Is Everybody Cheating?

Since last winter's basketball scandals, almost every sport has become fair game for reformers. This week, attacking on four fronts, probers, investigators and plain publicity hounds were sniffing around trying to ferret out some of the more noisome complaints: P: The Department of Justice attacked the National Football League's restriction on the telecasting of games. "If this suit is successful," warned a DOJ man, "action will be taken in the cases of all other sporting events." P: A congressional committee, picking up where it left off last summer, called more witnesses in its investigation of monopoly in baseball. Main targets: 1) the reserve clause, which binds a player to one club until he is sold or traded; 2) the player draft, which allows the majors to snatch Pacific Coast Leaguers for $10,000. P: A federal grand jury in New York where the International Boxing Club has its headquarters, was trying to 1) find out whether a fighter can get a big city match unless he signs one of the I.B.C.'s "exclusive" contracts, and 2) uncover some of boxing's undercover managers. P: Congressman Victor Anfuso of New York, disturbed by reports of "illegal betting, bribery, manipulation of races, and other illegal and nefarious methods of cheating," introduced a bill to find out just who owns the nation's race tracks.

Not content with such halfway measures, New York's Congressmen L. Gary Clemente proposed an all-out effort: a super committee to investigate "all phases of football, basketball, baseball, boxing, racing, and other sporting contests or exhibitions, or competitions, or games, or matches (professional or otherwise)."

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