Scorecard

Claims by Pontiac boosters that "computer-calculated" sight lines assure unobstructed views for everyone and that a lightning-fast food service will feed 5,000 people a minute we will believe after we have sat behind an Afro or bouffant and downed one of those instant hot dogs.

But the cost is believable and beautiful: $55.7 million, a mere pittance by New Orleans standards. It is being paid by bond issues of two years ago, the interest from which has helped to offset inflation—that and some judicious paring of luxuries. It will be no Superdome but, come to think of it, so far neither is the Superdome.

NO IFS, ANDS OR BUTTS

Joe Stanton, administrator of Maryland 's Port Authority, has returned from his vacation in Naples , Fla. with an arm in a sling, and we might as well get to the seat of his problems right away.

They started on the Gleves golf course when Stanton stepped from his cart to play a shot, He took a drag from his cigarette and placed it in an ashtray in the cart. As he addressed the ball a gust of wind blew the cigarette onto the cart's unoccupied driver's seat. Joe's wife Vicki meanwhile had played her shot. She returned to the cart and sat down—on the lighted cigarette.

Somewhat startled, to say the least, she put on about five quick moves, one of which started the cart. It surged forward over Joe, breaking his arm. That hurt, but the real pain came when his brother John, who was playing in the same threesome, bent over him. "Joe," he said, "that will be a two-stroke penalty for delaying play."

TOP HAT
The seven-foot high jump is now so old hat that when Alphonso Irving of William and Mary cleared 7'1" in the NCAA indoor championships, he didn't take his off.

STEADY AS SHE GOES

During the Great Depression sport suffered less, financially, than most businesses. Except for college basketball, which was off 5%—possibly because games were televised regularly on weekends for the first time—sport was not doing badly in 1974, either.

Horse racing, aided by 400 additional racing days, drew 1.5 million more fans and continued to lead all sports in attendance with 48,823,814 spectators. Directly behind and 1.5 million healthier, too, was auto racing, followed by college football and major league baseball, both off by a few thousands. The only real casualties were pro football which, beset by strikes, extensive televising and no-shows, was down by half a million, and baseball's 18 minor leagues, down 216,000. These were more than offset by the steady increase in the number of pro and college hockey fans, quantum leaps for boxing, wrestling, soccer and tennis and ("Here Comes Rusty!") greyhound racing, which attracted 16.3 million. That meant 1.2 million more people went to the dogs last year than in '73, 6.2 million more than a decade ago. Rusty, the mechanical rabbit, has developed quite a following.