Scorecard

SWITCHEROO

That $30 million authorization that a House Judiciary Subcommittee struck from the Olympic Sports Bill (SCORECARD, Aug. 28) was restored last week by full committee vote after intricate maneuvering. Given the fact that the Senate-passed version of the bill authorizes the same amount and that the House version now has the enthusiastic backing of Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino (D., N.J.) and Speaker Tip O'Neill, the funding looks promising.

But it wasn't all that easy. Rep. Thomas N. Kindness (R., Ohio), who led the move to strike the $30 million in the subcommittee vote, tried again in full committee. The motion was beaten back, but then, ironically, Kindness made the motion, which passed, to restore the funding. Kindness said he did this because he liked the wording of the amendment authored by Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D., Wis.) better than that of the Senate bill, but the word from Washington is that Kindness switched to escape increasing heat from the public.

NO ONE HERE BUT US SCOUTS

When Barry Sides, an assistant football coach at the University of Houston for 10 years, was assigned to scout Memphis State two weeks ago, he checked the Memphis press guide, which said the game would be played "at Ole Miss." So on the morning of the Saturday night game Sides flew from Houston to Memphis, rented a car and drove down to the Mississippi campus at Oxford.

"I got down there real early, about two o'clock," Sides says, "and of course there was no one there then. So I just drove around the campus for a while, went and got me something to eat and sort of fooled around."

Time passed.

"It wasn't until six that I got a little concerned," Sides says. "I thought, 'Well, maybe it's an 8 p.m. game, but I wonder why some of the stadium employees aren't showing up.' "

More time passed.

"I was getting real worried," Sides says, "so I stopped and asked a student about the game." The student informed Sides that the game was one of those that Ole Miss plays down in Jackson, three hours away. Sides called it a night, because by the time he got to Jackson all he would have seen was part of the last quarter, at best.