Sport: The Boys from Syracuse

Time and again, Syracuse’s winged-T play seemed to be going to the left when Negro Sophomore Halfback Ernie Davis suddenly flashed back to take the ball and smash through the right side of the West Virginia line in a scissor-like reverse. Twice, the sturdy (6 ft. 2 in., 205 lbs.), sprinting Davis got away for touchdown runs of 57 and 29 yds. When the defense shifted to contain him, burly Fullback Art Baker, an intercollegiate wrestling champion who can run the 100 in 10.1 seconds, blasted up the middle as undefeated Syracuse steamrollered 589 yds. to a 44-0 victory.

Throughout the game. a character looking like an aging water boy strode up and down before the Syracuse bench. He wore a dark blue school shirt and a baseball cap pulled low over his close-cropped grey hair, and he barely came to some of the players’ shoulders. But when he spoke, they spun to listen, and for good reason. Bantam-sized (5 ft. 8 in., 160 lbs.) Coach Floyd Burdette (“Ben”) Schwartzwalder, 50, is the one man who has changed Syracuse from a perpetual Eastern patsy into a powerhouse that leads the nation in offense (36.4 points, 441.8 yds. per game) and defense (100 yds. allowed per game).

Hard-Nosed, Hard-Bitten.WhenCoach Schwartzwalder arrived in 1949, Syracuse’s chief interest in football was to beat archrival Colgate occasionally. Coach Ben brought with him a 25-5 record, compiled at little Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and a determination to revive Syracuse’s glory days of the ’20s, when the team won 50, lost 11, tied 6 in seven seasons. As a 152-lb. center out of Huntington, he had learned hard-nosed football at West Virginia playing for Coach Greasy Neale, later coach of the pro’s world champion Philadelphia Eagles. As a paratrooping major in the 82nd Airborne, he had made combat jumps in Normandy and at the crossing of the Rhine, won the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Even so, Coach Schwartzwalder took his lumps until the early ’50s, when independent Syracuse (enrollment: 7,000) decided to go big time. Counting on the New York Thruway to bring new fans to the stadium, Syracuse gave Schwartzwalder authority and money to recruit some shock troops (“If we can get ’em, we can coach ’em”). In 1953 a Negro halfback named Jimmy Brown showed up unannounced, went on to become the finest running back in the game (he now leads the pros as a Cleveland Brown), and in no time Schwartzwalder and Syracuse were rising toward the top.

Unbalanced Ferocity. This year they have made it. As a curt nod to modern times, Schwartzwalder has installed the winged-T. But basically the Syracuse attack is built around an anachronistic, unbalanced single-wing line that double-teams and cross-blocks with old-fashioned ferocity. To get the most out of his boys, Drillmaster Schwartzwalder relieves the pressure of practice with some heavyhanded, country-style kidding. “But there’s no laughing on game days,” he says.

Before a game, Schwartzwalder gives his team a mild tongue-lashing as a stimulant but avoids oldtime histrionics. “If Knute Rockne came into my locker room and gave one of his fight talks, the kids would laugh him right out of the place,” he says. “You can’t fool them. When I was a player, Greasy Neale tried to tell us three weeks running to go out and win the game for his dying mother. And there she was every game, sittin’ up in the stands.”

These Saturday afternoons fans are packing into the ancient concrete bowl of Archbold Stadium (cap. 39,701), the students fret about national rankings, and a battered Civil War cannon keeps up a running drumfire as it booms out each score. Syracuse is now scheduling such national powers as Notre Dame and

Oklahoma. Syracuse’s winningest coach (60-33-2) is unawed. “We take ’em a game at a time,” says Coach Schwartzwalder. “We’re just country folks.”