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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 14, 1989)
9 The Battalion SPORTS Thursday, September 14,1989 Wacker: ‘It’s gonna take a miracle’ No. 22 Ags, Homed Frogs open conference play Saturday By Clay Rasmussen Of The Battalion Staff Texas Christian Coach Jim Wacker wouldn’t mind a little divine intervention against Texas A&M when the two meet Saturday in Fort Worth. “You have to believe in a miracle,” Wacker said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It’s gonna take a mira cle to pull this off. We’re the decided underdog.” No. 22 A&Ms’ largest concern for the game is the ineffectiveness thus far of Heisman Trophy candidate Darren Lewis. In the first two games of the sea son, opposing defenses have held Lewis to 110 yards on 32 carries. He is averaging only 3.3 yards per carry. But as defenses have keyed on the Heisman hopeful, Aggie fullback Robert Wilson has picked up the slack. Offensive Coordinator Bob To ledo accepts some of the blame for Lewis’ slow start on the Heisman stop Darren Lewis too and hope he needs to pass a lot to free up their hype. doesn’t kill me.” backfield. “Other people read (Lewis hype for the Heisman) and they’ve kind of It is the passing game that Toledo “I think that’s the best backfield ganged up on Darren,” Toledo said, hopes will loosen up TCU’s defense tandem in America,” he said. AM / “They’re taking away a lot of our outside running game right now. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re not going to let Darren run outside.’ But in turn, it’s opened up our inside running game with our fullback. “They’re taking Lewis out of the game plan. They’re smart. If I was defensing A&M I’d say we’d better wsr mmMmM and allow Lewis and Wilson to have a running chance. “I think it’s just a matter of time before all the pieces of the puzzle fit together and we’re able to do every thing we want,” Toledo said. “Even tually they’ll have to stop the full back, and if we throw it well, they’ll have to stop that.” “They’re two outstanding running backs and they’re my main concerns going in.” Wacker also said that it’s just a matter of time until Lewis breaks loose. “Wilson broke loose and had a big, big, day against LSU and Dar ren just hasn’t had his dav in the sun,” Wacker said. “I just hope we can contain them” r pro contend with is their battered offen sive front. Offensive linemen Mike Arthur, Richmond Webb and Mike Pappas all are banged up and Wacker doesn’t believe A&M See Game /Page 10 Crowd noise worrying Holtz as Irish prepare for Michigan SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — When it comes to crowd noise, Lou Holtz says there’s a double standard. Crowd noise has been a buga boo for the Notre Dame coach for quite a while. Especially, it seems, whenever the Irish play Michi gan. Top-ranked Notre Dame meets the No. 2 Wolverines Sat urday, and the 105,000 fans at Michigan Stadium will produce a roar to rival space shuttle launches — and make it tough for the Irish to hear quarterback Tony Rice calling signals. Crowd noise is a problem lor a lot of visiting teams, but Holtz says his team has gotten hurt both ways. “There are a lot of things you can’t say,” he said Tuesday to about 40 writers. Then he went right ahead and said them any way, grumbling about a seeming double standard that never works to Notre Dame’s advantage. “We went up there two years ago in front of 105,000 people,” he said of his team’s 198/ victory at Ann Arbor. “We were down deep in their territory, and the crowd was screaming and we couldn’t hear. So they penalized us for delay of game. “Then they came down here last year, and we got charged with a timeout because they can’t hear their cadence,” Holtz said. “Now, I didn’t realize our 60,000 people made that much noise, compared to 105,000. So don’t ask me about crowd noise. I can never quite fig ure that situation out. “It seems like nobody See Irish/Page 10 Sure, college basketball has its faults — but it’s still fun to watch You’ve probably heard about it. The book that was coming out exposing all the dirt in Jim Valvano’s basketball program at N.C. State. It’s out. Cash, cars, coke (no, not sasparilla), it’s all in there. About the only stab you could take against the author, Peter Golenbock, was that he started out to do a book on OU football and got mixed up. The book details episodes of Valvano’s recruiting techniques and promises. After a few chapters you figure that if the basketball thing doesn’t work out for him there’s always televangelism. But the Geraldo-type expose isn’t nearly as intriguing as two pages in the book’s introduction. These pages outline 11 points to clean up college basketball. You can see it’s flawed right from the Mm mm S Tom Kehoe — Sports Editor start. As if there’s something unclean about college basketball. I know these suggestions seem ludicrous and unreasonable, something wrong with college basketball. What an alarmist. I won’t lay all of them on you. Their outrageousness would shock you and probably cause you to never read the sports page again. Then you’d miss out on good stuff like dp. But here’s a handfull of the 11 points and why Mr. Golenbock is greatly in error. • Eliminate freshman eligibility — Like that’s going to help. After a whole year of nothing but studying, a kid would probably just quit college altogether. He’d miss out on a whole year of playing to packed houses and having his sneakers stuffed full of cash after games. That’s what college basketball is all about, isn’t it? • Eliminate athletic dormitories — What a stupid idea. If this idea had been implemented at Oklahoma a year ago it would have taken the cops hours to round up all those football players. Keep ’em centrally located to make it convenient for law enforcement officials and crack dealers. • Schedule games on Friday and Saturday only — What? I think we all agree that big-time college atheltics is about money. Trash that weekend idea. Since many are being payed like NBA players. make them play an 82-game schedule, every night of the week. • Split the TV money among all NCAA schools — Like, Rice would get the same as North Carolina? This is actually an old idea. It’s called Marxism. In general, we dislike Marxism. • Outlaw booster groups whose sole purpose is to raise money for the athletic department — This was the orignal idea, no booster clubs. But candy sales and raffle tickets don’t buy too many Camaros. And besides, when there were raffles you had to give one of the Camaros away to someone who was just a student. • As an alternative, decree that all money raised by booster groups be given to a general treasury — This might not be a bad idea because it cuts out the middle step of getting the raffle tickets printed and gets the goodies directly to the less-deserving general student population. • As another alternative, make the booster club balance sheets public — Oh, sure. And why not fax a copy of it directly to all those nosy reporters? It would save them the trouble of finding former players who want to get back at the coach for not giving them enough playing time. • Outlaw sneaker and clothing contracts for coaches — Actually a good idea. It would make the coaches apreciate how difficult it is for his players to conceal those ^ surges in disposable income that come from- under-the-table payments. Now, I’m sure that Mr. Golenbeck had everyone’s best interests at heart. 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