Scorecard

ORANGE AND BLACK

Syracuse University, famed in past years for black stars like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Jim Nance and Floyd Little, is having profound trouble with its current generation of black football players. Last spring nine of the 10 blacks on the squad stayed away from spring practice; their action, they said, was the result of Syracuse's repeated failure to hire a black assistant coach. (A visit to the practice sessions by Little, now with the Denver Broncos, during which he criticized the attitude of some of the undergraduate black players, appeared to trigger the walkout.) John Corbally, chancellor of the university, who had been maintaining a hands-off attitude, instructed Head Coach Ben Schwartzwalder to hire a black assistant before fall practice began, and Carlmon Jones of Florida A&M subsequently joined the staff. Meanwhile, Schwartzwalder sent letters to the black athletes who had missed the spring drills, telling them, "If you have any interest in returning to football, it is essential that you see me personally before August 1. Your status will be discussed at this time."

How many blacks requested interviews is not clear, but most of them spoke to Schwartzwalder either personally or by telephone. When notices were sent to players to report to fall practice, only two of the nine rebelling blacks were on the list; the other seven were not invited because of their "attitude." They then filed a complaint against Schwartzwalder and the coaching staff with the local Human Rights Commission.

White players on the squad were generally in sympathy with Schwartzwalder's action. Joe Ehrmann, a tackle, said, "Sure, we're going to miss them, but they more or less brought it on themselves. There wasn't a racist issue on the club. It was just a separatist attitude: blacks and whites doing what they wanted, by themselves." Ray White, another tackle last year, said, "Most of us were for Ben's choice. The idea was that we weren't against the demands of the blacks. It's just that they quit."

Greg Allen, one of the blacks who had been invited back, said, "All summer I've prepared myself to play football. I want to play. But I don't know all of the present situation. I thought we had a justified complaint. We had been told that we would have a black assistant coach at spring practice. I feel the whole problem would have ended, now that there is a black coach, if the seven had been permitted to play this fall."

FILL HILL
Chicago and New York have both talked about building artificial ski slopes for city dwellers out of compacted garbage and solid waste. It sounds fairly gamy but, assuming land is available and costs not extreme, Garbage Mountains make a lot of sense, since they provide a symbiotic solution to two pressing urban needs: garbage disposal and recreation areas. And you wouldn't be skiing through tin-can moguls or down bed-spring slopes. Dirt covers the waste and the deodorized and disinfected junk, and grass covers the dirt. Snow, of course, is another problem.

GET YOUR COLD BEER

When vendors at Milwaukee Brewer games in County Stadium are out of Schlitz, they're out of beer—or almost. After getting complaints from readers that the vendors were refusing to sell Pabst and Miller, two other Milwaukee beers, The Milwaukee Journal had a young reporter apply at the ball park for work as a beer hawker. He was hired and, according to his account, was instructed to sell seven cases of Schlitz for every two of Pabst and one of Miller. Checkers under the stands kept track of the cases of beer each vendor took out to sell to the crowd to make sure that of every 10 cases taken seven were Schlitz. The reporter was told, "If they ask you for Pabst, tell them we don't have enough cooler space to cool as much Pabst."

The arrangement is not as arbitrary as it sounds. Robert A. Uihlein Jr., the president of Schlitz, is one of the owners of the ball club, and Schlitz is a major sponsor of radio and television broadcasts of Brewer games. Allan (Bud) Selig, president of the club, freely granted that Schlitz had a favored position. "It is a basic fact in the baseball business," he said, "that when a brewery makes a deal for radio and TV rights, the beer sales in the stadium go along with it."

And the arrangement violates no laws. The Brewers' contract with Milwaukee County specifies that no product shall be sold on an exclusive basis. Almost exclusive doesn't count.