19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

NOT SUPER ENOUGH?
Sirs:
Tex Maule's rendition of Super Bowl VIII (It Was the Day of the Dolphins, Jan. 21) as another boring affair with those automatons in aqua called the Miami Dolphins at center stage reflects meaningfully on the pro game today. This latest and least entertaining of a series of generally tedious Super Sundays should give Pete Rozelle and the magnates of pro football good cause for reassessing the current condition of their overexposed and overanalyzed sport (or is business a better word?).

The Dolphins are an excellent team. But unfortunately they also epitomize the extreme conservatism and predictability that are killing NFL football as a spectator sport. Super Bowl VIII was not played, it was executed, and unless reforms occur soon the NFL will be executed by its own hand.
DAVID R. MURPHY
Albany, N.Y.

Sirs:
Congratulations to Tex Maule on his relatively unbiased report on this year's Super Bore, uh, Bowl. Miami is one awesome, incredible machine. As a Viking devotee, I could only hope that Minnesota would reverse its 1970 form in this so-called classic and that Miami would conduct itself on the field as 40 human beings rather than as a squad of robots. So much for a dream.
DAVE CULLEN
Swansea, Mass.

Sirs:
Now that Super Bowl VIII is over and the Dolphins have won two in a row, people are starting to compare them with the old Green Bay Packers. To determine which team should be called the best why not play a game by computer, as they did an AH vs. Marciano fight?
STEVEN LEONARD
Mechanicsburg, Pa.

Sirs:
Your article on football predicting (Doing It by the Numbers, Jan. 14) was excellent, but it also proved that not even the biggest or smartest computer in the world could predict the outcome of a game being played by two great football teams in pressure competition. As I figure it, Bud Goode's computer was off by eight.
WAYNE RIENDEAU
Rolling Meadows, Ill.

EMPTY CUP
Sirs:
Joe Jares' story The Boo-Boo in Bogotá (Jan. 21) about the defeat of the U.S. Davis Cup team by Colombia was simply a report on a case of the better team winning. Whether the Dennis Ralston-coached trio of Charlie Pasarell, Harold Solomon and Erik van Dillen and, yes, even Ralston himself, took the South Americans lightly or not, the result was a clear-cut verdict.

This was the most lackluster squad to represent the U.S. in cup play for many years. It is a shame that Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors were not available. It behooves the powers that be to take immediate steps to assure the inclusion of Smith, Ashe and Connors on the 1975 squad. After all, the Australians have their best men going for them with Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, et al., and they are a tough bunch to beat.
WILLIAM F. O'BRIEN
Cincinnati

Sirs:
That was a great bit of strategy, sending a third-string team to play the Davis Cup in Colombia. Well, now we can save our aces until 1975.
JOHN E. HERZOG
Pittsburgh

BOBBY VS. BORIS
Sirs:
Congratulations to William Lombardy and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED for the fine article on Bobby Fischer (A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma, Jan. 21). Fischer deserves attention for his fantastic series against Boris Spassky. Being able to come from down two to win it all is the mark of a true pro. The article brought out the extraordinary events that surrounded that match. In my opinion, it gave the reader a fantastic look inside the sport of chess, American style.
DAN WEARSTLER
Lafayette, Ind.

Sirs:
My only reaction to the article about Bobby Fischer was that, somewhere along the line, he should have been soundly spanked. His conduct made me ashamed to be an American.
ANDREW A. JASINA JR.
Sterling Heights, Mich.