Sport: Scoreboard: Dec. 15, 1961

>When the National Football Foundation chose football’s top scholar-athletes for $500 Earl Blaik Fellowships, all eight turned out to be linemen—who are supposed to be long on brawn and short on brains. The winners: Tufts’ David Thompson, Rutgers’ Alex Kroll, Vanderbilt’s Wade Butcher, Western Reserve’s Albert Iosue, Colorado’s Joe Romig, Rice’s Robert Johnston, Oregon State’s Mike Kline, Utah State’s Merlin Olsen.

>In the first Gotham Bowl at Manhattan’s Polo Grounds, one of the West’s best football teams proved no match for an also-ran from the rugged Southwest. Unbeaten, once tied Utah State bowed, 24-9, to the oft-beaten underdog, Baylor.

>The Soviet Union’s stranglehold on world sky-diving records slipped slightly when a four-man U.S. team, bailing out near Chandler, Ariz., broke Soviet marks for day and night group-precision jumping. In daylight, the U.S. parachutists landed an average of 13 ft. 7 in. from a target point on the ground; their nighttime average was 13 ft. 10½, in.