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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 1994)
V ypl'-lklll-j ly • July 18, 1994 Moons Jupiter’s 16 known satellites orbit the planet’s equator, and will not be hit by any of the 21 major comet fragments. t) €) Left to right: Ganymede, Callisto, to and Europa Great Red Spot Giant storm is about 16,000 miles across. 'ound irobably into 21 . The train 2.5 million ing into the aens ig overly con- body image, ifine health as social, spiritu- id maintain a ysical health, ttain emotion- iccepting nat- i cannot have ople smaller :r than, some- s moderation, ^commend ex- as a healthy - and consists ps in the food t should do so g permanent 1 not drop be- :tive ien heals itself >stein, that the es CMV parti- t latent, in the said, could at- ihut down the ated, said Ep- s repairing the ow without re- )ckage. heories about sis and ours is •stein. Monday • July 18, 1994 Sumo silicone ban turns heads in Japan CHRIS S. COBB I thought Americans went too far concerning sports. Flipping through the newspaper, I could not believe one of the articles that I read. Let me give you some back ground so you know what I am talk ing about. In Japan, sumo wrestling is the number one sport. The best athletes in the sport are equivalent to famous movie stars here in America. These fat men who hit one anoth er with their huge bellies earn big money and marry the most beautiful women in Japan - not a bad job. Let the spectator beware Not to be over-critical of the sport, it is wrestling and the people who seem to get hurt the most in the sport are the spectators in the front row watching these matches. Their rings do not have ropes to keep the wrestlers on the stage-like ring and they sometimes fall and crush the sumo-goers watching the match. The athletes who want to get into the sport of sumo wrestling must take a physical examination to see if they meet the physical requirements. One of the requirements is that the wrestlers weigh 165 pounds. Another is that they must be 5 feet 6 inches. This is where it gets good. When some of the wrestlers don’t make the height requirement, they have done certain things to make the required height. One method that was recently banned and has re ceived attention lately is getting sili cone implants in the head. Yes, this is the same material that is used in breast implants. After passing the physical, the wrestlers then undergo another procedure to have the implants removed. The sumo-wrestling officials turned their heads, so to speak, when dealing with this issue until just re cently. One wrestler had six inches of silicone implanted in his head so he would meet the height require ment. The Coneheads return The officials are now banning the implants after hearing about this sumo-conehead. They fear the im plants will leak, like some breast im plants. This is the strangest performance- altering procedure that I have ever heard of. Athletes in America have taken drugs to make them stronger, but how many of them have had a plastic-like substance surgically placed underneath their skin? None that I can remember. Americans fear that there will be an economic war in which the United States will lose. We have fallen be hind in the technology race with Japan, but I don’t think American athletes will try to match this con cept. Can you imagine how American athletes would use silicone implants? Every player in the NBA would be six inches taller by having implants in the soles of their feet. Football players would have more room to block if they use silicone in jections in their arms and shoulders. Let’s hope this doesn’t catch on in our country. Can you imagine the places where bodybuilders would get the injections? SPORTS MU Page 3 Waiting on the Big 12 There’s work left for new conference By Brian Coats The Battalion Last February, the Big 8 Conference invited Texas A&M, Baylor, Texas Tech and Texas to join the league, ending the 80-year-old Southwest Conference. Now it is July, and the initial excite ment of change has died down. Now the work begins. The athletic directors of all the Part one of three schools in the recently named Big 12 have had three meetings (in Kansas City, Mo. and Dallas) to start hammer ing out the details of the new confer ence. Wally Groff, A&M’s athletic di rector, said it is a good thing there are two years left before league-play be gins. “There are still hundreds of unan swered questions,” he said. Groff said in addition to the number of issues facing the athletic directors, there is another problem. The plans the athletic directors are laying out at the meetings are unofficial recommen dations. “There is no official governing body like a council of the presidents or facul ty group for the Big 12 yet,” he said. “At this point, we are making these recom mendations, but we don’t know who we are making them to. I guess to the world. Right now, we (the athletic di rectors) are the governing body.” Plans for the league are being ham sharing, scheduling and sport by sport issues. Lynn Hickey, the senior associ ate athletic director, is A&M’s repre sentative on the team. ffn| • ■ gPjjk mi u nil is. gts CON FERENC E £ m mered out almost daily, even though the next athletic director’s meeting is not until August, Groff said. He said a six-person transition team has been named to work on issues like revenue Hickey said she was amazed at how much work is needed to start the new league. “There is a tremendous amount of work to get done,” she said. “When I first went into the meetings, I thought we could get softball started next year. Now I see there are too many things to work out for that to happen.” However, one part of the new con ference that has been worked out is a television contract, possibly the most exciting and most lucrative part of the new conference. For $100 million, ABC and Liberty Sports, which owns HSE, will televise Big 12 football games, starting with the 1996 season. Groff said he could not be happier with the arrangement. “The TV deal is finalized and a very pleasant surprise,” he said. “We start ed the new conference off with a bang to land this package. It is a great situa tion for our conference.” Groff said the TV package is going to bring national exposure to A&M’s foot ball team, which has frequently been on national TV in recent years, as well as other programs which do not receive as much publicity, like women’s sports. “Liberty is going to be starting an all-women’s sports channel,” he said. “They are planning to use the Big 12 as the base for that. That is unbelievable exposure for our women’s programs.” Groff said the negotiations to secure the deal were long and intruiging. Please see Big 12/Page 4 Students view World Cup Final in MSC Dorsett did not Aggies call U.S.'s first Cup as host a success By Mark Smith The Battalion There should have been a sign in the MSC on Sunday reading World Cup Final 2:35 - Space is Limited. The flag room had already drawn a crowd of students when the 160 members of the second session of the Texas A&M Soccer Camp filed in. Couches were moved and chairs arranged around the two small-screen televisions so that everyone could catch a glimpse of Brazil battle Italy to a shoot out victory. The International Student’s Associa tion organized the World Cup viewing and has shown all of the Cup’s matches, except for games shown on tape delay. A number of students watched the games in the flag room. Among them was Sandy Edwards, a midfielder for the Texas A&M soccer team. Edwards said the first World Cup to be played in the United States was successful. “It’s been great,” Edwards said. “I think it’s been the most exciting World Cup yet.” Head soccer coach Gerald Guerrieri said the World Cup affirms what U.S. soccer enthusiasts have said about the ex citement of soccer. “People sitting and watching these games by the best players in the world brings credibility to what has been said before,” Guerrieri said. “It shows people that it is a very athletic game. That it can bring passion.” Another midfielder for the Aggies, Jamie Csizmadia, agreed with Guerrieri and said that Americans are learning more about the soccer. “A lot of people are watching the games,” she said. “They’re learning more about the sport.” Guerrieri said it is wrong to think that soccer will replace baseball or football in the U.S. sports world. “Soccer is here. It shouldn’t be thought of as a replacement,” he said. “People were saying in the late 70s that soccer was growing, that it would be the sport of the 80s. Those were foolish statements. It’s just another form of entertainment.” k : Stew Milne/THE Battalion The MSC flag room displays the semi-final game between Italy and Bulgaria as Steve Maranz, a graduate soil and crop student, watches. Maranz wanted Brazil Please see World Cup/Page 4 to win. Sunday they beat the Italians in the World Cup final, on penalty kicks. always want to carry the football DALLAS (AP) —For many of his 11 seasons with the Dallas Cow boys, star running back Tony Dorsett complained because he thought he didn’t get the ball enough. That’s certainly not how his ca reer began, when he was a jittery sixth grader playing for the Aliquip- pa (Pa.) Termites of the Pop Warner League. “I was afraid to play,” Dorsett said. ‘Then, when I played, the first kickoff I caught, because of the fear I had — I didn’t want to be hurt — 1 took it 75 yards for a touchdown. “From that point on, it got better and better.” It’ll get even better on July 30 when Dorsett is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Can ton, Ohio. Former Cowboys coach Tom Landry will present Dorsett. But there was a time when Landry and Dorsett feuded, mostly over the number of times Landry would call Dorsett’s number. Dorsett, the NFL’s third-leading rusher/ thinks he’d be No. 1 if Landry had given him the ball more than 17.5 times per game. Landry insisted he was only trying to pro long Dorsett’s career. “With 25 carries per game, I would have retired as the all-time leading rusher. There’s no question in my mind,” said Dorsett, who still racked up 12,739 yards. He trails only Walter Payton (16,726) and Eric Dickerson (13,259). Dorsett would have had 16,617 — 109 yards fewer then Payton — if he had maintained his career 4.3- yard average and carried as often as Payton, who played one more season than Dorsett. “I was screaming for it when I first came to the Cowboys: ‘More carries. More carries.’ But coach Landry thought that because of my physical size, my career would have been short-lived if that had hap pened. The Battalion MARK EVANS, Editor in chief WILLIAM HARRISON, Managing editor ANAS BEN-MUSA, Night News editor SUSAN OWEN, Night News editor MICHELE BRINKMANN, City editor JAY ROBBINS, Opinion editor STEWART MILNE, Photo editor MARK SMITH, Sports editor WILLIAM HARRISON, Agg/e///e editor Staff Members City desk—James Bemsen, Stacey Fehlis, Amanda Fowle, Jan Higginbotham, Ellie Hudson, Sara israwi, Christine Johnson, Craig Lewis, Angela St. John Parker and Tracy Smith News desk— Kari Rose, Sterling Hayman and Stacy Stanton Photographers— J.D. Jacoby, Jennie Mayer and Bart Mitchell Aggielife— Traci Travis, Christi Erwin, Jennifer Cressett, Jeremy Keddie, Warren Mayberry, and Paul Neale Sports writers— Josh Arterbury, Brian Coats and Constance Parten Opinion desk— Chris Cobb, Josef Elchanan, Erin Hill, George Nasr, Jim Pawlikowski, Elizabeth Preston, Frank Stanford and Julia Stavenhagen Cartoonists— Boomer Cardinale, David Deen and Josd Luis de Juan Clerks— Michelle Oleson and Elizabeth Preston Writing Coach— Timm Doolen The Battalion (USPS 045-360) is published daily, Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and Monday through Thursday during the summer sessions (except University holidays and exam periods), at Texas A&M University. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77840. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald Building, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843. News: The Battalion news department is managed by students at Texas A&M University in the Division of Student Publication, a unit of the Department of Journalism. Editorial offices are in 013 Reed McDonald Building. Newsroom phone number is 845-3313. Fax: 845-2647. Advertising: Publication of advertising does not imply sponsorship or endorsement by The Battalion. For campus, local and national display advertising, call 845-2696. For classified advertising, call 845-0569. Advertising offices are in 015 Reed McDonald and office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Fax: 845-2678. Subscriptions: Mail subscriptions are $20 per semester, $40 per school year and $50 per full year. To charge by VISA, MasterCard or Discover, call 845-2611. Enjoy Summer Sports! Don’t let an injury hold you back! CarePlus •Physical exams to ensure your healthy start Provides 'Prompt care for minor emergencies •Family health care & follow up Quality Care Plus Convenience Open till 8 p.m. Seven days a week Texas Ave. at Southwest Parkway 696-0683 No appointment needed • 10% A&M student discount CONTACT LENSES ONLY QUALITY NAME BRANDS (Bausch & Lomb, Ciba, Barnes-Hind-Hydrocurve) Disposable Contact Lenses Available $118°° TOTAL COST...includes EYE EXAM, FREE CARE KIT. AND TWO PAIR OF STANDARD FLEXIBLE WEAR SOFT CONTACT LENSES. SAME DAY DELIVERY ON MOST LENSES. Call 846-0377 for Appointment CHARLES C. SCHROEPPEL, O.D., PC. DOCTOR OF OPTOMETRY 505 University Dr. East, Suite 101 College Station, TX 77840 4 Blocks East of Texas Ave. & University Dr. Intersection Page 3 us' >f Aunt the e her ave iorical ters ox- ie and yor of to ' i mu-' ill’s : emi- - [