Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 59

RODMAN SUSPEIiDED Section College basketball, Page 4 Scoreboard, Page 6 All-Suburban team, Page 7 Scores: 1-900-737-8884, Sports: 1-313-222-6660 (Calls to the score line are 79 per minute) He's no-show after leave of absence ends; Spurs give no timetable. Page 7E. Thursday, Dec. 8, 1994 Detroit 4frce Pre i 4LBION. i 1.

VS 3 Prediction: NHL to play by Jan. 5 Sides can give more 1 fj is sports teams are costing him millions, but somehow Mike Hitch can afford to ll smile at his own misfortune. 1 I Bitch's baseball Tigers, with a payroll of more than $43 million, sustained losses approaching $20 million in the season aborted by the players' strike. "It" Albion has been playing college football for 110 by! Saturday will be the first national championship appearance for the Pr A. KEITH GAVE NHL I His NHL Red Wings have a payroll of $23 million, and the owners' three-month-long lockout of players tears at him.

"If we stay locked out the whole year, we'll lose $10 million," he said Wednesday. "That's cheap, compared to baseball." Ditch laughed. "That's a joke," he said, "a bad joke." Nevertheless, it suggests that Ditch knows something that we do not about the stalled labor negotiations that threaten the NHL season. At least he remains optimistic rarjig -ttI amid the gloom and doom. Ditch said he expects the season to begin in January and he phoned embattled commissioner Gary Bettman to offer his services during the final, sensitive stages of negotiations.

"I've got faith in the system, and I'm still cautiously encouraged," said Ditch, who spent the better part of the last decade on the owners' negotiating committee. He quit after getting a 1. i1P LTiZI See KEITH GAVE, Page 8E IN BUSINESS: Using the "real world" as a model, Doron Levin says baseball and hockey need salary caps. See Page IF. IN BASEBALL Tigers player representatives are hopeful after working on new proposal.

See Page 8E. a. Massey between Monk and mark BY CURT SYLVESTER Free Press Sports Writer Sometime Saturday it will happen. Maybe in the first minute, maybe in the 60th, more likely some Photos by WILLIAM ARCHIEDetroit Free Press Superior Street, superior team, superior fans they all come together in Albion over coach Pete Schmidt and his Jiritons, who are responsible for a severe case of national-championship fever going into Saturday's ESPN-televised game in Salem, Va. Division III title would go nicely with great academics where in be- By Michelle Kaufman Free Press Sports Writer LBION Something big is going on here this week.

i ALBION A Championship Week Bigger than the daily 2 o'clock train stop. bigger than last year repaying ot superior street, an event they were still talking about Wednesday. nationwide that are unbeaten and untied, the others being Nebraska, Penn State and Penn. More than 700 Albion fans and ESPN will be at Salem Stadium for the 12:06 p.m. kickoff.

College classes are canceled Friday to enable students and faculty to take the 12-hour chartered bus ride. It is the first time in Albion's 1 10-year football history that the Britons have made the national championship, and the town, midway between Jackson and Battle Creek, is buzzing. A giant "Go Brits" banner stretches across Superior Street downtown. Posters hang in the windows of the hardware store, the drugstore, the jeweler, and several of downtown's eight beauty parlors. WALM-AM radio will pipe Saturday's game into the streets; Cascarelli's is offering free hot dogs and baked beans; and the Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring the team send-off and welcome back at Sprankle-Sprandel Stadium.

(Yes, those are the See ALBION, Page 4E WHAT: The Stagg Bowl, NCAA Division III football championship. MATCHUP: Albion (12-0) vs. Washington and Jefferson (11-1), 12:06 p.m. Saturday, Salem Stadium, Salem, Va. TVRADIO: ESPN; WALM-AM, (1260), Albion.

Bigger than the opening of the Subway sub shop. Bigger than the Festival of the Forks. This is even bigger than the annual cardboard sled race. The last time something this significant happened in Albion (population 8,800) was May 13, 1877, when Juliet Calhoun Blakely invented Mother's Day at the pulpit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. What could rival Mother's Day? A national college football championship.

The Albion Britons (12-0) leave this morning for Salem, where they play Saturday for the NCAA Division III title against Washington and Jefferson The Brits are one of four teams tween. Sometime Saturday, Art Monk will dash off the line of scrimmage, give Lions corner-back Robert Massey a hard push legally, of course turn around and catch a pass. And history will be made. The play will mark the 178th consecutive game in which the New York Jets wide receiver has caught at least one pass an NFL record. "That first play of the game, we're going to throw him an out route and see if Robert will let him catch it," Jets coach Pete Carroll said Wednesday, kidding reporters in a conference phone call.

To which Massey replied: "I'll be out there competing. I'll try not to let him catch it, but if he catches it, I'll be one of the first ones to congratulate him." Then again, if things don't work out just right, if Monk happens to slip, if Jets quarterback Boomer The bitter 70s at Kent State were right for MSlf Saban LUC NOVOVITCH, Associated Press Art Monk is already in the NFL record book for most career receptions (929). Saturday's game MATCHUP: Lions (7-6) at New York Jets (6-7), 12:30 p.m., Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ. TVRADIO: Fox (Channel 50 in Detroit); WWJ-AM (950), WAAM-AM (1600). LINE: Jets by 3.

Sure hands All-time NFL leaders in consecutive games with a reception: Steve Largent 177 I 1 "Nick is the type of person who must always be in charge, in control." Terry Saban, wife of coach Nick Saban Art Monk 177 The Golden Flashes ultimately played football that fall because the university thought they could provide a needed diversion. But a poorly conditioned and focused team did little to lift the pall that shrouded the campus, winning only three games Saban's sophomore season. "We weren't just a lost football team at that time," said Herb Page, a former Kent State kicker and now is its golf coach. "We were a lost school. "That was one reason why Nick stood out the way he did.

He literally hated losing and being told that something couldn't be done, but he couldn't get many others to share that conviction because they kept walking around in a daze." That changed after the 1970 sea-See SABAN, Page BY DREW SHARP Free Press Sports Writer KENT, Ohio The seeds for Nick Saban's coaching career were sown during a tumultuous time at a school touched by tragedy. Saban, Michigan State's new football coach, was a freshman at Kent State in the spring of 1970, when defiant youth protested the Vietnam War at campuses across the country. Unlike most other 18-year-olds, though, Saban begged for discipline and direction, finding neither as a defensive back for a Kent State football team that was largely a laughingstock. But little was funny at Kent State after Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students during a Vietnam War protest May 4, 1970. The school was closed temporarily, and the administration contemplated canceling the 1970 football season.

Ozzie Newsome 150 Brian PRUITT, above, a tailback from Central Michigan and Saginaw, made the AP's first team, as did Boston College tight end Pete Mitchell of Birmingham Brother Rice. U-M kicker Remy Hamilton made the second team. The first and second teams, Page 6E. 140 Jerry Rice Harold Carmichael 127 At left, Nkk Saban in his playing days, as a strong safety for the 1970-72 Kent State Golden Flashes Esiason misfires, if Massey gets a good break on the See LIONS, Page 5E.