Sport: Big Nine’s Big Wheels

Northwestern’s unbeaten, unscored-on footballers nervously pulled on their togs. A sign on the wall in Evanston’s Dyche Stadium was meant to be reassuring: “You are as good as the next guy. [He] pulls his pants on one leg at a time, too.” It was small comfort: the beef-trusters (up to 250 Ibs.) in the Minnesota dressing room wore much bigger pants.

Northwestern’s jitters followed them on to the playing field. They fumbled three times. The first fumble cost them, a safety. Minnesota turned the other two into touchdowns. That brought the score to 16-0. Northwestern’s coach Bob Voigts chewed gum a mile a minute on the bench.

In practice he had kept telling his all-too-tame Wildcats that they had to hate the guy across the line from them. Only a few days before, an eager freshman had driven a first-string tackle out of a play. When the big varsity man picked himself up, smiled and said, “Nice block,” Coach Voigts got mad. “When the kid dumped you,” he said, “you should have snarled.” On Saturday against Minnesota, just when things looked blackest, the Wildcats began to snarl.

Alex Sarkisian, Northwestern’s fighting center, took charge of containing the mighty Minnesota line. Quarterback Don Burson’s forward passes began connecting. Before Minnesota knew exactly what had happened, Northwestern had won, 19-16. After twelve lean years, Northwestern was once again one of the big wheels of the rough & ready Big Nine Conference.

The other big wheel, Michigan, had been turning slowly ,so far this season. It had a new coach, old Michigan Immortal Bennie Oosterbaan, as well as a few players left over from last year’s Rose Bowl champions. Michigan barely got past Michigan State (13-7) in its first game, but picked up some momentum against Oregon (14-0), and last week crushed Purdue (40-0).

This week, when they play each other, both Michigan and Northwestern fans will know a little more about which of their teams is championship bound.