The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 59

Sports People 2 High schools 15 Horse racing 18 Ben Callaway 20 Classified 22 section. sports Sunday, September 26, 1982 On a football-less Sunday? Analysis: Inequities in shorter schedule Talks: Best guess is New York City coccinn fiy Gordon Forbes iKjuirtr Sun Wriur The toughest, angriest players strike in pro football history has already wiped out 13 NFL games. Tomorrow night's will be the 14th, and more perhaps many more will follow if loud rhetoric isn't replaced by purposeful negotiations. Baseball tried to solve the problem of a strike-gutted schedule last year with a split season, which was great for the also-rans and not so great for the leaders. Just ask the Cincinnati Reds.

The NFL competition committee says that it still isn't sure how to handle an abbreviated schedule. What is certain is that, by causing games to be scrubbed, the strike will have a major effect on which teams make it to Super Bowl XVU -and which teams don't. Let's assume the strike lasts for three weeks. The league's competition committee, made up of Dallas' Tex Schramm, Cincinnati's Paul Brown and Miami's Don Shula, would then tackle the job of trying to make 28 club owners happy with a 13- game schedule clearly an impossibility. The idea of extending the season three weeks further into the winter, with a mid-February Super Bowl, is too ridiculous to even consider.

In the early weeks, the NFL tries to fill its schedule with 'south-to-north movement, warm-weather teams flying to cold-weather cities. Thus, today's schedule had Dallas at Minnesota, the Los Angeles Rams at Philadelphia, Miami at Green Bay, and Tampa Bay at Detroit. Shifting (See STRIKE on 10-E) (Mi lad Prta International NEW YORK While fans suffer through an autumn Sunday without National Football League games for the first time in the league's 63-year 'history, negotiators for the striking players will be meeting with the Management Council at an undisclosed location to resume the talks that broke off eight days It had seemed that the meeting would be held in Washington. Jack Donlan, the NFL Management Council's chief negotiator, agreed to appear today, along with Gene Upshaw, the president of the NFL Players Association, on the CBS program "Face the Nation," which is telecast from Washington. But hours later, Donlan backed out, leading observers to believe that New York once again would host the discussions between Donlan and Ed Garvey, executive director of the players union.

"All I can say is that we're meeting sometime this weekend at an undisclosed location," Management Council spokesman Curt Mosher said. "It's going to be a regular negotiating TaT TT tons last gasp Diem tafe's Ass Curt Warner leaps in front of Pern By BILL LYON Who's No. again UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Jim Tar-man, the Penn State athletic director, was strolling through a hotel lobby yesterday morning, when he was accosted by a cornfed Nebraska fan. "The guy said he had missed only three games in the last 23 years," Tarman related, "and he said this Nebraska squad was the best college football team of oil time.

"So I gulped and thought, 'Geez, if he's right, I hope those portable lights It is the opinion of those who have made an extensive study of such matters that the best collegiate football team in history was fielded by Nebraska in 1971. That was the undefeated Johnny Rodgers-Rich Glover-Jeff Kinney steamroller that casually cuffed an unbeaten Alabama team in the Orange Bowl, 31-6, to win the national championship. The coach of those Cornhuskers was Bob Devaney. He is now the athletic director at Nebraska. "I can go down every position in the lineup for you," Devaney had said yesterday, "and this team is better at this stage bigger, stronger, faster than that 71 squad." On Friday night, Joe Paterno had been asked what would be required of his defense in order for Penn State to avoid total incineration.

"I'd say, if we can hold Nebraska to three touchdowns and a couple of field goals, we've got a chance," he replied. Uh, that's 27 points, Joe. Were you planning on your quarterback, Todd Blackledge, throwing for four touchdowns, as he had in each of the first three games of the season? "Four? He might have to have eight," Paterno snorted. He was only half-kidding. From the preceding testimony, you probably have gathered that Nebraska's swift and strong legions were held in esteem bordering on outright awe.

Nations with nuclear capability get less respect. The Cornhuskers had only out-scored their first two victims by a mere 103 points. Wherever they went, scorched earth was left behind. But at 7:06, Eastern Daylight Time, last night, with banks of portable lights holding back the September sunset in Happy Valley, Todd Black-ledge, falling back in the face of a (See LYON on 14-E) WW nuuiuer council spoKesman saia that he was not at liberty to discuss what may take place. "But I will tell you that it was Garvey who initiated the contact for resumption of bargaining sessions," 1.

i tie auiu. i uuu i mjuw ii im win meei with Mr. Donlan alone or have his player representatives with him. I just assume ne wouia not bargain, without some players present." In Washington yesterday, the play-' ers association accused the three ma-" (See NFL on 10-E) Lions wiit in final 1 4 seconds By Ron Reid Inquirer Statt Wriur i UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. If there ever was a more dramatic finish to a collegiate football game or a come- back more thrilling than that engineered by Penn State yesterday against second-ranked Nebraska, no one who was here would believe it.

College teams aren't supposed to win games in the final 4 seconds of play. They are not- supposed to possess either the poise or the moxie to drive 65 yards for a game-winning touchdown in 74 seconds. On national television. In a packed stadium filled with enough hysteria to warm a Siberian winter. But in a stunning 27-24 victory oyer the unbeaten Cornhuskers, who had entered the game as 4'2-point favorites, the Nittany Lions (No.

8 AP, No. 5 UPI) had what it took. After a windup like this one, who needs the NFL? Certainly not anyone in the crowd of 85,304. As if the game needed one additional dollop of drama, the heroes of the piece were, at once, the most logicial and the least likely on the field. Respectively, they were quarterback Todd Blackledge and substitute tight end Kirk Bowman.

Until about 7 o'clock last night, when he became the Nittany Lion most likely to be squashed in an end-zone celebration, Bowman had caught a grand total of one (1) pass this season a 14-yarder from Blackledge that gave Penn State its opening touchdown. It hardly figured, then, that Bow-man would be on the end of theiwo- yard touchdown pass that Blackledge would complete with 0:04 showing on the clock or that he would grab the ball off his shoe tops to finish off a 10-play drive. Blackledge completed 5 of 8 passes for 60 yards in the winning march, and he covered the other five yards on foot. 1 His heroics were necessitated mistakes that cost the Lions (4-0 at least one touchdown and by Turner Gill, the quarterback who had taken Nebraska 80 yards to what looked like the game-winning touchdown. Gill, who completed 16 of 34 passes for 239 yards and a pair of touchdowns, put the Cornhuskers ahead, 24-21, with a one-yard dive over the middle with 1:18 to go.

When the Lions took the ensuing kickoff, a tie seemed almost as implausible as a victory. There was all that distance to cover, for one thing, and there were the difficulties that had visited themselves upon freshman kicker Massimo Manca, for another. Manca, who had made 5 of 6 field-goal tries, had missed from SO, 47 and 34 yards yesterday. There had been other woes for Penn State. Apparent touchdown (See PENN STATE on 14-E) Cards reduce) magic number to 3 with wiri By Frank Dolson Inquirer Sports Editor Vi ST.

LOUIS As luck would have it, Lonnie Smith was at bat yesterday when the news of the Phillies' loss was flashed on the Busch Stadium scoreboard. Smfth stepped out, waited foiKthc roar of the 37,565 fans to subside, then singled in a run to help the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-1, and get a stranglehold On the first divisional championship in their history. The Cards' 11th victory in 13 games increased their lead in the National League East to 5'i games and lowered their magic number to three. Unlike most of their recent wins, this one was easy, thanks primarily to an overpowering pitching performance by Joaquin Andujar.

The hard-throwing righthander (See CARDINALS on 5-E) 1 m-i 1 1 mmim mi i i iiiiiiiihiiim.i -tt TTiririiT iriT i iw mini 11h hilifi. 'flftSpWLVsv 'y tol yard pass from Todd Blackledge Perm's 3d-quarter rally topples Lehigh, 20-17 Associated Press and set up a Penn State score 34 losses enough for Northwestern It took four touchdowns from Ricky Edwards (left), but Northwestern finally ended the longest majorollege losing streak in history by defeating Northern Illinois, 31-6. Fans in Evans-ton, celebrated by dumping a goal post into Lake Michigan. Elsewhere Rutgers 10, Temple 7 Pitt 20, Illinois 3 Delaware 35, Princeton 17 Boston College 31, Navy 0 West Virginia 43, Richmond 10 Florida 27, Mississippi State 17 Alabama 24, Vanderbilt 21 North Carolina 62, Army 8 Notre Dame 28, Purdue 14 Washington 37, Oregon 21 Stanford 23, Ohio State 20 UCLA 31, Michigan 27 Southern Cal 12, Oklahoma 0 Detailed coverage begins on Page HE Chris Van Norman to pull in a 43 ference. The Quakers won the game by scoring 17 points in a 2-minute, 47-second span of the third period.

The winning touchdown came with 6:25 left in the period, when split end Karl Hall beat Engineers defensive back Blair Talmadge on a 52-yard pass play that was devised in Penn's locker room at halftime. The TD play and Dave Shulman's conversion made it 20-3, and Penn needed it. All of it. The Engineers (0-3), whose 58-0 demolition of the Quakers started Penn's losing streak last season, didn't go quietly. And they went down the stretch without starting free safety Jimmy Gum and running back Jim Ancel, both of whom were lost to injury.

Lehigh cut the Quakers' lead to 20-10 with 9:19 to play when second-(See PENN on 14-E) i' IT 1 Carlton not enough as Mets sink Phils, 2-1 By Chuck Newman Inquirer SMf Writer Although Penn was nearly perfect last week in its opening-game shut out of Dartmouth, cynics noted that the Quakers also opened their 1981 season with a victory and then lost all nine of their remaining games. However, the Quakers may have silenced some critics yesterday, when they hung on to defeat Lehigh, 20-17, before 11,154 fans at Franklin Field. They ran their record to 2-0 for the first time since 1974 and matched victory total that they hadn't achieved since 1978. Credit must be given to second- year coach Jerry Berndt's emphasis on fundamentals and execution, to the outstanding defensive effort and to an off-season conditioning pro gram. But a bit of improvisation by the Quakers may have made the dif ing of the Baseball Writers Association.

Corrales lost his argument with Carlton. And then Carlton went out there yesterday at Shea Stadium and lost a 2-1 game to the Mets. It was about as much his fault that he lost as it was Abner Doubleday's. Pitching on three days' rest for the third straight start, six months and 270 innings into the season, Carlton went seven innings, struck out 11, doled out six hits and two runs. That should have been enough to earn him win No.

22. Except his teammates didn't hold up their end of the bargain. They tame out of a bases-loaded, no-out opportunity in the seventh inning with zero runs. And so they lost one more game they couldn't lose this one to the reborn arm of Craig Swan. "It's been games like that the last (See PHILLIES on 6-E) By Jayson Stark Inquirer Stan Writer NEW YORK Pat Corrales tried his best to convince Steve Carlton not to pitch yesterday.

Fat chance he had. Yeah, sure, Carlton is the strongest guy this side of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, sure, he went out Tuesday to pitch his third game in nine days and threw a staggering 167 pitches, striking out a mere 14. Yeah, sure, you sometimes get the feeling that the mind-boggling accumulation of pitches that would turn most arms into rigatoni doesn't even register on Carlton's flinch-meter. But even after having managed the guy for a year, Corrales wasn't convinced totally.

So he tried to talk Carlton into taking an extra day off yesterday. He might as well have tried to talk him into addressing the next meet lit Associated Press Manager Pat Corrales and Steve Carlton show the disappointment of another Phillies loss ft.