Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 10

In This Section College Football Scores Page 6 RacingResults Page 9 The Inside of Sports Page 10 Detroit ifrcc Prcoo SECTION Sports SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1977 MIAMI OF OHIO NEARS TITLE WMU's Rally Falls Short, 14-8 Bird Looks Good In Florida Game i Central Michigan is in second place in the MAC following the Chippewas' 49-10 victory over Kent State. The story is on Page 6D. There's nothing like a migration south for the Bird's ailing wing. Tigers' pitcher Mark Fidrych tossed two shutout innings Saturday in the Florida Instructional League, and when he was done, general manager Jim Campbell was flying, too. Fidrych gave up just one infield hit in his two innings, striking out one and walking none.

But Campbell was excited because the Bird threw 15 fastballs in his 20 pitches and felt no pain, not even a twinge, in his first game appearance since he was put on the disabled list last summer. "He had no pain," chirped Campbell. "Everything went great." Last season was a bad one all the way around for Fidrych. He didn't join the team until late May because of knee surgery, then posted a 6-4 record with an earned-run average of 2.89 before arm trouble sidelined him once again. Oh, yes, the Tigers' squad of mostly rookies beat Philadelphia's kid, 3-0.

The Miami defense was just too quick for the Broncos. Many times, the Redskins' down linemen actually beat the Western offense off the ball. They even had the Western coaches screaming "Offsides!" to no avail. And the Miami pursuit was marvelous. Middle guard Jack Glowik was all oyer the field, making 11 solo tackles (four in the WMU backfield) and assisting on four others.

IT WAS THIS PURSUIT that stymied Little. The sophomore signal-caller from Kalamazoo Central is not altogether slow afoot, but the Miami defense swarmed on him so quickly that at times he looked like a young race horse carrying too much weight. Little was sacked only three times on pass attempts, but two of those came in the crucial closing moments of the game when Western had hope of pulling it out after a successful onside kick. Little was rushed even on rollouts most of the afternoon, Please turn to Page 6D, Column 1 BY BRIAN BRAGG Fret Prtst Sports Writer KALAMAZOO It is no accident that Miami of Ohio stands atop the Mid-American Conference, on the verge of winning its 1 1th football championship. The team is no fluke.

The Redskins took control of the line of scrimmage early in the game, then withstoood a desperate Western Michigan rally in the last six minutes Saturday to Win their seventh game in a row, 14-8, and move within one victory of the conference championship. The Skins are 4-0 in the MAC with just one game left against Kent State next week. They'll be a heavy favorite in that one. The loss left the Broncos at 3-3 in the conference, 4-5 overall. TWO LONG MIAMI marches in the first half proved enough for the decision in a game that had the fans at Waldo Stadium yawning except for a few electric moments in the fourth period.

The Redskins' offensive line, a strong and skilled aggregation that includes four underclassmen, didn't overpower the WMU defensive front, but the Ohioans' blocking was good enough to provide ball control when it was needed. And Miami's defense looked exceptionally quick, generally stifling Western's quarterback, Albert Little, on most of his attempts to run the option play. Only the blistering speed of WMU tailback Jerome Perscll gave the Broncos a rushing game against the visitors. Persell slashed for 123 yards the 14th time the Detroit junior has topped the century mark in 17 starts for Western. Significantly, that was just one yard under Western's entire net gain on the ground.

Mark Fidrych Finally Has Laugher Bo Did All He Could By Pulling 1st String 20 Tame Cats, 63 BY CURT SYLVESTER Fr Pres Sports Writer ANN ARBOR After two months of very serious and intense football, maybe the University of Michigan deserved a little fun. Just a nice day at the stadium. Throw the football around some. Let all the guys play. No worrying about upsets or any of that stuff.

And thanks to good old Northwestern, the punching bag of the Big Ten, the Wolverines wishes were fulfilled. Quarterback Rick Leach had a day to remember, running and passing the football all over the place, and the Wolverines buried Northwestern, 63-20, before a crowd of 103,211 In Michigan Stadium. Seventy-seven Michigan players got into the game in one way or another, and if there was anybody on the bench who didn't make it, it was strictly an oversight. The Wildcats were totally outclassed once Leach got Michigan moving. The junior quarterback ran in two touchdowns and passed for two more, enjoying an 8-for-ll day, good for 155 yards that made him the U-M career passing leader with 2,664 yards.

BUT LEACH WASN'T the only one to enjoy himself. It was one of those days when everything seemed to go right. Tight end Gene Johnson scored the go-ahead touchdown by recovering teammate Russell Davis' fumble in the end zone; freshman tailback Stan Edwards scored on a 26-yard pass from Leach; fullback Lawrence Reid, who has been injured all year, went 19 yards to score; tailback Mike Smith, who hadn't carried the ball all season, scored on a 15-yard run; and freshman wingback Alan Mitchell, who hadn't touched the ball all year, caught a 33-yard scoring pass from quarterback John Wangler, who had only thrown once. The regulars almost missed out on the fun. Harlan Huckleby scored on a four-yard run in the second quarter and Ralph Clayton scored on a 41-yard pass from Leach.

Fullback Russell Davis somehow missed out on the scoring, but busted out 71 yards in 15 carries. Keep in mind, however, that it was Northwestern now 0-9 for the season and 1-25 in the last 26 games. Not Ohio State. Only in the first quarter of the game did Northwestern pose any threat, when quarterback Scott Stranski connected with split end Mark Bailey on a 68-yard pass play, setting up his own one-yard TD dive that gave the Wildcats a 7-0 lead with 4 minutes to play in the period. They didn't score again until Michigan had scored 49 points.

Then Flanker Todd Sheets caught a 28-yard TD pass from Stranski. Northwestern got its final score on a Stranski to Bailey pass for eight yards. ANN ARBOR Why do they even bother playing games as they did Saturday? What do they prove? That Northwestern has.courage? That Michigan has compassion? I'm really not sure what it's all about. I suppose they've got to play these games since-they've been scheduled. You just don't leave the place empty.

Not even Don Canham could lure 103,211 in to look at his carpet. He's got a great carpet, but it's not that great. Something ought to be done in the future to avoid such mismatches. They are a total waste of everybody's time. Every one knows It, too.

You just can't get anyone to talk about it. Once again, Michigan was slow in starting, but even their own mistakes couldn't keep the Wolverines from running all over the poor Wildcats from Northwestern. Four touchdowns in the third quarter. Three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. It was getting so the Wolverines were scoring every time they got their hands on the ball.

They were scoring even when they dropped the ball. I can't believe this Is what football is supposed to be about. If you dont have a challenge, you don't have much. You don't have anything. The last three years it's been 69-0, 38-7 and 63-20.

No matter how you cut it, that's a walloping 170-27 edge for Michigan. I If you think that's fun, then you ought to buy season tickets for the San Quentin gas chamber. Romans Rooted for Lions, Too My boy Bo did the best he could to hold it down. I got a little miffed at him when he called a pass play with his team ahead, 56- "WE'VE GOT A HAPPY TEAM in there," said Schembechler when he came out to talk to writers. "They all played.

"We need a great effort out of our demonstration teams these next two weeks and this Is a great morale booster I made up my mind early that if we got ahead, I'd use as many as I could." Schembechler was asked about the Wangler-to-Mitchell scoring pass when U-M was already leading, 56-14, the implication being that he was pouring it on. "What am I supposed to do? Tie his hands behind his back and buck into the line every time? he snapped. "When I've got my fourth lineup in there I can do as I damned please and I don't have to make any explanations." Otherwise, Schembechler was in a good enough mood, with the team's eighth victory in nine games and a 5-1 Big Ten record, going into the final two games at Purdue and then in Ann Arbor against Ohio State. Statistically, the game was everything anyone might have expected it to be, with Michigan piling up 323 yards rushing and netting another 188 in the air for a 511-yard total offense Please turn to Page 8D, Col. 8 rf -y M- 41, ouu ii icauucu 111 a tuuviiuuwii, cAiauuiug tiic auuic uirii I thought it was bush.

Even Frank Beckman of WJR was saying, "Will somebody tell me what he's doing calling a pass play with the score 56-14 in his favor!" Frank thought as I did that Bo, for whatever reasons he had, was running up the score. I was ready to cut him for such shabby tactics when Randy Hardy, a writer for the Chicago Sun Times, brought things into perspective for me. "What do you think about throwing that pass?" I asked him as we waited outside the Northwestern dressing room. He shrugged. "I thought it was okay he had his reserves in there and you can't hold them down.

You've got to let them play. All a coach can do is pull his first-stringers." He was right. Bo Schembechler not only had pulled his first-stringers and second-stringers, but he was going with his third-, fourth and even fifth-stringers. He used 78 players in all 36 on offense, 40 on defense and his two kickers. Players nobody ever saw before except in the jam around the bench began showing up on the field for the Wolverines.

Even that didn't help much. The Wildcats got two late touchdown, but the Wolverines kept putting the ball over, too. The students seemed to enjoy the rout. But they always do. So did the Romans in the days when the lions were able to win a few.

It just doesn't make much sense when two teams that are so obviously mismatched have to play each other in the third-to-last game of the season. They ought to be able to represent their conference in a more meaningful way. It's one thing when the Wolverines run up the score on an outside opponent early in the season. These things can't always be helped. You play who you can sometimes, and sometimes it gets out of hand.

But when the score reaches these proportions in conference games, it's time for the conference to take a look at the situation. Free Press Photo by CRAIG PORTER U-M quarterback Rick Leach (7) watches as fullback Russell Davis lost, however, as teammate Gene Johnson recovered to give the fumbles into the end zone in the second quarter Saturday. All was not Wolverines the lead for keeps as they dumped Northwestern, 63-20. MSU Uses Long Passes To Bag Gophers, 29-10 How Top 20 Fared HowtheTop20teamsintheAssociatedPressmajorcolIege football poll fared this weekend: 1 Texas (8-0) topped Houston, 35-21. 2 3 Oklahoma (8-1) ripped Oklahoma St, 61-28.

4 Ohio State (8-1) smothered Illinois, 35-0. 5 Notre Dame (7-1) trounced Georgia Tech, 69-14. 6 Michigan (8-1) clobbered Northwestern, 63-20. 7 Kentucky (8-1) thumped Vanderbilt, 28-6. 8 Arkansas (6-1) vs.

Baylor, night. 9 Penn State (8-1) stopped N. Carolina St, 21-17. 10- 1 1 Nebraska (7-2) downed Missouri, 21-1 0. 12- West Virginia, 44-3.

13- Clemson (7-1) vs. North Carolina. 14- Brlgham Young (6-1) vs. Utah. 15- 1 6- Southern Cal (5-3) vs.

Stanford. 17- California (6-2) vs. Washington. 18- LSU(5-2)vs. Alabama.

1 9- Arizona State (6-1) vs. Wyoming, night. 20- Iowa State (6-3) lost to Colorado, 127. BY VINCENT Fret Press Sports Writer MINNEAPOLIS 'Michigan State spotted Minnesota 10 points Saturday afternoon before coming back for a comfortable 29-10 win over the Golden Gophers. The bars around Memorial Stadium began filling early as most of the mini-crowd of 30,600 filed out of the stadium early in the fourth quarter, when the Spartans spoiled their hopes of watching Minnesota roll to a sixth consecutive home victory.

The Gophers, who had beaten Michigan, UCLA, Western Michigan, Northwestern and Washington here earlier in the season, grabbed a quick 10-0 lead on a 23-yard field goal by Paul Rogind and a two-yard run by fullback Kent Kintzmann. They did as they pleased in the first half. But Michigan State finally got three points on the scoreboard late in the first half when Hans Nielsen kicked the first of his three field goals, and the second half belonged to the Spartans. Nielsen added field goals of 52 and 44 yards, quarterback Eddie Smith threw touchdown passes of 51 and 86 yards to Kirk Gibson and tailback Steve Smith added a 15-yard TD in the game's final minutes. SMITH'S 86-YARDER to Gibson just back from a heel injury was the third longest in MSU history and the longest since Steve Juday threw an 87-yarder to Sherman Lewis in 1963.

But things weren't that rosy for the Spartans all afternoon. Michigan State deserved everything it got in the first half. The Spartans only vaguely resembled the team that thoroughly dominated Illinois, 49-20, just a week ago. A lost fumble and a pass interception foiled the Spartans twice. The combination of penalties and Minnesota's defense left the Spartans facing third and 23 and third and 40 on other occasions.

Though Minnesota's offense has not been impressive this season, the Gophers had little trouble racing through MSU the first time they got the ball. Quarterback Wendell Avery riddled the MSU secondary whenever he took the notion, hitting split end Jeff Anhorn for 14 yards on a third-and-seven situation, then throwing to flanker Elmer Bailey for 17 on a third-and-10. Freshman fullback Garry White did most of the rest of the damage, grinding out 28 yards on seven carries. But when the drive bogged down at the MSU six, Rogind came in to put the first three points on the board. The two teams spent the next 15 minutes jockeying for field position and it appeared the Spartans were getting the better of it, thanks to Ken Stachowicz's punting.

He kicked for 43 yards, 47 and 39 while Minnesota's Terry Simmons was getting off kicks of only 21, 27 and 32. Please turn to Page 6D, Column 8 Specter of Ohio St, Looms The familiar talk is for the Big Ten to drop Northwestern, or vice-versa. At least in football, the most demanding sport of all. Personally, I've been against it because it would break up the tradition of the old league and I'm great on tradition. But now I must wonder what is to be gained by continuing these carnages.

Neither side can be getting very much out of it and the gap is growing wider. We have one school that plays before 20,000 fans, if the weather is good, and another that jams in more than 100,000 week after week. That's fair? How can Northwestern stay up with Michigan under such conditions? The answer is the Wildcats can't and something should be done about it. This was an important game for Northwestern in only one regard. The Wildcats took home a check for almost a quarter of a million bucks.

That'll buy a lot of helmets. And basketballs. And track shoes. And soap and towels and all the other things Deeded to keep an athletic program going. Next year, Michigan is supposed to play in Evanston, but they're all trying to get the game changed.

They want to play here again. The score won't change much, but at least the Wildcats will be able to pay some bills. As for Michigan, it's hard to judge the Wolverines' perform ance. When a game falls apart like this one, anybody can look good. It was a picnic and they all enjoyed themselves.

The specter of Ohio State how will they look against the Buckeyes? looms over everything this Michigan team does. I get the notion Bo will have to get his players to an emotional peak, as he did his first year in 1 969, because the things that work against the Northwesterns aren't going to make, it against the bigger, tougher, stronger Buckeyes. I'm still picking Ohio State in the big one. Bids High for Lyman S'Western WinsPSL Grid Title GP South Loses 1st Stories onP age 3D NEW YORK (AP) Former Minnesota infielder Luis Gomez became the first baseball free agent to agree to terms following Friday's re-entry draft, but his contract with the Toronto Blue Jays isn't quite in the class another ex-Twin, Lyman Bostock, expects to get. Agent Abdul Jalil, opening talks in Oakland for Bostock, anticipates a considerably fatter deal for his client than the Blue Jays had to give Gomez.

Jalil spent Saturday fielding phone calls from the California Angels, Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees and Toronto and making ap pointments to begin negotiations next week. "I expect the White Sox, Angels and Milwaukee to be here on Monday and Toronto on Wednesday," said Jalil. "You have a basic idea about where you will start with each team you talk to. A player like Lyman might be more important to some teams like Texas, Milwaukee or the Yankees than he might bs to some others, like maybe Oakland and San Fran Cisco." Jalil said Bostock, who earned barely more than the major league minimum of $19,000 while batting .336 for Minnesota in 1977, had established his value by his performance on the field..