Golden Jubilee

In January basketball will be 50 years old. To commemorate its birth and honor its founder, thousands of U.S. basketball teams will donate the proceeds of one game on their 1941-42 schedule to the James A. Naismith Memorial Fund. Proceeds of these "golden ball games" will be used to build a monumental gymnasium (including a Hall of Fame) in Springfield, Mass., within dribbling distance of the Y.M.C.A. where basketball was first played.

Already more popular than football in many parts of the country, college basketball has acquired, like football, big gates, subsidized players, cross-country trips. This week Manhattan's Madison Square Garden opens basketball's Jubilee Year with the first of 18 doubleheaders between outstanding college teams: Long Island University v. Oregon; College of the City of New York v. Oklahoma A. & M.

Other sharpshooters invited to the Garden this year: wild & woolly West Texas State, tallest team in the U.S., which won 29 out of its 35 scheduled games last year; Southern California, favorite to win this year's Pacific Coast Conference championship; Colorado University, featuring Bob Doll, a 6 ft. 5 in. center; Wyoming, Big Seven champions; Creighton, Missouri Valley champions; Notre Dame; Washington; Rice; Oregon State (whose basketball teams are nearly as good as their football teams).

Wisconsin, defending champions of the National Collegiate A.A., will not appear in the Garden this season. Reason: the Big Ten is enforcing a rule forbidding its member teams to play anywhere but on the home court of its opponents.

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