College Football: Way up South

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

What do Y. A. Tittle, Bart Starr, Joe Willie Namath, Fran Tarkenton, Babe Parilli, George Blanda and Charlie Conerly all have in common? They all are, or were, masterly pro quarterbacks.

And they all played their college foot ball in the Southeastern Conference —the roughest, toughest, best college conference in football. The S.E.C. has ten regular members plus Georgia Tech, which technically classifies as an inde pendent, though it plays about half its games against conference schools. Of those eleven teams, five ranked last week among the top 13 colleges: Alabama (No. 4), Georgia Tech (5), Florida (7), Tennessee (10) and Georgia (13).

No other conference had more than two teams in that select company.

S.E.C. coaches admit that their athletic scholarship policies are the most liberal in the country. “A good football player,” says Vanderbilt Coach Jack Green, “is a precious commodity—and we know it.” Not that S.E.C. schools pay more; they offer the usual free ride: room, board, tuition and textbooks, plus $10 per month “laundry money.” They just spend more. Alabama, for instance, awards 120 football scholarships a year compared with a maximum of 35 for Notre Dame. Even Vanderbilt, a perennial conference doormat—partly because it is the only S.E.C. university that does not offer majors in either “recreation” or physical education—awards 98. S.E.C. recruiting is also “tremendously polished,” according to one man who ought to know: Alabama’s Attorney General Richmond Flowers, whose son, Tennessee Halfback Richmond Flowers Jr., got offers from 62 different schools. “It’s a smooth game of selling,” says Flowers. “Richmond Jr. was darn near tears, sometimes, saying of some coach: ‘He’s so nice I sure would hate to play against him.’ ”

With all that going on, chances are good that there is another Y. A. Tittle or Bart Starr somewhere down South this year. The pros already think they have spotted one: Florida’s Steve Spurrier, one of the sharpest college passers in the U.S.—with 133 completions in 206 attempts for 1,530 yds. as of last week, although his Gators lost to Georgia 27-10. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Spurrier, a C student, is apparently ticketed to the National Football League’s New York Giants, provided that they are willing to pay his price: a reported $500,000. Other pro teams may have to settle for the likes of Tennessee Quarterback Dewey Warren, who last week completed ten out of 16 for three touchdowns and scored another TD himself as the Vols beat Chattanooga 28-10. And that would be settling for a lot.