Cougs Must Wait Longer To Learn Bender’s Status

The Leon Bender Eligibility Watch will continue for Washington State football coaches and fans until late this month, a university official confirmed Tuesday.

Dan Peterson, the school’s associate athletic director in charge of academics and compliance, said the eligibility status of the 6-foot-5, 278- pound junior defensive tackle won’t be officially decided until at least Aug. 25 after faculty representative Irving Tallman returns from vacation.

Tallman, acting upon the recommendations of the registrar’s office, will make the final call on the eligibility of Bender and all other Cougars athletes, Peterson said.

It was thought that Bender needed only to get decent grades in a couple of summer school courses to show satisfactory progress and retain his eligibility, but Peterson said new NCAA rules have made eligibility matters much more complicated.

“It’s not only 24 (credit) hours that a student needs (each academic year) any more,” Peterson explained. “Under the new eligibility rules, student athletes have to be certified into a major field by a certain point in their careers, have so many hours toward that major and have a certain grade-point average.”

As a part of the checks-and-balances system WSU has in place, both the registrar’s office and officials from the athletic department review the academic profiles of each student athlete before they are forwarded to the faculty representative.

“Then he either signs off on the student athlete’s eligibility or questions it,” Peterson said. “And that process won’t be done until late this month.”

In the meantime, Bender, projected to be a starter and a key contributor to WSU’s young defense, will be eligible to practice.

But defensive coordinator Bill Doba is faced with the problem of not knowing Bender’s status until the week before the Sept. 2 season opener at Pittsburgh.

“Leon swears he has everything caught up,” Doba said. “He thinks he’s made it and we’d love to have him back. But we’re going to have a football team without him, too. We can’t let it kill us if he’s not there.”

Doba said Bender will practice as if he will be eligible to compete, but redshirt freshmen Gary Holmes, Darryl Jones and Delmar Morais will also get a good share of the repetitions at defensive tackle.

Hayes on Butkus list

WSU’s Chris Hayes, a 6-foot, 212-pound senior, is one of 62 players named to the preliminary list of candidates for the 1995 Butkus Award that is given annually to the nation’s outstanding collegiate linebacker.

Hayes, the third-leading tackler for WSU last fall, will start at weakside linebacker this season. He is joined on the early list of Butkus candidates by Washington’s Ink Aleaga and Deke Devers.

The preliminary list, released by the Downtown Athletic Club of Orlando, Fla., will be trimmed to 10 semifinalists Oct. 19. Three finalists will be announced Nov. 16. The winner will be named in December.

Kicker of the future?

One of the most intriguing freshmen in the Pacific-10 Conference has to be California’s Ignacio Brache, a 5-10, 170-pound placekicker from tiny Village Christian High School in Sun Valley, Calif.

As a senior last fall, Brache tied a state record with 16 field goals, including kicks of 60, 59, 56, 55, 54 and 49 yards.

Brache, who also booted 79 of his 86 career kickoffs into the end zone and averaged 42 yards per punt, was expected to move in and unseat veteran Ryan Longwell as the Bears’ placekicker.

But his progress has been slowed by adjustments he has been forced to make.

Cal coaches have shortened Brache’s approach by a step in order to shorten the time he needs to get off a kick. The change has dropped that time to 1.4 seconds, but it also seems to have affected his accuracy.

If Brache doesn’t win the job, the Bears’ kicking game could suffer considering Longwell, a junior, was a miserable 8 for 22 in field-goal tries last fall.

Bowl partners

The Pacific-10 Conference has entered into a new partnership that will guarantee the league at least four postseason berths.

Along with sending its conference champion to the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, the Pac-10 will send a second team to either the Cotton Bowl (Jan. 1) or the Plymouth Holiday Bowl (Dec. 29).

The Western Athletic Conference champion, a Pac-10 representative and two teams from the Big 12 Conference will participate in the Cotton-Holiday parlay.

A third Pac-10 team will play in the Dec.

29 Sun Bowl against a Big Ten team and a fourth will be in the Dec. 25 Jeep Eagle Aloha Bowl against another Big 12 foe.

, DataTimes