ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 1996 TAG: 9612170060
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: IN SPORTS
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
Walt Harris, the Ohio State assistant who built his career on defense and his reputation on offense, was chosen Monday to succeed Johnny Majors as Pitt's football coach.
Harris, hired by the Panthers after two other quarterback coaches turned them down, said a program that once was a model of rebuilding now must copy the reclamation projects at Northwestern and Kansas State.
``There are teams that have not won for a period of time, and coaches came in and got everybody excited,'' said Harris, offered the offensive coordinator's job as an enticement to stay at Ohio State. ``Gary Barnett and the Northwestern staff did a fabulous job, and Bill Snyder at Kansas State. If there weren't something to build on here, I wouldn't be here.''
Harris, 50, will stay at Ohio State through the Rose Bowl, but expects to have a coaching staff assembled before the end of the holidays.
In other college football news:
* Another Nebraska football player has ended his college career early after being cited for drunken driving.
Starting wingback John Vedral was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and negligent driving Sunday near downtown Lincoln, Neb. Vedral apparently drove his vehicle into a curb twice.
Coach Tom Osborne called Vedral's arrest ``unfortunate.''
``We will suspend him and he will not play in the bowl game or make the trip to the Orange Bowl,'' Osborne told the Lincoln Journal Star. The Dec.31 bowl game against Virginia Tech would have been the senior's last game.
ETC. Woods SI's Sportsman of Year
Tiger Woods, who exploded upon the golf scene by winning two of his first seven PGA Tour events after turning professional in late August, will be named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year this afternoon in a ceremony at Bay Hill Club in Orlando.
Woods, who will turn 21 on Dec.30, won his unprecedented third consecutive U.S. Amateur crown in August at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon, then turned professional the next week at the Greater Milwaukee Open. In eight PGA Tour events, Woods earned $790,594, or $98,824 per start, to finish 24th on the season-ending PGA Tour money list.
Woods will be the first golfer to individually win the award since Jack Nicklaus in 1978.
* The head of a top Formula One racing team was ordered to stand trial Feb.20 on manslaughter charges in connection with the 1994 death of star driver Ayrton Senna.
Frank Williams, the chairman and managing director of the Williams-Renault team, and five others are to be tried in Imola, which is 20 miles outside Bologna and the site of the fatal crash.
Senna, a Brazilian, died of head injuries when his Williams car smashed into a concrete wall early in the San Marino Grand Prix on May 1, 1994.
According to the indictment, the Italian news agency ANSA reported, the crash stemmed from a ``badly done'' modification of the steering column, which broke. The experts also concluded the accident was worsened by track conditions.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB