Scorecard

Big-time college football and basketball—and, in some areas, baseball—rely on the pros to leave college athletes alone, and in turn the pros depend on the colleges to operate a de facto farm system. To protect that mutually beneficial arrangement, the college coaches could have made Denver think twice about another raid if they had made a cause c�l�bre of the Haywood case. Now, with the bidding wars between the two professional basketball leagues still on, there may well be other hardship cases signing with the pros, backed by a legal precedent to keep them there.

UNSUNG HERO

Breakthroughs in science have often come about in the most casual ways. Take Isaac Newton and gravity, or Archimedes and displacement, or William Taylor and the dimpled golf ball.

You don't know about William Taylor? Shame on you. England does and is erecting a plaque to his memory in the city of Leicester. Up to 60 years ago golf balls sliced, hooked, fluttered, dived and took off in all directions like nothing you ever saw. Then William Taylor put his scientific mind to the problem. His answer was dimples, the little depressions that so characteristically mark the golf ball even today, for in all the years since, no one trying to stabilize the flight of a golf ball has been able to better Taylor's basic design. And just as Newton required only an apple to help him find the answer he sought and Archimedes only a bath, all Taylor needed was a cigar. He had no wind tunnel in which to observe and analyze the disturbances caused by a fast-moving sphere. So he blew cigar smoke at the ball and studied the eddies. Eureka!

SPORTING CHANCE

Drug use by kids is a national problem, but a bright note comes from Harlem, where a group called the Sports Foundation has devised a method of recognizing early drug use and, sometimes, correcting it. For three years the group has sponsored the Harlem Junior Olympics, a widespread sports competition that annually attracts about 3,000 youths between 9 and 18. Before the youngsters can be active in the Olympics they have to undergo physical examinations. The exams reveal drug use and, not uncommonly, the presence of disease. Community organizations are then brought into the picture. If a youngster stays in the year-round Olympic program, eventually contact can be made with scholarship agencies and college placement bureaus.

Olvin McBarnette, executive officer of Sports Foundation, explains, "These kids don't have doctors, teachers, lawyers and other professionals living on their block. About the only image they have is that of the thug. But there is a deep interest in sport, and we try to reach them on that level."

PLAYING WITH FIGURES

The "11th" game in collegiate football this season is causing an upheaval in the matter of individual statistics. Since 1936 National Collegiate Sports Services, the statistical arm of the NCAA, has recognized individual champions in such categories as rushing, passing, punting and scoring on the basis of season totals. This year, because some schools will play an 11th game while others will stay with 10 or even nine, the standard has been changed to average performance per game if the player has appeared in at least three-quarters of his team's games. This means that a John Reaves could pass for 3,300 yards in Florida's 11 games and still rank behind a Rex Kern with, say, 2,135 yards in only seven of Ohio State's nine games. Kern's per-game average of 305 yards would be better than Reaves' 300, and Kern's would therefore rate higher.

If the system had been in existence last year it would have had such a significant effect. Ed Marinaro of Cornell averaged more yards rushing (156.6) than did Steve Owens of Oklahoma (152.3), yet Owens, who played one more game, accumulated more total yardage and was the NCAA leader in that category. Owens' position as "the nation's leading rusher" helped him win the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the outstanding player in the country, and didn't hurt a bit when it came time to negotiate his professional contract. On the other hand, who is Ed Marinaro?