Will Connolly writes a would-be-snide sports column for the San Francisco "Chronicle." If he limited his sniping to the West, Connolly would be on safe ground. But sometimes he turns his inane prose against something east of Nevada; and then Mr. Connolly slips badly. You must have facts to be effectively cynical a requirement Connolly regrettably neglects.

A recent column forwarded to this office contained Connolly's thoughts on Bill McCurdy's promotion to the head track coach's position here. In an obiter dictum on the current Cambridge athletic picture, Connolly again demonstrated his abysmal ignorance of matters Eastern.

"Curiously," he wrote, "Harvard is de-emphasizing intercollegiate athletics, and in our book, intelligently so." One wonders whether Mr. Connolly's book also records that in the recent winter season alone, Harvard teams competed in more than 225 separate inter-collegiate contests. Is that de-emphasis, "intelligent" or any other kind?

"The Ol' Crimson is backing away from high pressure," he continued,"...a seizure of conscience has set in at Cambridge." No guilty feelings in this vicinity, Mr. C., we look on sports as part of a college education. But can you say as much for Stanford's alumni-supported athletic slush fund: the "Buck-of-the-Month Club?"

This San Francisco seer doesn't have much faith in Harvard's "de-emphasized" athletic program. "The Crimsons are not going to win many football games or track meets," he opined. All right, Mr. Connolly, will you match a five-spot--payable to the Shrine Hospital Fund--that says Harvard has a better season this fall than Stanford?

Connolly heaved his biggest rock at retiring coach Jaakko Mikkola, "a Finn whom Harvard picked from a ditch-digging job after World War I." Mikkola, of course, coached the 1920 and 1924 Finnish Olympic teams, as a quick check at the Athletic Association would have revealed.

And his trophy case contains almost as many decorations, Mr. Connolly, as your column does inaccuracies.