Soundtrack

It's the rule

Bing Crosby aired a fine idea the other day. Bing took off from Don Canham's article in SI (Oct. 25), "Russia Will Win the 1956 Olympics"?which points out that while Russia state-supports its athletes all the way, the U.S. Olympic Committee has to shake the tin cup. Bing's suggestion was both logical and simple: To help raise the million or so dollars the Olympic Committee needs to send U.S. athletes to Melbourne, why not arrange for UCLA and Oklahoma?both unbeaten, untied and uninvited to regular Bowl games?to play a special post-season game?

Chancellor Raymond B. Allen of UCLA promptly put the crusher to that idea: both UCLA and Oklahoma are parties to tidy conference agreements which rule out Bowl games two years in a row for the same team?and UCLA and Oklahoma played in Bowl games last year. The rule works to share the Bowl-game gravy, even when it means second-rung football.

We say too bad on two counts: 1) the Olympic Committee could have used the money and 2) Bowl games ought to pit champions against champions.

Disappearing Bullets

Clair Bee, president and coach of the Baltimore Bullets of the National Basketball Association, had a premonition before the 1954 season began that the path ahead would be almost as rough as it was last year for his cellar-dwelling club. So he wrote to friends around the country in the hopes that some hidden talent could be shipped off to Baltimore. From one of his friends, the head of a West Coast AAU team, he received this reply:

I have no one on my team who could help you.

I have no one on my team who can help me.

I have no one on my team who can help themselves, let alone anyone else.

I do know of someone who can help you. Get down on your knees, brother, and pray.