Wednesday, April 22, 1998

The rewards of virtue

College football has endowed the vocabulary of sports with such terms as "true freshman" and "fifth year senior." Could Peyton Manning add another -- "master's candidate"?

Manning, thanks to summer school and hard work, graduated cum laude from the University of Tennessee. He would have been wealthy a year sooner if he had turned pro, but he elected to come back for his fourth and final year.

That was a departure from current practice where top athletes view college as a three-, two- and even one-year tryout for the pros. The idea is not so much to get an education as to establish a market value.

Manning had a different slant on the marketplace. "You can't buy back a senior year," he said. His return was a success but not a fairy tale: His team won the conference but not a national championship; he did not win the Heisman Trophy but finished second.

Last weekend he was rewarded: the No. 1 pick in the draft, fat contract from the Indianapolis Colts to follow. Manning says he plans to produce and be an asset for the Colts. "Holdout" does not seem to be in this communications major's vocabulary.

Would other athletes follow his example? It would be nice to think so.