College Football: Pick of the Pros

To hear the pro scouts tell it, the 1965 college football season was a bust.

The college quarterbacks were “awful,” the running backs were “only so-so,” the linemen were “neither big enough nor quick enough.” These heart-rending groans, of course, were only a tactical maneuver — designed to keep prices down. Last year competition for talent between the two pro leagues was so intense that a taxi-squad quarterback got $200,000 in bonus money, a first-stringer got $400,000, and a rookie lineman collected $150,000 just for signing a contract. This year the battle for graduating college stars figures to be fiercer than ever, if for no other reason than that each league has one new team to stock from scratch: the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins of the American Football League.

The first shots were fired last week as representatives of both leagues conducted their annual draft. Three University of Illinois players walked into A.F.L. draft headquarters in Manhattan and asked to look around—casually announcing that their passage to New York had been paid by the N.F.L. David (“Sonny”) Werblin, president of the A.F.L.’s New York Jets, complained that he was unable to contact players his club wanted to sign—presumably because the N.F.L. had them tucked under lock and key. Amid all the sound and fury, scouts from 22 teams voted for the 22 players that they felt were the best of this year’s collegians. From the tabulation of their votes came TIME’S All-America.

OFFENSE •QUATERBACK: Rick Norton, 22, Kentucky, 6ft. 1 in., 1961bs. Playing for a teamthat started out like a lion (with victories over Missouri and Mississippi) and wound up like a lamb (losing to Houston and Archrival Tennesee), Norton completed 113 out of 214passes for 1,893 ards and eleven touchdowns.He injured a knee in Kentucky’s next-to-last game, had to undergo an operation. The bad knee makes Norton a questionable commodity, but he is still “the best of a bad lot.”

•HALFBACKS: Donny Anderson, 22, Texas Tech, 6 ft. 3 in., 210 lbs., and Mike Garrett, 21, Southern California, 5 ft. 9 in., 189 Ibs. “Mr. Everything” at Tech—where he gained 2,280 yds. in three seasons, was the team’s punter and No. 1 pass receiver, ran back kickoffs and punts—Anderson was a No. 1 draft choice of both the Green Bay Packers and Houston Oilers as a junior last year. Garrett led the nation in rushing this season (with 1,440 yds.), and last week he became the second Negro (the first: Syracuse’s Ernie Davis in 1961) to win the Heisman Trophy as the year’s best college player. Small as running pro-halfbacks go, he will probably be converted to flanker. “Out there he’ll get the daylight he needs.”

•FULLBACK: Jim Grabowski, 21, Illinois, 6 ft. 2 in., 219 lbs. A guileless, straight-ahead power runner, Grabowski broke Red Grange’s 40-year-old school ground-gaining record at Illinois. That was enough to make him the A.F.L.’s No. 1 draft choice. The consensus: “The top ball carrier in the Big Ten. Durable, never gets hurt. Has been the primary target of every team he has faced in the last two years, but still crunches out the yardage.”

•ENDS: Howard Twilley, 21, Tulsa, 5 ft. 10 in., 180 lbs., and Milt Morin, 23, Massachusetts, 6 ft. 4 in., 245 lbs. The pass-catchingest end in the country for two straight years (1965 record: 134 catches for 1,779 yds. and 16 TDs), Twilley is something of an enigma to the scouts: “He has no size and no speed. But he makes the catches.” Massachusetts isn’t exactly big league, but Morin may be: “Excellent hands, a mighty good blocker, and he kicks off too—clear through the end zone.”

•TACKLES: Francis Peay, 21, Missouri, 6 ft. 4 in., 246 lbs., and Sam Ball, 21, Kentucky, 6 ft. 4 in., 241 lbs. “If I were poetic,” says one scout, “I’d say that Peay was very subtle for a lineman. There is real class in the way he hits people.” Ball, says another, is simply “a mean S.O.B.” Both are exceptionally agile for big men: “No matter how big a man is, he’s going to be caught off balance too often if he hasn’t got coordination.”

•GUARDS: John Niland, 21, Iowa, 6 ft. 3 in., 240 lbs., and Stan Hindman, 21, Mississippi, 6 ft. 3 in., 235 lbs. Usually the pros resign themselves to making guards out of college tackles, because college guards are too small. Not this year. Iowa was the doormat of the Big Ten, but Niland still drew raves from 14 pro teams. Hindman, the scouts marvel, “can play any offensive or defensive position in the line, and he is as fast as most fullbacks.”

•CENTER: Pat Killorin, 21, Syracuse, 6 ft. 2 in., 235 lbs. Syracuse has a reputation for producing pros (Baltimore’s John Mackey, Dallas’ Maury Youmans, Cleveland’s Jimmy Brown), and Killorin may be one of the best. “A leader type,” is the word. “As aware of what’s happening in that crowd around him as a floorwalker in a department store.”

DEFENSE

•ENDS: Bill Yearby, 21, Michigan, 6 ft. 3 in., 230 lbs., and Aaron Brown, 22, Minnesota, 6 ft. 4 in., 241 lbs. Yearby is “a vicious tackier, always on target, always gets his man—and not 5 yds. downfield, like most college kids.” Brown, who played one game with his jaw broken and three more with it wired shut, is so good on both offense and defense that the pros are puzzled about where to play him. “If he gets his hands on the ball, he’ll run over the other team. If he doesn’t, he’ll knock the other team down.”

•TACKLES: Walt Barnes, 21, Nebraska, 6 ft. 3 in., 252 lbs., and George Rice, 21, Louisiana State, 6 ft. 3 in., 255 lbs. Barnes, some scouts insist, is the nation’s No. 1 college player: “If Jimmy Brown could get through him, he’d really be earning his pay.” Rice is “a kid with the arms of a blacksmith. He knocks enemy guards flat on their butts with just a flick of his elbow.”

•LINEBACKERS: Tommy Nobis, 22, Texas, 6 ft., 233 lbs., Carl McAdams, 21, Oklahoma, 6 ft. 3 in., 226 lbs., and Frank Emanuel, 22, Tennessee, 6 ft. 3 in., 220 lbs. Nobis was the N.F.L.’s No. 1 draft choice, but it may take some doing to get his signature on a contract. “I look at him,” sighs one scout, “and all I see is money. To some of these guys, anything less than the $400,000 Joe Namath got is going to sound like small potatoes. Nobis might be the man to match it.” McAdams “may actually be better than Nobis,” and Emanuel is “a tough, hardnosed guy who likes nothing better than knocking people down.”

•CORNERBACKS: Nick Rassas, 21, Notre Dame, 6 ft., 185 lbs., and Ben Hawkins, 21, Arizona State, 6 ft. 1 in., 176 lbs. Playing strictly on defense, Rassas was Notre Dame’s top ground gainer—running back six interceptions for 197 yds., returning 19 punts for 435 yds. A two-way player who averaged 50 min. of action per game, Hawkins runs the 100-yd. dash in 9.7 sec. Naturally, that impresses the pros. So does his “ability to improvise when standard defensive patterns fail.”

•SAFETYMEN: Eric Crabtree, 21, Pittsburgh, 5 ft. 11 in., 180 lbs., and Rodger Bird, 22, Kentucky, 5 ft. 11 in., 201 lbs. The safetyman is the last line of defense, and it should be more than ordinarily difficult for anybody to get past Crabtree, an “agile, shifty” runner himself. Bird played some defense in 1964 at Kentucky, but none this year; he was too busy being the Southeastern Conference’s second leading ground gainer (with 646 yds.). A little still went a long way with the scouts. “A sure tackier, hard to fool on fakes,” goes one report. “As a matter of fact, he’s even better on defense than on offense.”