Entry 15:

Chas,

I'd go so far as to argue that that protean rulebook has been the game's salvation. For basketball's first four decades, the good doctor himself sat on the rules committee, but never with a stern, don't-mess-with-my-baby attitude. Thus hoops got constantly tinkered with, from the elimination of the center jump, to the introduction of the shot clock, to the widening of the lane, never touching off any of the braying that baseball gets from the "Time Begins on Opening Day" crowd. Basketball's 13 original rules didn't mention dribbling. They simply said you couldn't run with the ball. Some guy in a handlebar mustache figured out that you could drop the ball, retrieve it, and do so again and again—and when Doc Naismith caught a look at someone really skilled at dropping and retrieving, he said, more or less, "That's sweet." Soon the dribble had a place in the rules. And soon the old rules for women that forbade crossing midcourt—"Ashley, I just can't trouble myself to extend the defense!"—had been sent, as if by Tony Battie, into the cheap seats of history.

Glad to see that the Times has finally let Bob Lipsyte out of NASCAR purgatory to turn in acouple of thoughtful pieces about Title IX and big-time college football. As NCAA athletic directors cut non-revenue men's sports to get their gender-equity numbers in order, the men blame the women. None dare blame football, for college football coaches would have us believe that life as we know it would cease if they suddenly couldn't carry squads of 100 or more. This even as NFL teams find 53 guys plenty for a game in which no more than 11 play at a time. I wish the football panjandrums would read up on their John McKay, the old Southern Cal coach who made it a point of pride to do more with less. "All I need is one team on offense, one team on defense, and one team to carry me off the field," he liked to say. Right now the NCAA allows Division I-A football teams 85 scholarships. Cut that limit to 70, even 75, and football would remain a fine spectacle—and you could salvage men's gymnastics and fencing and track, add women's rowing and soccer and swimming, and let a million Nicole Levesques bloom.

Levesque, you'll recall, is the Vermont gal (gotta plug my homegirl) who, during the WNBA's inaugural season, got pulled out of a job waiting tables in Trapp Family country to start at point guard for the Sting. She wound up making the league minimum—something in the high four figures—and shooting better than 90 percent from the line. (Barbara Ehrenreich should write her biography—Nickels and Droppin' Dimes: The Nicole Levesque Story.) Hers might have been the most lopsided salary-to-free-throw-percentage ratio in pro basketball history. Staking out the opposite end of that continuum, of course, would be the Aristotelian fella from L.A. Takes all kinds.

Equitably,
Alex