Yow honored as Female Sports Executive of the Year

Deborah A. Yow, director of athletics at the University of Maryland, College Park, has been named national Female Sports Executive of the Year by the editors of Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal.

Yow joins the 1998 winner, Val Ackerman, president of the WNBA, and the 1999 winner, Marla Messing who served as president and chief executive officer of the Women's World Cup organizing committee, as recipients of the annual award.

The university reports that under Yow's guidance, the Maryland athletics department has made remarkable progress over the past six years. The school says budgets within the department are now balanced, and the operating debt of nearly $7 million has been paid in full.

Maryland also reports that it ranks in the top 15 percent of all NCAA Division I programs competitively across all sports, and the Terps set a record of 181 Atlantic Coast Conference academic honor roll student-athletes last year, a 51 percent increase over the past six years.

Yow is president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

Classics benefit HBCUs

Fans of college basketball at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) will get a double dose of action in two cities, thanks to the efforts to a clothing designer with deep roots in HBCUs.

The inaugural Harbor City Classic is set for November 24-26 at the Baltimore Arena in Baltimore while the second annual Legacy Basketball Classic will be played January 12-14, 2001, at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Cary Mitchell, a Johnson C. Smith University alumnus and member of the board of trustees, founded the events. Mitchell has fashioned the attire of more than 70 teams in professional sports.

The Harbor City Classic will feature rivals Coppin State College and Morgan State University, as well as a contest between Virginia Union University and Johnson C. Smith University.

The Legacy Classic will begin with North Carolina Central University and North Carolina A&T State University and conclude with a matchup between Virginia Union University and Johnson C. Smith University.

Bowers rushes to record

Who has more collegiate rushing yards than Ricky Williams, Ron Dayne, Tony Dorsett or even Brian Shay?

Grove City College senior R.J. Bowers became the all-time leading rusher in college football recently when he broke the all-division NCAA rushing record set by Shay of Emporia State University.

Bowers ran for 128 yards and three touchdowns in a 20-14 overtime victory against Bethany College (West Virginia).

Bowers now has 6,999 rushing yards in his career, surpassing the 6,958 yards of Division II's Shay and the 6,397 yards of Wisconsin's Dayne, the Division I-A record-holder.

Bowers was behind the Wolverine's victory as well, as he rushed for the game-winning touchdown in the overtime victory.

"It made the record a whole lot sweeter to do it in a victory," Bowers said. "I share this record with my offensive line, who made this day possible."

Bowers also tied Shay's all-divisions career touchdowns record of 88, breaking the Division III mark of 86 held by Carey Bender of Coe College.

Number crunching

The sport of field hockey annually ushers in the NCAA championships season, crowning a titlist in November. This year is no different, with the Division II Field Hockey Championship leading off the 2000-01 NCAA championships campaign November 5. Division III crowns its field hockey champion November 12, while the Division I winner will be determined November 19 at Old Dominion.

A breakdown of the all-time field hockey champions, by division:

Looking back

November 1997 -- NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey is among participants in a televised panel discussion on sportsmanship and other sports-related issues. The program, "Sportsmanship in the '90s: Is Winning the Only Thing?" featured Dempsey and 15 other high-profile administrators and players in professional, college and high-school sports. The ESPN broadcast is part of an effort by the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance to boost the national awareness of sportsmanship. University of Connecticut women's basketball player Rebecca Lobo, the 1996 NCAA Woman of the Year, also was a panelist, reminding viewers that athletes' actions are judged by more than just adults. "Remember," she said, "little eyes are watching you." (The NCAA News, November 17, 1997)

November 1991 -- San Diego State University running back Marshall Faulk becomes the first freshman to win the national crown in both rushing and scoring with a 154-yard effort against the University of Miami (Florida) November 30. Faulk averaged 158.8 yards and 15.6 points per game for the 1991 season.

"Well, it is correct that in the past, criticism of the NCAA Manual often has included reference to length. But (the members of the Special Committee on Deregulation and Rules Simplification) are convinced that the reference to length was sort of a secondary point and that length was tied in the minds of people who were criticizing it to the complexity of the Manual ... difficulty in finding information and understanding, and, to a degree, to what an individual might refer to as too much minute detail. ... (W)e have not received any indication that the membership is concerned directly with the length of the Manual so long as it is easier to read and understand, and organized to make it easy for users to find information."

-- NCAA President Wilford S. Bailey in 1988, who as chair of the Special Committee on Deregulation and Rules Simplification responded to concerns that the dramatically revised NCAA Manual might strike users as considerably larger than the current edition