The Saxonburg Area Authority is right in planning to force an Erie County contractor to resolve a problem stemming from a 2006 expansion of the authority's sewage system into Penn and Middlesex townships. Legal action will be taken if the contractor continues to refuse to resolve the problem.

But the authority merits criticism for being slow to get so firmly on the side of property owners who have been wronged by the sewage project.

It took pictures of the problem to convince the authority earlier this month to get tough with the contractor. Authority members shouldn't have needed those pictures to convince them that there was enough clear evidence to justify the possible forthcoming legal action.

Instead, the authority voted in June to back down. After an impasse with the company was reached, the sewer panel said it would take no further corrective action.

The photographs in question show trees that had been buried — obviously not deeply enough — breaking through the ground, creating a mess for the property owners.

Behind the dispute between the company and authority is interpretation of requirements under the company's $5.5 million contract with the authority. The authority contends that there is a perpetual clause mandating corrective action for any major problems; the company has insisted it is no longer liable.

Perpetual or not, the issue must be resolved, either by the company or authority. The authority promised that the problem would be corrected, even if an authority crew had to do it.

It's too bad that the authority wasn't so committed to such a corrective attitude all along.

The Pittsburgh Panthers' head football coach, Dave Wannstedt, needs to dole out some tough talk to his squad and some sterner action, and not just because of the Panthers' embarrassing 31-3 defeat Thursday night at the hands of the Miami Hurricanes.In the past two months, four Panthers have been arrested, the latest, for beating a woman at Chatham University.The four players are men who have been given an opportunity of a lifetime by having been given scholarships, not only to possibly prepare them for a professional football career but also for later productive careers outside football. Instead of making the best of the opportunities, the four players in question have resorted to the kind of criminal-minded stupidity that neither Wannstedt nor any other coach should tolerate.If players — at Pitt or anywhere else — want to make choices that relegate them to street criminals, they shouldn't be playing college football.The Pitt coach needs to send a clear message to his team members about a no-tolerance policy.Although he has dismissed from the team the player involved in the Chatham incident, he has reinstated one of the three other arrested players. The two others are on indefinite suspensions.As long as Wannstedt avoids a no-tolerance policy, there is a bigger chance that there will be more problems — and, in the end, that won't be good for Pitt football.

Bing Crosby, a popular singer and movie, radio and TV star who entertained many of this country's baby boomers' parents, deserves a cheer today even though he died in 1977.It is Crosby who kept the only known still-remaining complete copy of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series — the Series won by the Pittsburgh Pirates by way of a ninth-inning home run by Bill Mazeroski.Crosby, a part-owner of the Pirates, who was so nervous about the Series that he and his wife went to Paris to quell his fears that he might jinx the Bucs, had a company record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR.The game was filmed off a television monitor.A New York Times article relates how Crosby had more foresight than the television stations and networks of that time when he stored the prize broadcast — regarded as one of the greatest games in Major League Baseball history — in the dry, cool wine cellar at his home near San Francisco. Until the 1970s, stations and networks routinely erased or discarded games that they had aired, even the best games.The legendary broadcast was discovered in December, and an agreement will allow Major League Baseball to televise the game in the offseason.Not having degraded, the five-reel set has been transferred to DVD, paving the way for its airing.Around 1948, polls declared Crosby the "most-admired man alive," ahead of Pope Pius XII and baseball legend Jackie Robinson.Now, in 2010, at least among Pirates fans, Crosby might be included among the most-admired sports collectors in history, thanks to what can be regarded as the priceless find in his wine cellar.Now there are two Crosbys who have Pittsburgh buzzing — of course, the other one being the Pittsburgh Penguins' captain, Sidney Crosby.