BASKETBALL—ABA: The four-year-old league enjoyed a successful coming-out party in the national showplace, Madison Square Garden. Over 12,000 fans, undeterred by a nagging taxi strike and an...

5—Terence Spencer—LIFE25—James Drake26, 27—Heinz Kluetmeier36—T. J. Kenney37—John G. Zimmerman—LIFE39-42—illustrations by Ed Kasper44—Brown Brothers (2), UPI, Alfred Eisenstaedt—Pix45—Walter Iooss...

Wayne Carpenter, a policeman in Ogden, Utah, was chosen Most Valuable Offensive Player after rushing for 146 yards and one touchdown in leading his team to a 9-8 victory over the Salt Lake City...

SOUTH

FADING ROSESNewspapers had fun with it, running deadpan headlines saying DANCER'S IMAGE WINS DERBY and letting the joke lie in the fact that the result came two years and seven months after the...

•Billy Kidd, former U.S. Olympic skier, asked to explain the growing popularity of the sport in this country: "People are looking for self-expression. In skiing nobody tells you where to go or...

HUDDLE TO HUSTINGSSirs:Pat Ryan's article on Jack Kemp's congressional campaign (The Making of a Quarterback 1970, Dec. 7) is one of the most insightful pieces of sports journalism I have ever...

For weeks the Oakland Raiders stayed in the race by means of a series of almost supernatural last-second wins, but when they beat Kansas City for the Western Division title their tactics were au...

Kentucky was supposed to help Indiana open its new arena, but maybe it was better that it remained unfinished; the way the Hoosiers and Wildcats had at each other, the place might have split at...

While name golfers fought for glory and dollars at Grand Bahama, the also-rans played games of quiet desperation

They belong to Jim Plunkett and Joe Theismann, and they'd better be strong if the Indians and Irish intend to upset fearsome opponents

(dated Jan. 4, 1971)

Only 22, he set entire new standards of hockey excellence. While leading his team to a championship and emerging as an alltime star, he ushered a growing sport into the '70s with a flash of flying ice

A decade from now, when a Sportsman of the '70s can be selected, Bobby Orr may or may not have earned a place with the men shown here, personalities who reigned as dominant figures in their times....

If asked to identify John Fowles, the best-selling novelist who wrote the story beginning on page 84 of this issue, few of our readers would be likely to answer "ecologist." Yet not many of those...

Where did we go wrong? You say the 1970 census shows the number of bores is declining? Impossible. Have you checked all the sports?

Sir Francis Chichester is to sail out of Plymouth again this week, hoping to smash speed records by covering the 4,000 miles between Portuguese Guinea and San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua in 20 days....

How often does your postmortem begin: "Partner, I guess we should (or should not) have played that one at no trump"? If the words sound familiar, then this quiz is liable to be a tough one. To...

The celebrated author of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' takes a far-from-fictional look at the dour role of man in nature, argues on behalf of backyard laziness and places the fate of God's world...

Dan Jenkins is somewhere between 35 and 3,000 years old. He is the best sportswriter I know at college football, golf and skiing, and I guess the only reason he's not the best at baseball is...

The creator of Sherlock Holmes, fleeing the detective he created, practically taught the Swiss how to ski