To the Daily:
I am a senior business education student at the University of Nebraska. I am writing about all the bad press the Cornhuskers and Coach Tom Osborne have been getting from Michigan fans. The Michigan team did not play a tougher schedule than we did, period!
According to an Associated Press reporter, Michigan beat four teams ranked in the top 10 at game time with only one in the top 10 at the end of the season. Nebraska, on the other hand, beat five teams ranked in the top 10 at game time with two in the top 10 at the end of the season. Not only that, but everyone is afraid to play the Cornhuskers in Memorial Stadium.
Now, as for the Rose and Orange Bowls, Michigan played the No. 8 team and barely won. We, on the other hand, played the No. 3 team and walked all over them. People say that we played poorly in the first half. It doesn't take a genius to know that Nebraska is a second-half team. If you are losing to us by halftime, it will only get worse in the second half. I think the guys played a heck of a game in all four quarters. They are some of the greatest people around.
Now, for the fact that our coach is retiring. Some reporter wrote that many coaches cast a sympathy vote. The coaches just know a better team. How do we know that some of the AP voters didn't even bother to watch the Orange Bowl because they had already made their decision? We don't, so we really can't second guess any of the voters. We just need to congratulate each other and move on.
I don't have a problem sharing the championship with Michigan. Does Michigan?
Jana Bartels
University of Nebraska student
To the Daily:
Well, that's one way to win a "National Championship." As I well remember from my days in Michigan, the capacity of the football team to win any way it can at any cost is exceeded only by the Michigan fans' ability to believe that this means anything, that championships earned like this aren't seriously cheapened by the context.
So now you've won on the basis of some southern referee's fear of the crowd. Instead of giving Washington State its final play, the referee let the clock roll and headed for the showers and home, the Michigan team headed for the trophy, the sportscaster wept appropriately on cue for his boy and the networks headed for the bank. Had Washington State won, as it certainly could have if given a fair ending to the game, then there's no Bob Griese weeping over his MVP son, there's no National Championship, there's not much to market for ABC except in Pullman, Wash. - a market smaller than Ypsilanti on a good day.
So Michigan wins, but why do you still look like chumps, not champs? Is someone taking advantage of you at the cost of your integrity to their economic benefit? If so, did you really win anything besides a pile of brass? If you're No. 1 now, then what kind of category is it where you're the top?
Jack Kintner
Washington State fan
To the Daily:
Once again, our glorious Athletic Department has pissed me off. The idiotic idea of having a lottery for tickets to the football pep rally has left myself and many other extremely deserving fans without tickets. After buying football tickets, basketball tickets and hockey tickets for all four years, buying hockey Final Four tickets twice, and Rose Bowl tickets through the Athletic Department, I now have to sleep out to get a ticket to this pep rally while there are a good number of freshmen (no offense, young ones) who already have tickets. This is a joke. Tom Goss is not the great Athletic Director that everyone has been making him out to be.
First, he screws up with his treatment of Steve Fisher. Then, it's the Department of Public Safety at the Ohio State game acting like a bunch of animals. Then, it's charging us $80 for Rose Bowl tickets while Washington State students paid $75. And now this crap. I love our teams way too much to organize some kind of protest or boycott, but I want the Athletic Department to know that it is pissing off its greatest fans and supporters. Congrats to the football team (but not to Tom Goss) on an absolutely incredible season which I will never forget.
Mike Khomutin
Engineering senior
To the Daily:
I was quite surprised to open up the Daily on Dec. 9 only to find the headline, "Students support 'U' admissions." Granted, the article did discuss certain students and student groups in the Law School offering their support, but I think it's reasonable to assume that a casual observer would take this headline to imply that the student body had somehow united behind the University amid its legal troubles.
I have been and will continue to urge the Michigan Student Assembly to place a referendum about this issue on its spring ballot, so that we might have a better idea whether students really do support the University admissions policy. But until that time, I'd appreciate it if the Daily didn't imply that I support any form of racial discrimination.
David Burden
Engineering senior, MSA representative
To the Daily:
The article "BAMN members unite to vocalize their reaction to suit" (12/8/97) contained a conspicuous and unfortunate error of omission.
The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary, the Black Law Students Alliance and the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association all participated in the press conference to express our united support for affirmative action policies.
Despite the fact that BLSA and APALSA both presented written press releases and constituted the majority of the student presence at the press conference, the article fails to mention either organization. A false impression was conveyed of passivity on the part of minority law students and BAMN standing alone.
Luke Massie
BAMN
Tony Miles
BLSA
Kevin Pimentel
APALSA
To the Daily:
After attending the Dec. 7 basketball game between Bradley and Michigan in Peoria, Ill., I noticed a big difference between the two teams.
The Bradley players did not make gestures to the crowd to sit down, nor did they talk trash to the opposing team. They simply went out and played hard and conducted themselves with class and humility. The result was a five-point victory over a very talented Michigan basketball team.
Perhaps the coaching staff and players of Michigan could learn a lesson from the Bradley Braves and Coach Jim Molinari about how hard work and discipline are rewarded. It is nice to see that these types of values still exist in a world where athletes are constantly in trouble.
Mark Freeman
Bradley University fan
01-07-98
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