College Football: Out of Their League

Princeton had just annihilated Pennsylvania, 51-0, and the jubilant Tigers were whooping it up in their locker room. Carried away by all that enthusiasm, a halfback shouted, “We’re No. 1!” —and suddenly the whole team was chanting: “We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!” It took most of a minute for the realization of what they were yelling to sink in. The chanting stopped, and the Tigers grinned sheepishly at each other. No. 1? Princeton? “It’s a little sad, actually,” sighed one player. “We’ll never find out just how good we really are.”

They sure won’t. Because they play in the Ivy League, which is to big-time college football what repertory is to Broadway, the only thing anybody can say for certain about the Tigers is that they are out of their league. Ivy League rules forbid athletic scholarships, spring practice, and post-season games; yet, going into last week’s game against Brown, Princeton had demolished 14 straight opponents. They wasted no time making it 15 in a row, ripping off 53 yds. in three plays to score the first time they got their hands on the ball. When the day was over, Tailback Ron Landeck had thrown four touchdown passes and the final score was 45-27.

Awfully Dangerous. The most remarkable thing about Princeton’s success is that its attack is built around a formation that went out of style with bloomers: the single wing, in which the center passes the ball directly to the deep backs rather than handing it to the quarterback as in the T formation. A reluctant innovator, Coach Dick Colman has dressed up his offense with fancy shifts (into the I formation and the Notre Dame box), pass-run option plays and the like—all of which scare him as much as they do his opponents. “We’re playing awfully dangerous ball,” he shudders. But Princeton’s bread-and-butter play is still the old-fashioned single-wing “power sweep,” with two linemen pulling out of their positions to run interference for the tailback.

With the material he has, Colman doesn’t have to get too cute. Guard Stas Maliszewski is an All-America. Tailback Landeck turned down five Big Ten offers to come East to college. And any time the Tigers bog down within 40 yds. or so of pay dirt, they can always call on the services of Charlie Gogolak. Like his brother Pete, who boots field goals and extra points for the American Football League’s champion Buffalo Bills, Charlie kicks the ball soccer-fashion, with his instep rather than his toe—and he already holds practically every college place-kicking record. So far this season, he has booted 25 straight points after touchdown, 15 field goals (longest: 54 yds.) in 19 tries, ranks No. 1 among college scorers with 70 points.

Actually, Colman insists, the fact that Princeton is the only major-college team that still runs out of the single wing works to the Tigers’ advantage. “Our opponents have only one week to make the necessary shifts in their defenses,” he says. “Teaching a whole new defense in one week simply cannot be done.”