Sidelines

> As any big-time college coach knows, job security is measured by won-lost records. That produce-or-perish pressure accounts at least in part for the hanky-panky that caused Oklahoma two weeks ago to forfeit nine of last season's football games (TIME, April 30). Last week Steve Owens, a Heisman Trophy winner at O.U. who is now a Detroit Lions running back, suggested that abuses in player recruitment are more common than is generally suspected. Owens revealed that while he was a high school senior in Miami, Okla., one college offered to deliver a $5,000 cash bonus to him at the local airport if he would sign with its team. Another school, he said, countered with a $10,000 enticement. "I was offered cars, wardrobes, free fraternity dues, you name it," said Owens, who declined to identify the offending schools. At Oklahoma, "all I ever received was a scholarship and a chance to play football. I feel sorry for high school players who have to go through this."

> Like many coaches, U.C.L.A.'s John Wooden professes that "illegal recruiting is the bane of college athletics." He is virtually alone, however, in wanting to abolish the flesh trade altogether on the grounds that "our universities should stand on their own merits." Rival coaches, victimized by Wooden basketball teams that have won 75 consecutive games and seven straight national championships, understandably scoff at the proposal. Wooden, they say, can afford to take such an upright stand because U.C.L.A. has long attracted the best high school players on prestige alone. Last week, in fact, Richard Washington of Portland, Ore., considered by many the nation's No. 1 schoolboy prospect, announced that he was enrolling at U.C.L.A. Wooden, neglecting to mention that he had already signed another high school All-America, 6-ft. 7-in. Forward Gavin Smith from Van Nuys, Calif., for next year, tried to make little of his latest acquisition. Taking issue with recent news stories, the coach allowed that Washington was only "6 ft. 9 1/2 in., not 7 ft."

> Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, the man who helped devise the controversial designated-hitter rule, has worked up another idea to give new punch to the old game. He wants umpires to take a cooler attitude toward the heated attacks of players and managers who dissent from a call. Free and open discussion, says Kuhn, is "the American way." Though Kuhn has not yet specified what indignities short of an uppercut should now be endured in the name of free speech, the new permissiveness might help revive the declining art of umpire baiting. Take the case of Cincinnati Reds Manager Sparky Anderson. For years fans have been curious about what choice words pass in those tense exchanges between irate manager and aloof umpire. In an attempt to find the answer, World Series film makers put a microphone around Anderson's neck during the Reds' showdown with the Oakland A's last fall. After one questionable call, Anderson was filmed charging out of the dugout for the usual scene of angry gesturing and foot kicking. Then, standing chest to chest with Umpire Jim Honochick, Sparky pronounced the words that fans have waited so long to hear: "You know something? You might be right."

> "Hey!" screamed the middle-aged man from one of the bridges over Boston's Charles River. "Get those broads off the water!" The young women, smoothly stroking an eight-oar shell down the waterway once considered the private domain of the hallowed Harvard crew, are used to such abuse. Ever since Radcliffe recently organized its first rowing team, the oarswomen have had to endure sniggering as well as a more serious problem: lack of financial support. No matter. Women's rowing has not only been launched as a national sport, but it is scudding along at an astonishing pace. In New England alone, Radcliffe has a full schedule of spring meets against all-girl crews from Wellesley, Yale, M.I.T. and Wesleyan. What is more, the best crews will compete in the Women's National Regatta in Philadelphia in June, with a chance to go on to the European Championships in Moscow. Ultimately, the course leads to Montreal and the 1976 Olympics, where women's crew will be an officially sanctioned Olympic event for the first time.

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