19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

Sirs:
You goofed. Who else but Ara? At least he should have had a tie.

Jim Ryun seems like a nice young fellow, but his philosophy on winning is too old-fashioned.
BILL STEWART
Marietta, Ohio

WINNING WAYS
Sirs:
I concur with Father Hesburgh in his views on football and life in general, but feel that he has lost some perspective (The True Meaning of the Game, Dec. 12). Each institution must make a choice between big-time athletics and a strictly amateur athletic program that is secondary to the academic pursuits of the players. But the time to make the decision is not at the end of the season.

There is no doubt that Notre Dame has made the former choice and is big-time in every sense of the word. As a successful big-time football power, Notre Dame has an obligation to play the part through to the end—and that includes bowl games. Notre Dame's riding the fence in this case is curiously similar to the performance of the team against Michigan State. Notre Dame obviously entered this game with the intent to win, and just when the responsibility to try for the win weighed heaviest, the team backed down.
KENNETH J. KURTZ
New York City

Sirs:
That's just what the country needed, some moral instruction from Notre Dame on the game of football. Father Hesburgh ought to set up a Casuistry Bowl there in South Bend.
HARMON L. GARRETT
Little Rock, Ark.

Sirs:
Do you mean to say that Father Hesburgh and Ara Parseghian belong to the same organization? It's hard to be impressed by Father Hesburgh's noble expressions when his football team displays an altogether different commitment. This is the team that on one Saturday refused the challenge of a team demonstrably its equal, and on the next mercilessly thrashed its weaker opponent.

Notre Dame has paid a dear price for its glory: its own self-respect.
ART BRISSETTE
Bridgeport, Conn.

Sirs:
I have a word of advice for Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame. I have remembered it verbatim since I was a schoolboy:

"In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, and in articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and in amicable, philosophical and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous descantings have intelligibility and veracious veracity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, psittaceous vacuity and pestiferous prolixity, obscure or apparent."

I read the article twice. What did he say, anyhow?
OSCAR M. HOKANSON
Bernardsville, N.J.