FRACTIOUS, FRACTIONAL FOOTBALL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993                   TAG: 9302100367
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
FRACTIOUS, FRACTIONAL FOOTBALL
ENOUGH, already! I put up with decades of the biased, pious writing of Bill "ACC" Brill without writing. But so help me if I see the words "cleat" and "cheat" used in the sports page of the Roanoke Times & World-News again this year, I am canceling my subscription.
It is indeed sad that a football coach places winning so highly that he compromises the integrity of a school and an entire county, but let's be realistic. Football is not a religion. Before God there is no difference between a big lie and a white lie. Before the ruling bodies of sports, there have always been different degrees of penalties. What seems to escape your writers is that the reason there is an improper-equipment rule is, in this case, to prevent damage to the runner, not to eliminate an undue advantage.
Coach Vaught has brought discredit to a team that deserved to be state champions. Just as much discredit is due to a business that, knowingly or unknowingly, acted in one of the most unprofessional and unethical manners I have ever witnessed. And to a coach for trying to win a football game off the field that he was not able to win on the field.
I have always heard that football is a game of inches, but only the sportswriters of your newspaper, and Salem High School, would try to diminish it to a game of one-eighth inches. JERRY L. HAYNES PULASKI

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB