points out, are set up specially—the Federal Trade Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, and so on.

If a federal boxing commission were to be established, it would offer very slight employment opportunities for old, retired boxers.

UP AND OVER FOR FIBER GLASS
You can take it from Harold Abrahams, technical committee chairman of the International Amateur Athletics Federation, that the IAAF will not ban fiberglass vaulting poles outdoors. In his cluttered, hectic London office, Abrahams, 100 meters gold medalist in the 1924 Olympics, explained last week that "the fiber-glass pole is not so different in fact, only in degree," and is not inherently better than steel, since "a steel pole could in principle be made at least equally flexible and probably more so." The fiberglass pole is just easier to construct to vaulting specifications, it would seem. In the light of this information, legislation against the fiber-glass pole would be farcical. "Honestly," Abrahams said, "I don't think there will be any change."

MAMA ROE'S FULFILLMENT

During the school hockey season now ending, the feats of the four Roe brothers of St. Paul made history. John Roe captained his Williams College hockey team to its best season ever (16-3-1), and in the Williams forward line his younger brother Tom, with 82 points, ranked high among collegiate scorers.