19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

Sirs:
Frank Deford proposes a pro tour for the riffraff golfers, separate from the big-name players. Why? It is just a matter of time until a new batch of Palmers and Nicklauses emerge from the pack and establish themselves as superstars.

Mr. Deford insinuates that we should have only the superstars winning every week, yet the Women's PGA tour in effect does just that and it creates a very unhealthy situation. In summary, if he is going to write an all-encompassing article on sports heroes, he should be better informed on all the sports.
JOHN E. FURZE
Baltimore

Sirs:
Congratulations to Frank Deford for uncovering one of the great American put-ons. In this day and age of everything being relative to something, players' salaries seem to be relative only to each other and to the middle-class incomes of the people Mr. Deford spoke about.

Anything less than what O.J. (and others) are asking should be exploitation because of what the organizations are going to make from their use.
H. A. YAZEL III
Smithville, Mo.

Sirs:
As a Washington Redskins' season-ticket holder, I was very amused at Mr. De-ford's rhetorical doubt that Washington fans will continue to pay money to see Vince Lombardi's "faceless performers." Washington fans have long packed both Griffith Stadium and D.C. Stadium in order to watch Joe Kuharich's, Mike Nixon's, Bill McPeak's and Otto Graham's "faceless performers."
RALPH W. SMITH
Lutherville, Md.

POT AND KETTLE
Sirs:
Your recent SCORECARD ("Bad Show," June 2) on the CBS Super Bowl film was the most honest analysis I have seen of the unfair publicity with which the AFL has had to cope for nine years.

I commend you for the article, but I must say that it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For years, SI has given preferential treatment to the NFL. Last year you carried at least two biased articles. One was on the races in pro football, and the other on the great young quarterbacks in pro football. Both stories were made to sound in your future billings as though they covered the two leagues, but when the stories came out, the first turned out to be about the races in the NFL, and the second, "The Young Generals," mentioned Bili Kilmer and Craig Morton but somehow forgot Joe Namath, Daryle Lamonica, Bob Griese and all the other great young AFL quarterbacks.
ANGELO F. CONIGLIO
Amherst, N.Y.

Sirs:
I am compelled to write you to express the thanks of the millions of fans who viewed the first episode of NFL Action and were, as I was, totally nauseated by it. Ed Sabol made a mistake in not calling it Colt Action. The first episode, which you so aptly reviewed, wasn't really a film of the Super Bowl but rather The Johnny Unitas Story. The Jets dominated the whole game, but in the film the whole show was centered around the Colts finally scoring (to make the score 16-7).

The second episode to date was equally sickening, showing films of the Colts and the perennial losers, the Dallas Cowboys, almost exclusively. I hope future episodes will show some NFL action.
JAMES CROWDER
Shelby, N.C.

Sirs:
Surely we are aware of the fact that 70 million people watched the Super Bowl on TV. The following day each newspaper and magazine throughout the United States described the game in careful detail. A week later Vince Lombardi and Howard Cosell dissected the key plays on a major-network TV show. In our media a film version of the same damn thing six months later is unacceptable!