To the editor:

We all laud coach Roy Williams and his all-American basketball team for their individual and collective leadership and sportsmanship qualities. And, quoting from Monday’s editorial, “Rock chalk,” not only because the players made it to the national finals, but because they did it the “right way. They work hard, play clean and make no excuses. They set an example for others to follow.”

Still, many of us applaud President George Bush and his team of politicians for their unorthodox leadership tactics and questionable diplomatic maneuvers in breaking long-standing rules governing international coexistence, bullying any and all allies who disagree, dispensing with worldwide criticism as “irrelevant” and foregoing a unified “team” approach to “go it alone” and shattering the fragile forces of humanity in order to settle a familial grudge against a personal enemy.

These represent two diabolically different rules of play.

It’s a big step between Kansas and Washington, D.C. It’s an even larger one between the Jayhawk basketball team and Bush’s team. And it’s one gigantic gorge between these two when it comes to considering whose rules of play better reflect America at its best. That there are Jayhawk fans around the world proud of their ties with this team, this town, this school, this state, leaves one to ponder whether Bush may have dropped his ball years back by owning the Texas Rangers. Isn’t it just a wee bit possible that he might now be proving himself a more respectable president had he been one of the ball players? Or, for that matter, even a bat boy?

Helen V. Starrett,

Lawrence