Lamar May Be Little, But It Sure Isn't Minor

Last summer the NCAA laid it onto Lamar Tech. "Now look, fellows," said Big Brother, kindly, "your track team is running with the big boys and the rest of you are small time. Let's pick one pigeonhole for all your troops: small college or major college, but just one, and the choice is yours." Now Lamar is in Beaumont, Texas, and you know Texans. The NCAA might as well have asked them to either fight it out at Sabine Pass or retreat to a life of weaving blankets on an Oklahoma reservation. "Which way do the big boys live?" said the people at Lamar, coldly. And the big boys, the ones at places like Tulsa and Houston and Texas A&M, immediately fell down laughing. They were going to play Lamar in basketball and, well, all of a sudden the breather is strutting around packing a gun on each hip. That's a real thigh-slapper.

And so there really were two guns—maybe more. Lamar, picked by one rating service to lose by 32, shot down Memphis State by 13. Southwest Conference leader Texas A&M (a 28-point favorite by the same rating service) was the next big victim, falling in its own gym by 11. Tulsa came into Beaumont undefeated. It left shattered by Lamar's brilliant full-court press, a loser by 26. By the time Houston reached Beaumont it had to step over 12 bodies, but the bigcity boys still were unbelievers.

Tall, cool and talented, Houston went to work. At halftime Lamar, its racehorse offense for once out of whack, was down by seven points. With 10 minutes to play, it was down by 13, and its star, Earl Dow, loaded down with four fouls, was sitting on the bench.

Jack Martin, the Lamar coach, had recruited Dow out of Wharton Junior College, where he had averaged 21 points. "Don't take him, Jack," warned Gene Bahnsen, the Wharton coach. "He's an individualist. He won't run your patterns."

Martin shuddered. His intricate defenses (17 of them) and his screaming dive-bomber offenses are keyed on discipline, with every man always moving at top speed and yet knowing exactly where his teammates are and what they are doing. He looked at Dow, who is 6'1" and 155 pounds, and then he remembered his recruiting budget, which is even skinnier. And he sighed. "I've got to take a chance," he said.

Lamar is a state school, which means all the money Texas gives it must go for education. Texas (like most states) does not consider athletics as a part of education. And so the school must make do with what it can pick up from the student body through service fees ($22 a semester) and a building-use fee ($14).

The building fees go to paying off the Student Union and the football stadium, which was built for $1 million 100 yards downwind from a chemical plant. The plant also produces a blinding smog and a smell you wouldn't believe. Lamar almost had to give up home football games until the plant agreed to close down on Saturday afternoons.

"And the student service fees," says Dr. Richard Setzer, Lamar's president, "go toward a lot more than just athletics. There are other things just as important: the band, opera, health services, visiting lecturers, the choir, our debating team. Did you know that our debating team had been invited to New York to compete in a tournament with Harvard?" ("Oh, good grief," said a coed, when asked for her opinion on the debating trip. "Who cares what those creeps do?")

Dr. Setzer winked. "Besides, athletics have enough money. We are looking for a well-rounded program. Why, we cut $4,000 off the basketball budget this year and gave it to our recreation-and-intramural program. And it's a fine program."

Recreation's gain dropped Martin's budget to $44,000, including the 18 scholarships he has to account for, equipment, travel, recruiting and scouting. Ask the people at Tulsa or Houston, where there's real money, about their budgets and you get a blank stare.