College Football: Jolly Roger

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There he stood, looking like King Hal at Agincourt, a slim figure in gold staring at the enemy over the backs of his crouching linemen. “Haaaay, set! Hup-ah-hup-ah-hup-ah . . .” Back snapped the ball, and the crowd sucked in its breath. What would he do? Now he was rolling right and fading back as if to pass. He slithered away from one tackier, straight-armed another. Downfield, three receivers zigged, zagged, looked back, zigged again. Back and forth he dodged, now trapped, now loose. But there was no pass. In a spurt of swivel-hipped speed, he dashed forward. Five yards, ten, past the line of scrimmage, and on to a first down.

Another play: same thing. Only this time he suddenly stopped in his tracks, and threw—a perfect spiral, 17 yds. downfield. Touchdown!

A movie script? A sixth-grader’s dream of glory? Not at all. Roger Thomas Staubach, 21, Naval Academy midshipman and college quarterback beyond compare, was playing football against Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And as 37,000 bedazzled fans in the Cotton Bowl screamed wildly—for him, against him, or just from the sheer excitement of it—Quarterback Staubach put on a show that even the most jaded pro-football fan would find breathtaking to behold.

Playing with Magic. In the first quarter, a vicious, blind-side tackle sent Staubach to the bench with a stretched nerve in his left shoulder. Five minutes later, as if nothing had happened, he was ramming through the center of the S.M.U. line for a touchdown. Southern Methodist’s speedy backs scored twice before the half. But Staubach kept the Middies ahead—rolling out to his right to set up a touchdown, then rolling out to his left for the two-point conversion. By the half, 31 points were on the scoreboard: Navy 18, S.M.U. 13.

Back came the two teams, and the tension leaped another notch. A jarring tackle sent Staubach sprawling and aggravated his shoulder injury. He seemed oblivious to pain. Calmly, he pitched a TD strike to his left end. Score: Navy 25, S.M.U. 13. Now all Navy needed was a stout defense. But who was playing defensive football? In only two plays, Southern Methodist got that touchdown back on a 45-yd. run by John Roderick, a 168-lb. sprinter who runs the 100 in 9.4 sec. and plays football just to keep in shape for track. Minutes later the Mustangs got another and jumped into the lead, 26-25. Now it was Staubach’s turn again. Circling right end, he picked up 11 yds. and ran head first into a herd of Mustangs. Slowly, the tacklers unpiled—and a gasp went up from the stands. There lay Staubach, stunned, on the ground.

The Navy trainer waved smelling salts under Staubach’s nose, and the youngster was ready for more. He moved the Middies to the S.M.U. two. A field goal put Navy back ahead, 28-26. And with just 2 min. 52 sec. left in the game, bruised, battered, exhausted, he slumped onto the bench and waited for Navy’s defense to run out the clock. Not a chance. In only four plays, S.M.U. traveled 70 yds. for a touchdown. Score: Southern Methodist 32, Navy 28.

It was too much to hope that Staubach could rally the Middies now. Time was against him: the clock showed only 2 min. 5 sec., and Navy was 60 yds. away from pay dirt. The cards were stacked. But once again, Staubach began to work his magnificent magic. He scampered around right end for 16 yds. He passed for 14 more. He passed again for 12. He ran the middle for 15. And finally, with just 2 sec. left, he dropped back and fired one last pass to Halfback Ed Orr in the end zone. The gun went off—and the ball skidded off Orr’s fingertips. For the first time this year, Navy was defeated. Quarterback Staubach walked off the field weeping.

That is what U.S. fans are learning to expect from the colleges: rootin’, tootin’, wide-open, score-a-million, hell-for-leather football. The season is only a month old. But it might have been New Year’s Day and Bowl time last weekend for all the thunderous collisions among titans, the staggering upsets, and impossible heroics. In the same Dallas Cotton Bowl where Navy’s Staubach left everyone limp the night before, another 75,000 fans almost expired from excitement the next afternoon when No. 2-ranked Texas crushed No. 1-ranked Oklahoma, 28-7. In South Bend, a crowd of 59,000 watched happily as Southern California, the preseason pick for national champion, went down to its second defeat, 17-14, at the hands of an inspired Notre Dame team that had lost its first two games. At University Park, Pa., underdog (by 12½ points) Army dumped Penn State for the third year in a row, 10-7, and out in Seattle, winless (0-3) Washington worked off its frustration on undefeated (3-0) Oregon State, 34-7.

The winners snake-danced around U.S. college towns all through the night. And even the losers—for once—could take comfort in how the game was played. For in 1963 it is played by brilliant quarterbacks who spin and dance and fill the air with leather. 150mething Borrowed. College football has neither the studied grace nor the unbridled violence of the pro game. Its quarterback stars are not polished professionals who read the Wall Street Journal, belong to the P.T.A., and get birthday cards from their insurance agents. Their game is still a game. They make mistakes, and if they ever do get to be pros, most of them will have to take Football I all over again. But the colleges have borrowed one thing from the pros—daring—and at its pink-cheeked, earnest, illogical best, college football is at least as interesting as a 10-7 championship struggle between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers.

The colleges have always had their ancient rivalries, marching bands and majorettes. But their battle cry was usually “three yards and a cloud of dust.” The pros learned that bands can be hired, Copa girls can be taught to twirl a baton, and all rivalries get ancient after a while. When they also discovered the forward pass—the tantalizer, the equalizer, something everyone in the stands could see—they were on their way to owning the world. The forward pass was not invented by the pros; it had been around since 1906. But in the hands of such quarterbacks as Sammy Baugh and Sid Luckman, the pass became the most awesome offensive weapon in the history of the sport —a bolt of lightning that could strike anywhere, any time. Scores soared. The T formation grew flankers and split ends; pro coaches even made room for a third end in the backfield (they called him a “slotback”), began scattering receivers around the field like leaves in a hurricane.

Joining the Chorus. Suddenly, every youngster old enough to hold a football wanted to be a Y. A. Tittle or a Johnny Unitas. “They see the pros on TV,” says Iowa Coach Jerry Burns, “and they pattern themselves after the glamour boys. Nobody wants to be a Rosie Grier or a Big Daddy Lipscomb.” Conditioned by the heart-stopping excitement of the pro game, fans implored college coaches to pass, pass, pass. At least one university head joined the chorus. Chancellor Edward Litchfield of the University of Pittsburgh ordered Pitt Coach John Michelosen to open up. “Three things I find intolerable,” Litchfield said. “Winning all the time, losing all the time, and being dull. I would rather lose 28-27 than win 7-6.” Two weeks ago, when tricky Pitt pulled a fake kick, passed for two extra points and beat California, 35-15, for its third straight victory of the season, the entire student cheering section gave Litchfield a standing ovation as he rose in his box and gave the clenched-fist signal: “Go, Pitt, go!”

Now even the most conservative coaches are caught up in the enthusiasm. At Columbus, Ohio, where 84,000 watched unbeaten Ohio State and unbeaten Illinois battle to a 20-20 tie, Coach Woody Hayes, the grind-’em-out granddaddy of them all, let Buckeye Quarterback Don Unverfeth throw a season’s ration of passes (12). “I’m not throwing the ball just to make people happier,” insisted Hayes. “I’m trying to win games. That makes them happier, usually.”

Everything to Perfection. In the Year of the Quarterback, Navy’s Staubach is easily the most electrifying player in a college uniform. “Just say he’s terrific,” says Pitt’s Michelosen, whose Panthers play the Middies next week. But for nearly half of last year, he was a bench warmer, a green sophomore just up from the plebes, watching and learning from his elders. At last, Navy Coach Wayne Hardin waved him into a grinding, scoreless duel against Cornell. In 23 minutes of play, Staubach turned it into a rout, passing for one touchdown, running for two others. That was enough for Hardin. Staubach was his boy. When Navy played mighty Southern California, the nation’s No. 1 team, the point spread was 17; Navy lost, but in a 13-6 squeaker. And then came Army. “If we have a perfect season and lose to Army,” says Athletic Director William Busik, “then we’re lousy.”

Navy was a seven-point underdog. But at Annapolis they raised a banner, “Home of Roger Staubach,” and for Navy that evened all the odds. Showing an admirable taste for tradition, he completed eleven out of 13 passes, personally accounted for 222 yds. and four touchdowns as Navy won 34-14. Army Coach Paul Dietzel had the air of a man preparing the excuse for next year. “Staubach is head and shoulders above all the other quarterbacks,” he said.

“He’s a beautiful, unbelievable passer; he’s a scrambler and has great split vision; he can run, and that makes it impossible to defend against him and he’s a tremendous inspirational leader.”

Like Touch. In action, stilt-legged Quarterback Staubach is vaguely reminiscent of an ostrich. As he steps up behind the center, his arms hang loosely, and he shakes his fingers like a high-jumper warming up for the bar. Then he grabs the ball, rolls out to his right, and the fun begins. “At this point,” says a Navy coach, “nobody knows what he’s going to do except Staubach and God.” He may pass, he may run, or he may just drop back 25 or 30 yds., before he makes up his mind. Navy linemen no longer block just one man; they hit, get up and hit somebody else, “because Roger may be coming back again.” His receivers run their normal patterns, then keep dashing around waiting for the ball to come winging into their arms. As Staubach says: “Sometimes it gets to be a little like touch football.”

Opposing coaches swear that he has eyes in the back of his head. As he dodges around back there, he has an uncanny “feel” for tacklers closing in on him from behind, and the glint of sunlight off a gold helmet among a swarm of defenders downfield is all he needs to register the position of his receiver. Says Coach Hardin: “Some people will be in a room a thousand times, and when they’re out of it, they can’t tell how many lights it has, what shape the furniture is, or anything. Staubach could. He sees things.”

“That Made It Impossible.” If there is a way, short of absolute mayhem, to defend against Staubach, nobody has found it yet. After four games, he leads the nation both in passing (55 of 77, for 742 yds. and four touchdowns) and total offense (1,024 yds. gained). Before the season opener, West Virginia Coach Gene Corum calculated that his bulky linemen were too slow to catch Staubach. So Corum split his defensive ends to keep Roger bottled up, moved his linebackers into the line. “We contained his running all right,” says Corum sourly. “But of course that made it impossible to stop his passing.” Calmly sidestepping the puffing Mountaineers, Roger threw 22 passes and completed 17 for 171 yds. Score: Navy 51, West Virginia 7. “When I scheduled Navy,” sighed West Virginia Athletic Director Red Brown, “a fellow named Roger Staubach was a freshman in high school.”

The next game was more of the same, only better. William and Mary tried to go both ways on defense; drop back to cover Staubach’s pass receivers, blitz the linebackers to nip his running in the bud. Another mistake. Roger played greased pig all afternoon. Once, seemingly pinned behind the line of scrimmage, he abruptly reversed his field and rambled for 25 yds. Said William and Mary Coach Milt Brewer: “Instead of pursuing and trying to catch him, we should have just waited and eventually he’d come back to us.” In all, Roger passed and ran for 297 yds. —a new Naval Academy record—and the Middies won 28-0.

The record lasted one week. Against Michigan, Roger was not only spectacular, he was incredible. In the second quarter tackled for what looked like a 20-yd. loss, he arched as he fell and fired a strike to Fullback Pat Donnelly for a one-yard gain. Said Michigan Assistant Coach Jocko Nelson: “The way he plays, you’ve got to cover the ushers and the people in the stands. The only way to beat him would be to let the air out of the football.” With the ball on the Navy 46 and 13 sec. left in the half, Roger hollered over to Coach Wayne Hardin: “O.K. to go?” Hardin nodded. Roger scampered around, giving his receivers time to get downfield, then he sailed the ball 34 yds. zip through a Michigan defender’s arms and straight into the hands of Halfback John Sai. Sai jogged untouched into the end zone. Roger’s score for the day: 14 of 16 passes for 237 yds., plus 70 yds. rushing—another Navy record. Final score: Navy 26, Michigan 13.

Up to Him. Staubach’s performance so far this season is more than a tribute to his own splendid talents: it shows how completely today’s top college quarterbacks dominate the teams they play for. In the old tight-T and split-T formations, the quarterback was responsible for maintaining the oompah-oompah rhythm of a ground attack—and the coach often ran the team from the bench. But today’s quarterback is a thief with ten accomplices. He bosses the huddle, decides the play, totes the ball. What he does is up to him. The best decision makers:

> Southern California’s Pete Beathard, 21, is having passing woes: nobody can hang onto his howitzer-like heaves, including All-America End Hal Bedsole, who dropped seven passes in the first four games. Big enough (6 ft. 2 in., 205 Ibs.) to play with the monsters on defense, fast enough (he has been clocked at 5.9 sec. for 50 yds. in football gear) to match strides with the halfbacks, Beathard is a master of the run-pass option, key play in Coach John McKay’s “Shifty I” attack. He graduates this year, and pro scouts call him “a new Paul Hornung.” Says one: “He may wind up a quarterback, a flankerback or a defensive halfback—I don’t know which. But, believe me, this boy is a No. 1 draft.”

> Northwestern’s Tommy Myers, 20, has the face of an acolyte, the poise of a pit boss—and an arm like a crossbow. A rarity among college quarterbacks, Myers seldom runs a rollout; he is a drop-back “pocket” passer, throws what the pros call a “soft ball”—a pass that reaches the receiver slightly nose up, is therefore easier to catch. Says Northwestern Coach Ara Parseghian: “Tommy has the knack of throwing to the exact spot where his man is going to be—the way a hunter leads a duck before he pulls the trigger. That is a sixth sense that no coach can instill in a boy.” At Ohio’s Troy High School, Myers threw 73 touchdown passes, was already so accurate that he could fire a football into a 2-ft. bull’s-eye from 30 yds. away. Last year, Sophomore Myers set a college record by completing 15 straight passes against South Carolina, sparked Northwestern to its best season in 15 years: seven victories, only two losses. This year, he has averaged 204 yds. a game on passes, and the Wildcats (season record: 3-1) hope to ride his golden right arm all the way to the Rose Bowl.

> Miami’s George Mira, 21, may be the best pure passer in college football: last year, as a junior, he gained 2,059 yds., made four All-America teams. Against Nebraska in New York’s Gotham Bowl, he completed 24 passes for 321 yds.—though Miami lost, 36-34. Coaches raved, and pro scouts drooled. “Willie Mays in a football uniform!” said Maryland’s Tom Nugent. Perhaps all the praise was too much for “The Matador,” or perhaps Miami is not as good this year as the experts figured. By last week, Mira had gained only 594 yds., seen five of his passes picked off by alert defenders, and was still looking for his first touchdown pass of the season (he had twelve last year). But the pros pay that no heed. Says one scouting report: “A good one. If a receiver can get just one step ahead of the defender, Mira will put the ball in his hands.”

> Georgia Tech’s Billy Lothridge, 21, is a one-man gang. He runs, he passes, he punts, he kicks, he calls 80% of Tech’s offensive plays, and, what’s more, he beats Coach Bobby Dodd at his own game: pool. Small wonder that Dodd calls Lothridge “the most valuable player in college today.” It was Lothridge who, singlehanded, cost Alabama the 1962 national championship, using his talented toe to get Tech out of trouble nine times with punts that averaged 41 yds. and calmly booting the extra point that sent Alabama down to defeat for the only time all season, 7-6. A wiry, broadnosed senior, Lothridge is regarded by the pros as an adequate passer, a dependable runner—and the best kicker in college football. In four games so far this season, Lothridge has personally accounted for 52 of his team’s 65 points.

> Northern Illinois’ George Bork, 21, is the kind of small-college star no one hears about until he turns up as a pro. The Green Bay Packers want him, so do the Minnesota Vikings, and no less than 15 pro teams have dispatched scouts to DeKalb, Ill. On practically every play, the Northern Illinois team lines up in a shotgun formation, the ball goes to Bork on a direct snap from center, and five receivers fan out across the field. In four straight victories over the likes of Northeast Missouri and White water (Wis.) State, Bork has attempted 140 passes and completed an even 100 for a fantastic 1,431 yds. and 17 touchdowns. As a high school senior, Bork was too small (5 ft. 10 in., 155 Ibs.) to entice big-college football recruiters. But now he stands 6 ft. 1 in., weighs 170 Ibs., and is stuffing himself on mashed potatoes for the pros. As one scout says: “Anyone who completes that many passes has what it takes—and I don’t care whether he’s playing against girls.”

> Alabama’s Joe Namath, 20, is one of those oak-legged Pennsylvania steel-country lads who sifted through 52 college offers before settling on a choice. As a sophomore last year, he announced his arrival at Alabama by flinging three TD passes in the opening game 35-0 rout of Georgia, wound up leading the Southeastern Conference in passing with 76 completions and 1,192 yds., topped off the season by passing for Alabama’s first touchdown in a 17-0 victory over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. This year, Alabama casually clobbered Georgia (32-7), Tulane (28-0) and Vanderbilt (21-6) before getting its comeuppance from Florida, 10-6. Coach Bear Bryant’s complaint is that Namath has not yet bothered to take the wraps off his throwing arm. “It’s his greatest asset,” says Bryant. Shrugs Namath: “Why should I throw? We’re doing fine on the ground.”

There are dozens more. Boston College’s Jack Concannon has size (6 ft. 3 in., 200 Ibs.) and stamina, delights in the long scoring strike that breaks up ball games. The pros especially like Maryland’s Dick Shiner (“a stylist”) and Baylor’s Don Trull (“a football genius”). Even the Ivy is blooming: up on Manhattan’s Morningside Heights, Coach Buff Donelli is touting Junior Archie Roberts as the best quarterback in Columbia’s history—better than Gene Rossides or Paul Governali, better even than Sid Luckman.

Bird Dogs on Point. As perishable commodities go, there are few things more coveted than a good quarterback. Southern Cal’s John McKay spotted Pete Beathard as a junior at El Segundo High School, hardly let him out of his sight for two years. Northwestern’s Myers got VIP tours of all but three Big Ten campuses, plus Miami and the University of Florida. Midshipman Roger Staubach is a prize product of perhaps the most extensive recruiting service in college football. “We don’t dodge it,” says Rip Miller, Navy’s assistant athletic director. “We recruit like mad.”

Unlike most colleges, which have only 50 or so athletic scholarships, Navy has an open number of appointments, operates on a volume basis “in hopes that some of them will turn out to be good.” Working for Miller are 100 “bird dogs,” or scouts, strategically spotted around the U.S.—75 of whom, oddly enough, never had anything to do with the Navy.

The Navy bird dog who spotted Staubach was Cincinnati Businessman Rich ard Kleinfeldt, and he still comes to a twanging point every time he thinks about it. The only son of a salesman, Roger was the original Wheaties ad—neat, well-mannered, studious, and absolute murder on a football field. By the time he was a senior at Cincinnati’s Roman Catholic Purcell High School (B student, nine-letterman, president of the student council), the whole city was talking about his Saturday afternoon heroics. “Purcell had a reputation for being a school where the quarterback never got dirty,” says one of his high-school coaches. “After all, you don’t carry coal in a Rolls-Royce.” Oh no?

Against archrival Elder High, Roger crossed up the defense by tucking the ball under his arm on a bootleg and sprinting 60 yds. down the sidelines to a touchdown. College scholarship offers poured in from 30 schools. According to Roger’s mother, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes “must have spent a fortune in telephone calls.” But the one college Roger himself yearned to attend fumbled the ball. Notre Dame gave him the polite brushoff, and when the Navy recruiters persisted with their “What you can do for your country” line, Roger signed up for Annapolis. “I decided I wanted to do something else in life besides play football,” he says.

Getting an appointment was easy; getting in proved more difficult. Roger flunked the entrance exam. The Naval Academy Foundation—a private organization, says the Navy—paid his way to New Mexico Military Institute for a year of cramming in English. He passed handily on the second try, and then it was off to make Navy Coach Hardin a happy man.

The first time Hardin saw Staubach run with a football was in 1961, when the plebes scrimmaged the varsity. Staubach pursued an erratic course through the entire varsity team. “I thought Staubach was lucky,” says Hardin. “It turned out that I was lucky.” With Staubach as quarterback, the plebes won seven games, lost only one. The Middies started calling him “Jolly Roger,” “Mr. Wizard” and “Mr. Wonderful.” And last year Roger became the first sophomore ever to win the Thompson Trophy, which goes to Navy’s best all-round athlete. As Hardin says, “I even like to watch this kid practice.”

Graduation & Then? Off the field, Roger is a C student, ranks 620th in a class of 905 (“He has to work for everything he gets,” says one instructor). His course schedule for this term: differential equations, electrical science, thermodynamics, U.S. Government, piloting and navigation, and terminal ballistics. But in military aptitude, matters such as leadership, decorum, and the cut of his jib, the quarterback comes out, and he ranks twelfth in the class. Deeply religious, he has been known to bawl out nappers in the Navy chapel’s “Sleepy Hollows,” once remarked when congratulated about a football honor: “That won’t get me to heaven any sooner, will it?”

He is “engaged to be engaged” to Marianne Hoobler, a pediatrics nurse in Cincinnati whom he has known since the first grade. Quiet and composed as he is, his friends know that there is still some good old-fashioned tomfoolery in Navy’s model midshipman. Last June he tossed a water bomb into the room where Fullback Pat Donnelly and Guard Fred Marlin were studying for exams. Marlin grabbed a glass of water and headed for Staubach’s room: there stood Jolly Roger in his raincoat.

Graduation for Staubach is still a year and a half away, and he has a four-year Navy hitch to serve—probably as a supply officer (he is color-blind and tends toward airsickness). But what then? The pros frown on roll-out passing (“We’ve got too much money invested in our quarterbacks to take any chances on their getting killed”), but the New York Giant’s Jim Lee Howell says, “We can always teach a boy to go straight back; we just can’t give him an arm or a brain.” Staubach has both.

Two weeks ago, after the Michigan game in Ann Arbor, Roger flicked on a television set, flopped on a motel bed, and watched a rerun of a game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. Finally he got up and turned off the set. “Those Detroit Lions,” said Staubach. “They sure need a good quarterback.”