Page 4
Tuesday, October 5, 1982
Daily Nebraskan
Editorial
Avid college fans
might not mourn
pro football strike
What to do on a Sunday afternoon.
Well, you can strike watching pro football off your list.
Yes, another pro sport has decided to pack it in and go
on strike. So, just as the major-league baseball players
turned their backs on the diamond last summer, this year
pro football players are giving up the gridiron. (At least
temporarily).
But just how sorely is professional football going to be
missed?
Here's one writer that believes that if some major
colleges switch to Sunday game dates, most fans may
never care whether they find out which dark horse (such
as San Francisco or Cincinnati last year) makes it to Super
Bowl pay dirt in '82.
Why? Because frankly friends, college football is a
better deal.
Baseball players made a deep impression when they
walked out. After all, in the midst of a lazy summer, base
ball is just the tonic for sports fans who don't have much
else to cling to.
But pro football players may find that many fans don't
even miss them.
Thus, the football strike may provide an answer to a
question many have long pondered: Which is more
popular with the fans, pro or college football?
Here's one vote for the non-paid variety.
Maybe college football's biggest boost is that players
don't have any monetary incentive. (Let's pretend to for
get all the NCAA violations for a few minutes. At least
college players aren't picking up million dollar-plus
contracts as the pros are.)
Also, college football seems more down-to-earth. The
players make more mistakes, and those are the things that
perk up viewer interest in a game. The level of aptitude in
the pro ranks is almost too steep. (In college, a 200-yard
passing game is considered a good effort, not a routine
day's work like it is in the pro ranks.)
And don't forget about the alma marter ties that stu
dents and alums feel for college teams.
Back to the National Football League strike. Unless
things happen fast between players and owner negotiators,
it looks like fans will be in for their third weekend of pro
no-shows.
But if television networks move even faster and
persuade some major college powers to play on Sunday,
the pro football letdown may never be felt. And pro foot
ball players may find that they won't be as badly missed
as they thought.
That hinges on network programming schemes. Neither
Canadian football nor Division III college football chills
and spills will hold a Sunday audience captive.
But major-college football can hold an audience, and if
those games pop up on Sundays that, more than any
"negotiation," will herd pro stars back to the huddles.
Betsy Miller
Voters 'stealing' representation
"Currently, the state constitution allows state senators
to be paid a $400 monthly salary and their expenses
for the round trip from their home to Lincoln during
legislative sessions.
"The proposed amendment would expand that to
pay for their actual reasonable necessary expenses when
$
o I Jeff Allen
the Legislature is in session. If the election were held
today, would you vote for or against the amendment?"
Recently Research Associates of Lincoln polled Ne
braska voters for their response to the above question
and found that 52 percent of the respondents favored
reimbursement of the actual expenses incurred by state
legislators, while 41 percent opposed such an amendment
and 7 percent of the respondents were undecided.
It would appear that roughly 48 percent of the
sampled voters of Nebraska either don't recognize a good
bargain when they see one, or they would rather "steal"
their state governmental representation rather than to
pay a fair price for it.
"Stealing" legislative representation is by no means
new to the citizens of this state. Not since 1968 have
Nebraska voters extended further financial renumeration
to their representatives for the tedious and generally
thankless task of interpreting, changing and adopting
sound public policy.
Nebraskans' callous attitude toward raising legislative
compensation can be rationalized to a certain extent by
examing Midwestern ethics. For example, the element of
volunteerism in state government has always been held
in the highest regard by rural Mid westerners. The expec
tation that individuals would be willing and able to
serve In public office for nominal compensation is empha
sized as a primary belief held by many rural individuals
as time after time Nebraska's rural citizens vote to oppose
salary increases or expense allowances for their legis
lative representatives.
It is unfortunate, however, that a majority of Nebras
kans fail to understand that the price for inadequate
compensation far outweighs the cost of their fair com
pensation. Indeed, the highest price any state pays when it obliges
legislators to vacate office for financial reasons is the loss
of the continuity and judgment which only senior legis
lators can bring to government.
Every time an experienced legislator resigns from
office, the state bears an immeasurable cost in the loss
of his or her leadership. If ever there were a time when
leadership and experience were needed, it is now. Presi
dent Reagan has designated individual state governments
to carry out numerous omnibus federal programs and
along with them the rules and regulations governing their
administration.
Continued on Page 6
Israelis still hope that good will come from evil
Sometime during the immense protest rally in Tel Aviv
last week, an elderly Polish-bom Israeli expressed his pain
to a Western reporter. "I came to Israel and worked for it
to be a sign for the whole world," he said, "Now I'm
ashamed for what we've done."
This theme of personal disillusionment has run like a
minor chord through two weeks of self-doubt in Israel. If
' ' Jirnmir- :Tr,.,-i i Ti in,-- l --V, ., r- i - , - - - - ,
Ellen Goodman
it is hard to be a sign for the world, it is even harder to see
the letters in that sip tarnished.
For every Israeli who argues now that the country's be
havior is being held up to some higher standard of
morality, there is another who anguishes because the
country hasn't lived up to that standard.
This is not the first time we've seen a community
founded on ideals foundering in its own eyes.
We have witnessed so many crises of conscience in
societies created with the pledge of justice that it seems
numbly predictable. We have seen the moral dilemma of
slavery in America, the murder of the Kulaks in the Soviet
Union. Each time a community of country faces its weak
nesses, even its sins, we wonder again whether every
"good" society is dissolved or distorted by human weak
ness. In Israel's history the stakes have been higher. This was
territory carved out by the Western world's guilt. As a
nation of survivors, the Israelis carried a burden of proof.
Much of the world invested in this small country the pro
found hope that something good could come out of evil.
The world wrested the League of Nations from World
War I, the United Nations from World War II. The Jews
wrested Israel out of the Holocaust. Good out of evil.
Those who created Israel and grew up in it, fertilizing
the desert with their own labor, understood that they had
a deeper job, the task of creating a society better than the
ones they'd left.
It's no wonder that the existence of Israel - even its
military history until recently - has been tied up with its
righteousness. It's no wonder that many of these survivors
are horrified to believe that some of their own leaders be
haved like the "good Germans," and didn't "know" about
the Beirut massacre.
Bernard Malamud raises the same questions about the
possibility of a just society in his new book, "God's
Grace," a fable published with eerie timing during this
crisis. His simple, evocative tale opens after the ultimate
holocaust - a nuclear war followed by a second flood.
Once again, there is a survivor, a single Jew, Calvin Cohn,
who escapes destruction through a "miniscule error" of
God's.
Malamud's character also attempts to create a decent
community out of a tiny remnant of living creatures:
chimps, a gorilla, baboons. His commandments, stories
and preachings to the members all come down to one
lesson: "If we expect to go on living we have to be kind to
each other."
Yet even there, in the imminent shadow of holocaust,
with less than a dozen creatures left on earth, the com
munity doesn't hold. It's torn apart by anger, hatred,
jealousy, suspicion , aggression .
The 20th century track record of moral societies is not
much to prompt optimism in Malamud. Nor, I suppose, in
the rest of us. We wrested the League of Nations from
World War I and lost it. We wrested the United Nations
from World War II and watched it sink. We wrested Israel
from the Holocaust and then are shocked when members
of its government become accomplices to a massacre.
Yet it there's a tool that any community can use to
wedge against moral decline, it's the measuring stick of
right and wrong. This is the stick Israelis have always used
to measure their different-ness. This is the stick that
350,000 Israelis, one out of every 10, held on to at the
Tel Aviv anti-Begin rally.
Now they are using the same tool in protest, prayer
and politics. It yet may be a "sign" for the world, a
battered sign for a more cynical world still trying to
believe that good can yet come out of evil.
(c) 1S32. Waihington Post Wrktrt Group
