? 11 I I ? t I I ? I I I f ? I I ? . > . ft ^^^ft s^>jk A ^^ft^^L i^ s*i>?^ ME AC Coach Of Th< Joe Purzycki, third-year mentor at 1 Athletic Conference's football Co< DelState, traditionally an MEAC d INSTANT REPLAYS ~ Black Colle failure after suffering for years from chronic kidney and heart trouble. Merritt was known as a man who put his teams through a Spartan regimen that demanded their^best -. and usually got it. 1 hough his tenure was sometimes clouded by controversy, most notably accusations of recruiting and player-eligiblity violations, Merritt was a winnei. In 31 years of coaching, the first 10 at Jackson State, Merritt was 298-100-15. An era ended with his death. ? -m<-' -t : j?J l 4 WKKtm *m^^^lK9 ? H s Year Delaware State, is the Mid-Eastern ach of the Year. Purzycki made oormat, a 7-3-1 contender in '83, orjtinued wm, .sW v::?:::v:-:i-::::v ge Sports N Big men, or the lack thereof? Well, yes, to an extent. But I've seen a fair number of big-time clubs that were weak in the middle, or mediocre at best. Heck, it used to be a tradition at North Carolina and North Carolina State, which built many of their earlier teams on guards and slowdown offenses. Better players? Granted, the bigger schools have nearly a monopoly on bluechippers. But that leads to a chicken-or-egg question that I'll explain later. The correct answer, class, is television. Just like about everything else, college teams are legitimized by TV exposure. A player wants to go to DePaul to follow in the footsteps of Mark Aguirre and Terry Cummings because he saw them play on television. He wants to grimace and dunk and wag his tongue at North Carolina 'cause he sees Jordan grimace and dunk and wag his tongue on the tube at least one time a week, sometimes several. t. r >> J >ii' *j f _r"illinn /> o ? ccnvi fjiiv/iiw'vuiiiiig v.a111 iji11 iu LOT , the networks and individual stations, fine. But something has to be done. Soon. The Oops Dept. We goofed again. Due to a production error Gust as the TV people like to blame Ma Bell, we like to blame our production staff, since they don't have a column to tell their side of the story), the cover of our SWAC edi tion last month bore the title "MEAC-CIAA Edition." Sorry. Though we normally change the label for the cover of the special SWAC edition, which we publish three times a year and contains some different articles and photos, we just plain forgot. We promise to do better in the future, SWAC fans. January. 1984-Page 19