That headline in Sunday’s paper, I mean.

The headline that read:

It was a dumb headline.

It was unfair to Seneca Wallace, Iowa State’s magnificent quarterback.

It was unfair to Cyclone Coach Dan McCarney and the rest of his players.

It was unfair to reporter Randy Peterson.

Iowa State football fans are upset, and they have every reason to be upset.

Nowhere in Peterson’s story of the Cyclones’ 31-17 victory over Texas Tech did it say that Wallace didn’t play a Heisman Trophy-type game.

That was purely the imagination of a headline-writer who obviously should be assigned to serve as a tackling dummy at Iowa State’s next practice.

How that person got the idea that Wallace didn’t play at the level of a guy leading the Heisman race is beyond me.

All I know is that the editor or the sports editor of the paper should step up to the plate and give a reason, in print, why the headline was written.

Instead of writing about some goofy feature that he hopes will appeal to the 21-to-34-year-old crowd so he can sell one or two more papers, editor Paul Anger should do some explaining about headline-writing—both good and bad--in his next column.

Readers deserve to know.

The editor or the sports editor should explain that sometimes reporters, copy editors and news editors do things at 11:30 p.m. or midnight that they wouldn’t normally do. All of them are under pressure at that hour, but that goes with the territory.

In Journalism I, you’re told you’ll be working under pressure.

And, because they’re under pressure, headline-writers shouldn’t try to write cutesy headlines that aren’t based on any type of fact.

A better headline at 11:30 p.m. last Saturday would have been:

The word "Heisman’’ didn’t need to be in the headline. It’s too early for that. Wallace has six games left to prove he deserves to be named the best player in collegiate football.

You know and I know that Iowa State’s fans raised all kinds of hell with the paper when they saw the headline the paper used on Sunday.

You know and I know because the paper used Peterson’s Monday story on page 1-A of the news section.

That was the editors’ way of telling Cyclone fans that they know they made a mistake Sunday.

The paper was still trying Tuesday when Wallace’s spectacular 12-yard touchdown play was detailed on the sports pages.

Strange thing about that.

On Sunday, the first line of the headline said

Tuesday’s headline said:

You know and I know the editors were trying to win back their Iowa State readers with that one.

You’d be surprised at the number of readers who actually think that reporters do write the headlines. Sometimes (obviously in Peterson’s case) they should. Actually, copy editors and news editors write them.

A reporter is at the continual mercy of those assigned to write the headlines and make editing decisions.

I’ll never forget coming into the office on a Monday morning after covering an Iowa football game at Northwestern.

An editor rushed up to me to say, "I’m sorry for what happened to you.’’

"Why, did I get moved to the farm department?’’ I asked.

"No, the final score was edited out of your story,’’ he explained

Sure enough, the careless, idiotic copy editor did just that.

Another time, I turned in my advance story on an Iowa State-Creighton basketball game.

But it wasn’t in the paper the next morning.

I couldn’t believe it. Neither could Iowa State and Creighton.

Johnny Orr, then coaching the Cyclones, invented some new four-letter words that day.

"What happened?’’ I asked anyone within shouting distance after arriving at the office.

"Paul was the news editor. He forgot to put the story in the paper,’’ someone told me.

I once wrote a story about a high school girl who was a standout swimmer despite being born without arms.

The copy editor who handled the story—a guy named Bob--wrote an absolutely stupid headline that included some sort of play on words regarding her disability. Fortunately, the headline lasted through only one edition of the paper.

The sports editor—one of my all-time favorites at the paper--didn’t have a stroke when he found out about that incident, but he came very close.

I don’t know how Bob avoided being fired.

Wise decision by Bob.

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