A Chip off the Old Buffalo
By Dick Taylor
()
About this ebook
Capturing Taylors memories of his youth being part of the football culture as it existed back then, A Chip Off The Old Buffalo is an interesting autobiographical account where he shares on CUs previous success in football and how it fell apart. CU went from defeating Oklahoma, winning the Big Eight Championship, going to the Orange Bowl, and being rated seventh in the nation to firing all of the coaches, losing forty-plus players, being placed on probation for two years, and no games on TV.
Dick Taylor
Dick Taylor lives in Mercer Island, WA where he and his wife, Pat are recently retired. The home of 30 years also houses Cedric, English Cocker and two rescued kittens, Winston and Oliver. Pat has her passion for watercolors and the grandchildren. Dick shares the time and enjoyment of the grandchildren but has many more passions; at the top of the list, playing Saturday morning soccer, followed by breakfast with old friends to have a lively discussion of politics. He has remained active with the CU’s Letterman’s Club which promotes the former athlete’s interests, continues to travel at any opportunity, and tries to keep his hand in with developing new business interests. He is fortunate to still be married to his childhood sweetheart from their hometown, Pueblo, CO. He also feels blessed to have their two adult children and their families live in the Seattle area where they have many opportunities to share time.
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A Chip off the Old Buffalo - Dick Taylor
A Chip Off the Old Buffalo
by
Dick Taylor
Copyright © 2010 by Dick Taylor.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010912769
ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4535-6419-6
Softcover 978-1-4535-6418-9
Ebook 978-1-4535-6420-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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Contents
INTRODUCTION
The FRESHMAN
The GAMES
SPRING BALL 1963
The UNION
The SOPHOMORE PRESEASON 1963
The PRESEASON DAY 1963
USC Trojans September 21, 1963
OREGON STATE Beavers September 28, 1963
KANSAS STATE Wildcats October 5, 1963
OKLAHOMA STATE Cowboys October 12, 1963
IOWA STATE Cyclones October 19, 1963
NEBRASKA Cornhuskers October 26, 1963
OKLAHOMA Sooners November 2, 1963
MISSOURI Tigers November 9, 1963
KANSAS Jayhawks November 16, 1963
AIR FORCE ACADEMY Falcons December 7, 1963
RECAP OF YEARLY STATS 1963
THE THREE IDIOTS
SPRING BALL 1964
THE TOWER
The JUNIOR PRESEASON 1964
USC Trojans September 18, 1964
OREGON STATE Beavers September 26, 1964
KANSAS STATE Wildcats October 3, 1964
OKLAHOMA STATE Cowboys October 10, 1964
IOWA STATE Cyclones October 17, 1964
NEBRASKA Cornhuskers October 24, 1964
Would You Play for Money? Would You Play for Nothing?
OKLAHOMA Sooners October 31, 1964
MISSOURI Tigers November 7, 1964
KANSAS Jayhawks November 14, 1964
AIR FORCE ACADEMY Falcons November 21, 1964
RECAP OF YEARLY STATS 1964
END OF SEASON 1964
The RACIST
SPRING BALL 1965
The SENIOR PRESEASON 1965
WISCONSIN Badgers September 18, 1965
FRESNO STATE Bulldogs September 25, 1965
KANSAS STATE Wildcats October 2, 1965
OKLAHOMA STATE Cowboys October 9, 1965
IOWA STATE Cyclones October 16, 1965
NEBRASKA Cornhuskers October 23, 1965
OKLAHOMA Sooners October 30, 1965
MISSOURI Tigers November 6, 1965
KANSAS Jayhawks November 13, 1965
AIR FORCE ACADEMY Falcons November 20, 1965
RECAP OF YEARLY STATS 1965
CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
This book has been bouncing around in my head, more or less, for over forty-five years. It captures the memories of my youth being part of the football culture as it existed back then. I was recruited by a number of schools, but none more than Colorado. Not so much because of my prowess on the football field, but more due to the desperation of the time for the program at Colorado.
Colorado University (CU) had won the Big Eight Championship for the first time in 1961, only to end up firing their head coach and entire staff by the following spring. To top it off, the program was placed on probation for two years and lost more than forty players to suspension and removal. No one with an iota of honesty denied that the program was doing what it was accused of—paying players over and above that authorized by the NCAA. However, almost everyone associated with the program thought the penalties were excessive. The sense of it was that they hadn’t done anything that the other programs in the nation and the Big Eight weren’t doing as well. Further, this action was to stop CU from dominating the conference for the forseeable future.
Sonny Grandelius had been the head coach. He was young, twenty-nine years old, when he took the job in 1959;with Hollywood good looks, he was a golden boy before Rick Neuheisel was even out of the womb. Grandelius had run the program in tyrannical fashion back when that sort of style was more common. Normally, a cross between boot camp training and sadistic activites, the typical program had a patriarchal leader that was going to take them (the players) through whatever was necessary in taking the program to the promise land.
In the case of CU, that was, first, to beat Oklahoma; second, to attain the Big Eight Championship; and third, to lead the team to national prominence. Well, on March 17, 1962, this all came crashing down. One could argue that Sonny had attained all three, but it wasn’t enough to save him or his staff or his players. CU went from defeating Oklahoma, winning the Big Eight Championship, going to the Orange Bowl, and being rated seventh in the nation to firing all of the coaches, losing forty-plus players, being placed on probation for two years, and no games on TV.
In the middle of this debacle, Bud Davis accepted the task of trying to hold it together for the next year. He compiled a staff of former college and high school coaches. They proceeded to pick up in recruiting where the previous staff had left off. I found myself being recruited, not so much out of my desire or their desire for me to attend CU, but the then necessity of the moment in their need to sign up players.
My first choice had been a Texas school, primarily Texas A&M, since my father had attended Aggieland. There was no offer of any aid, so I then wanted to play for Wyoming, having been introduced to Coach Bob Devaney by my high school assistant coach, Ed Posa. I was very impressed and wanted to attend Wyoming. However, Devaney switched to Nebraska in the middle of the recruiting season; and when they contacted me, I thought, Who wants to play for Nebraska? So much for prescience, I wasn’t going to be a seer. So it came down to CU or Colorado State University( CSU), and CSU decided it for me by offering me a half a ride.
That, and my visit to CU for the CU relays, convinced me that CU was the place.
It took just one walk around the campus on Friday afernoon to know I wasn’t going to find anything better than this. The atmosphere and the girls and the girls and the girls persuaded me in the end. Also, working on me was my good buddy Ramie—Raymond LeMasters, that is. He was, as it turned out, my conscience—telling me that it was the best school in every way. Ramie had an inside track. Sonny, his older brother by a year, was already up there—up there, as in reference to Pueblo, our hometown, which is 135 miles, more or less, south of Boulder.
CSU had a new coach too. Mike Lude was coming in to turn the moribund program around. At the time, Lude was out of Deleware and had helped develop the wing T formation and offense. His first year, they were very successful in recruiting by getting a bunch of the guys out of Pueblo from the state championship team, Central High School. He got about five guys off that team, which, at the time, was impressive. I think CSU benefited immensely from CU’s problems, but Lude never did much and subsequently made it big as an athletic director at the University of Washington. At the time, I resented their unwillingness to offer me a full ride, but in the end, things worked out for the best.
So that is the setting, a miserable situation for a school and the players and coaches to have to face—the rebuilding of the program. In my innocence, or ignorance if you take a cynical view, I thought we could do it! Not that anyone had asked my opinion. Little did I know, not only did they never ask, they never cared to ask nor cared about my opinion. In the four years that I played ball
for CU, I came to understand that it not only was a business, but it was without any compassion whatsoever for any ideas, thoughts, or concerns that didn’t specifically and directly contribute to the winning of football games. I came to understand that even though there are many redeeming qualties in college football, one of them is not that the program is about the players and the school. It is about the people who run the program, whether it be the coaches, administrators, alumni, or business interest (e.g., Nike, Nike, Nike).
As important as this realization is, there is the understanding that college football as an institution uses people in the most base way possible. It takes the best athletes and processes them through a systematic climate designed to alter them for all time—not to their personal, or society’s, betterment, but for the sole purpose of exploiting their talents for the entertainment of the public. So today, an entire public-run organization worth hundreds of billions of dollars is focused on this activity.
Through it all, there is this wonder about why these young men have problems with the police, women, school, or other societal relationships. Or the often-spoken comment that we give them all of these resources, and look what they do! Give them resources? These teenagers not only have very few resources, and absolutely no control over what pittance they get, but they are so grossly underpaid for what they generate in revenues that it is ludicrous to debate. This book attempts to put the record straight from one person’s point of view. This is not intended to be a bible or an attack, but a description of what happened forty-five years ago and its consequences.
The FRESHMAN
002A.jpgFreshmen players from Pueblo, Dick Taylor #83,
Bryan Richey #74, Rich Redd #73, and kneeling Ramie LeMasters #27 facing Freshman Head Coach Don Stimack
I arrived in the University of Colorado campus in Boulder on a Sunday in early September 1962, accompanied by both of my parents, full of hope and freshness. It was post-World War II America, and despite the threat of a nuclear holocaust, we knew that we were part of the biggest and best thing ever. On the other hand, the introduction to the university way of life was all very new. My family, being a classic example of a dysfunctional family, was very nervous. Being nervous meant turning on one another. So we had our requisite number of spats, and everyone’s nerves were quite raw. Once we arrived in Boulder, after a two-and-a-half-hour trip from Pueblo and lunch at a café on Pearl Street, my parents took me to my dormitory. This was Baker Hall—it was the rule that for at least the first year, all freshmen had to live in the dormitories for men or women. There were no coed dorms. At that time, the thought would have been revolutionary—tantamount to freeing the slaves! My dad and I, because my mother couldn’t join us in an all-male dorm, went to my room with my luggage and a footlocker—by today’s standards, pretty pedestrian. No radio, TV, PC, video games—nothing but my clothes and an electric razor, which, at most, I used every three days.
When we arrived at the room, I met my roommate, a kid from Texas; but to me, he was a man. Twenty years old, he had played ball under Grandelius at CU for two years. His name was Ronnie Jones, and he was from Houston. He was about five feet nine inches and 190 pounds—all stud. Ronnie was one of my introductions to college ball. He had played all right, but only until the first game week, when he was clipped during a punt return drill. It ripped out his knee and ended his career right there, without further ado. Now as it turned out, he was going to help out with the freshman program. (In 1962, there is a restriction against allowing freshmen to compete at the varsity level.) My dad and I quickly unloaded my stuff, what there was of it. The room was located in the basement on the west end of the 1930s building. A classic building, with great furniture built to be part of the dorm as long as it would last. None of this made any impression on me since I was so nervous. I self-conciously introduced myself. Ronnie, in his friendly Texas way, responded warmly. After handshakes and some nervous comments, my dad and I left to rejoin my mother in the car. We then drove around the campus and hill area for want of anything else to do.
As we approached the University Memorial Center, known commonly as the UMC, I saw a guy from my hometown, Bryan Richie. He played tackle for the state champs, Central High School out of Pueblo. I met him during preparation for the all-state game in August. He made all-state voted by the Denver Post. My folks stopped, and he jumped in and joined us for our little tour of the campus. He had been up on campus for the previous week, taking part in rush week as part of the annual fraternity ritual. He joined the Phi Gamma Delta, or Fijis. Bryan was very talkative and full of information. He was already intiated to the ways, at least beyond anything I had yet experienced. I welcomed his presence both for his information and because it took my parents’ attention off me. As it turned out, Bryan also had been assigned to Baker Hall since, back then, you couldn’t live in a fraternity in the first year. My parents drove us back to Baker.
We said our good-byes, and much to my pleasure, they left. I thought to myself, I am free! I was setting off on a journey. God only knew to what and where, but it was mine—this much I knew. I wanted more than anything to attend college and play football. Here was my chance. I wasn’t going to blow it. I was going to take it and do it!
Bryan and I, after being let go by my parents, went out to the quadrant area behind Baker Hall. The quadrant was an open area of about a square block in size bordered on three sides by dormitories, men’s and women’s, and on the fourth side by the music school and the medical center—a perfect area for hanging out, looking for something to do or someone to do it with. We ran into Ramie LeMasters and his brother Sonny, and within minutes, Jack Lentz (who emigrated from Germany as a nine-year-old to live in Pueblo with his aunt and uncle) joined us. We had attended grade school together until he joined his mother in Akron, Colorado, upon her marriage to an American. Jack grew to be six feet eight inches, made all-state in basketball, and was recruited to play at CU. He was a year ahead of me in school and smart enough to major in engineering. Fortunately, Ramie’s brother Sonny was with him. He had a car since he now lived off campus. One of us suggested after some time that we go for dinner in Louisville; there was an Italian place, the Blue Parrot, that served great spaghetti. Not that I would have known great spaghetti from average or mediocre—all I ever cared about was that there would be a great amount of it. As it turned out, it was a great idea—plenty to eat, affordable, with great company (all jocks). What a way to start off my first day on campus!
The first week of school was for matriculation, which was one of those words that I used without the slightest idea as to its meaning. It also was the second week of preseason practice for the varsity under new coach Bud Davis. When I went back to my room and had an occasion, and the nerve, to ask Ronnie about the new staff and program, he related that compared with Grandelius, it was like going from digging ditches for a dollar an hour to sitting and watching someone dig a ditch for twice that amount of money. At the time, I couldn’t really appreciate what he meant, but I learned soon enough. As nervous as I was, meeting the other freshman players was all very exciting since, like me, they were just arriving. Some of them I knew. There were four of us from Pueblo. In addition to Ramie, Bryan, and me, there was Richard Redd. He and Ramie were from Centennial High School, Bryan was from Central, and I had attended East in Pueblo. I had known Ramie and Richard since grade school, having competed in sports against or with them. We played on the same junior high team that took the city championship in 1958, retiring the trophy since we had won the championship three years in a row. Pueblo, at that time, had some of the best high school football in the state.
In addition to these guys, there were guys I had met when I participated in the all-state game that summer—Frank Rogers out of Del Norte, Roger Morris out of Lamar, and, of course, Larry Ferarro out of Trinidad. Larry later became known as Meashka Moushk for his Tasmanian devil ways. We all had played, with the exception of Richard and Bryan, for the South in the all-state game and, for the second year in a row, totally dominated the game. Ramie had even been chosen the MVP. I, for the first time in my life, played sixty minutes since we played the college-length game. I went both ways as a halfback and fullback on offense and an outside linebacker on defense. I loved it.
Well, the first week of school didn’t amount to much beyond getting registered for classes. Since we were freshmen, we couldn’t practice until classes officially started the following week. As an orientation to the registration process, the program organized a meeting for the freshman players. It was an opportunity to meet the freshman coaches, as well as be introduced to the others and be advised on what to expect in both the academic and athletic areas respectively. What a surprise. On the blackboard was a list of classes we were expected to take in the school of arts and sciences, which included over 90 percent of the players. I had applied and been accepted in the architectural engineering program. But I knew it was more than I could handle, so I had decided to change to liberal arts—whatever that meant.
Head freshman coach Stimack told us in order to assure our eligibility for the first year, we were to take the displayed schedule. This included five hours of physical education, broken down by one hour of basic PE and two hours each of fundamentals of physical education and fundamentals of football. In addition, we were directed to take the English requisite, a social science, preferably world history, and either physical science or physical geography. He advised us that it would be easier to manage our eligibility if we were to take this schedule. The coach only upon request could grant any exceptions to the schedule. Boy, what a comedown. I had gone from qualifying for engineering to being directed to become a PE major in one fell swoop. I knew I was no mental giant, but I thought I could at least handle the routine college course work. Whatever my plans, they were for not since I was allowed only one exception. I could take a basic math class based on my performance on the SATs in math. Other than that, I was expected to take the five hours of PE. What an introduction to the university and freedom of thought; welcome to the tradition of Socrates, Da Vinci, and Newton.
In order to further orient ourselves, a few of us decided we would go over and watch the varsity go through their morning workout. The practices were being held on the lower field, which meant it was below the stadium. This was a magnificent edifice made of red sandstone native to Colorado and in an Italian Renaissance style similar to most of the rest of the campus buildings. The coaches’ offices were located in the southwest corner of this building which, when full, held just over fifty thousand.
As we were walking by this corner, a VW bug pulled into the adjacent parking lot. As the driver emerged from the car, you could hear the comments on his size and physical demeanor. It was Bill Frank. He was dressed in bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, and he filled both out with rippling muscles. I thought to myself, My god, how can I possibly compete against the likes of that? Fortunately, for me but unfortunately for the team, Frank had been declared ineligible for school because of an administrative snafu, which had eliminated an additional five to eight players, on top of the forty suspended or removed in the spring.
Despite that scare, we proceeded through the field house, which too was adjacent to the stadium and included space for the locker rooms. Built in the 1930s, it was of the same architecture as the stadium but felt much older. The walk down the hill to the practice fields is quite nice as it follows a nice trail that eventually crosses Boulder Creek. Once you are across the creek, you enter onto the fields, which, at that time, were next to the baseball park.
Practice was in full splendor; Bud Davis had instituted a new offense borrowed from the Green Bay Packers, making us the only college team in the country that was running such an offense. As we watched, the size and speed of the players struck me, as well as the ferocity with which they practiced. Their physical presence was impressive. They appeared savage in their gear, which included white pants topped by black jersey sleeves cut so as to reveal the sizable biceps of the respective players. The violence was palatable, as if it hung in the air, with the coaches yelling to punctuate the action on the field. It was frightening and, at the same time, fascinating to see these guys doing their jobs. For the first time, I began to understand that this was a profession. Man, could they hit, spit, cuss, and just generally be ornery! What an orientation. The only thing that could be better would be the real thing, the day we scrimmage the varsity!
At the time, CU was known as a party school, an acceptable school academically, but not exclusive and certainly not on a par with even the state universities like California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Today, it is generally ranked among the top twenty-five schools in the country, depending on the particular discipline. But that wasn’t the case when I matriculated—I just love that word. One of the social attractions was the fact that you could drink beer at eighteen years of age in Colorado—the legal distinction being that it was 3.2 percent alcohol only. This had been the case since the repeal of prohibition in the 1930s, so for us who lived in Colorado, it was no big deal. But for youngsters from other not-so-privileged states—which, at the time, were the vast majority of them—it was a major attraction.
As it turns out, my good buddy Ramie’s eighteenth birthday coincided with our orientation week, so he and I had to bring it in appropriately. We decided to go to a bar near the campus called the Timber Tavern at the corner of Arapaho and University. Perfect, a cross between a native Colorado tribe and our newfound school. We set about drinking him into the manhood as we understood it, which, as it turned out, wasn’t very well. But that never daunted us, and we proceeded to drink a number of pitchers of beer until the bar closed at midnight, which was the statutory limit for a 3.2 percent bar. In addition, even though neither one of us smoked, we bought a pack of cigarettes and toked up on the things. After finishing and closing the tavern, we walked back to campus through the very practice field on which we had watched the varsity perform. The bags and sleds were out; so we, in our drunken state, attempted to collide with them in a way that demonstrated our manliness. As we had earlier in the bar, we committed our everlasting allegiance to football, CU, and each other.
When we were finally able to reorient ourselves, we proceeded in the direction of the dorms, which were up the hill from the practice field and Boulder Creek. I don’t remember which of us realized it first, but it occurred to us that I couldn’t go back to my room in my alcoholic condition since my roommate was an assistant coach on the freshman team. Our mutual decision was to have me join Ramie in his room, which he shared with Ray Kushnir, another friend from Pueblo who, as it turned out, broke the mold by being extremely intelligent. He was going to major in electrical engineering. Among a lot of mechanical and electrical accomplishments, he had built a satellite that emulated the first American one in space. When we showed up at the room, as we expected, Kushnir was already asleep in his bed. So there being only two single beds, that left me the floor—a very hard tile floor. I fell right to sleep, given my drunken condition. During the night, I threw up a number of times, fortunately in the trash can. Unfortunately, it didn’t cover the smell. When we awoke, on top of the hangovers we suffered, was the horrid odor emerging from the trash can. I swore, not for the first or last time, that I would never drink again—rationalizing that it had been warranted by the special circumstances of Ramie’s eighteenth birthday. So this is how I finished off the first week my freshman year—with a hangover.
I had met most of the guys from the freshman team. It was still to be seen who among them could perform, but it was a start. I planned to go home to Pueblo for the weekend. I got a ride with Larry Ferraro, who, at this late date, had yet to decide on whether he was signing with Colorado or Oklahoma. I had been introduced to Larry during three years in high school football and wrestling and during the all-state game. He was an excellent player, although he was only five feet ten inches and 192 pounds. He was unbelievably tough and committed. The coaches were not able to sign him before he left, which was of concern since he was considered one of the best recruits—if not the best. On our ride down to Pueblo, over the next two and a half hours, I tried to convince him that CU was the best choice. Try as I might, he wouldn’t say. He seemed to be leaning toward Oklahoma, so much so that when I got out of the car, I felt as if I wouldn’t see him again until we were scheduled to play OU in 1963. But fortunately, he was there on Monday at our first practice. It was one of the few lucky breaks we would be awarded over the next four years.
The following week was the first week of practice—the first occasion to be tested under fire. We had to get our gear, get assigned lockers, meet the coaches, and get our pitiful little asses down the hill to the freshman practice fields. We were a big deal, but definitely a sideshow compared with the varsity. Every time we walked by the varsity locker room, we would hear, What chu you lookin’ at, rookie?
I just avoided the place as much as possible. God help you if you had an injury and had to go to see the trainers. You always had to defer to the varsity players; they got the best equipment and were treated first, taped first, and fed first. Along with the second-class treatment came constant verbal harassment. Rookie,
scum,
stupid,
boy,
sissy,
etc., were just samples of what you had to endure. In the end, it was harmless; but initially, it was intimidating. Growing up in Pueblo, I was used to intimidating behavior. Every day you went to school, there was the possibility of a fight. It was a tough town where toughness was held in higher esteem than almost any other attribute, including intelligence and academic achievement. So this atmosphere wasn’t really much different except that these guys were big and, at least as far as I knew, tougher than anything that I had ever gone up against.
Our first day was an introduction to everything—getting undressed and dressed for the first time, sizing up the competition. Our big names were Don Sessions, a quarterback from Aurora, a suburb of Denver; Jesse Kaye, another quarterback out of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Rick Booth, an all-state halfback from Greeley; Mike Cwik, a guard from Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Larry Ferraro, a fullback from Trinidad, Colorado. These guys had the most notoriety of any of us. So it was important that you look them over and prepare yourself to go up against the best you had ever seen. Next were the coaches: Stimac was the freshman head coach. For assistants, he had Reed Johnson, a graduate assistant who had backs and wide receivers; Ronnie Jones, my roommate, who had the line and linebackers; and Frank Montera, a graduate assistant, who had quarterbacks and others. Stimac, as it turned out, was the nicest coach I was to have while I played ball at CU. He was decent, respectful, and expected the same from you. It didn’t occur to me then how rare these qualities were at that level.
We all met on the practice field to be introduced—about fiftysome players, half of whom were on scholarship. Our first drill, to introduce us to each other, was a tackling drill where three blocking dummies are placed in a line. The two outside ones are the out-of-bounds. The middle one, by its very presence, offers some interference for the ballcarrier. The tackler is on one side of the three bags and the ballcarrier on the other. The objective is for the tackler to tackle the ballcarrier and, of course, for the ballcarrier to avoid being tackled. The other benefits derived from this drill are to see who is tough, athletic, possesses good technique, etc.
As it turned out, Mike Cwik was first in line to tackle. There is great anticipation since Cwik’s reputation for meanness preceded him. As the two players got set, there was a moment of anticipation always—but not this time. Before anything could happen, Cwik began to attack the dummies. It seemed he had gotten himself in such a state that he could no longer contain himself, and he attacked the dummies as he approached the ballcarrier at the same time. As you can imagine, the ballcarrier was totally surprised by the move since normally the tackler waits for the ballcarrier to pick a side of the middle dummy and reacts accordingly. Not Mike Cwik. He took out all three dummies, ballcarrier, and started on the rest of us, who were gaping in shock. Once the coaches regained control, we prematurely ended the drill. It became one of our routine drills in ensuing weeks, and even Mike was able to keep himself under control. But that first day was a real eye-opener regarding the kind of physical and psychic forces of which we were now in the presence. It was a new level. Everyone was big by the day’s standards—fast and athletic.
Also, we all came from different locations, but more or less the same backgrounds. Most of us were from working-class towns, either from southern Colorado with its steel and mining industries, or from Midwestern towns and cities, which were part of the great American industrial belt. Some were from the ethnic minorities that made up the workforces of industrial America: Polish, Czech, Serb, Croat, and other Slavic groups and Italian, Greek, and Irish. Unknown to us at the time, this influenced the flavor of the experience. Soon this would change dramatically by the introduction of the African American athletes, but on our freshman team, there were no black players. There had been under Dal Ward and Sonny Grandelius, and there would be under Eddie Crowder; but on this freshman team, it was strictly ethnic minorities. Of course, in our unsophisticated minds, we never really noticed since these social forces hadn’t even been readily identified, much less made out to have the significance that they came to deserve. The civil rights movement, as we came to know it, was in its nascent stage. Not yet had there been a march on Selma, much less on Washington, although they were just around the corner, thanks to Martin Luther King and his fellow travelers. Our team was lily white with a mixture of Protestant and Catholic Christians; most of the guys were racists, either vocally or passively.
Mike Cwik was Polish-American, Catholic, from a family of eight children, with a dad who was a salesman. He was, more or less, typical in that he came from a working-class or middle-class family and that he aspired to being part of the great middle class of America. His ticket was his full ride to play football. So we were made up of guys who were either working class or middle class, but only two were from anything resembling an upper-class background. As it happened, they were roommates: Steve Sidwell and John Stemmons. Steve’s family had oil and natural gas wells in Kansas, and John’s family was one of the wealthiest families in Dallas—they had even named a freeway after his grandfather, for God’s sake! In any case, these two guys were the only exceptions to the social strata as it manifested itself in our freshman team.
As we progressed through the practices, we learned that we were going to run a pro-offense modeled after the Green Bay Packers. Of course, one fine point based on the substitution rules of the day, we had to play both ways—offense and defense. The viability of such an offense was based, to a significant degree, on the assumption that you could platoon and therefore take advantage of specialization. This was further aggravated by the fact, at least with the varsity, that they had only the spring ball and two weeks of preseason to master the pro-offense. Needless to say, we never came close to mastering it, but it was fun and quite an education. We on the freshman team had even less time, but ours wasn’t actually a real season; we only had two games scheduled with Wyoming and Air Force Academy. I always thought it was a wasted opportunity to get playing time for the development of the freshman players in game conditions, but as I came to realize, we were much more seen as fodder for the development of the varsity than for our own purposes. It seems to go something like if you last long enough, that will be proof in and of itself that you have the right stuff. There was not a lot of thought given on to how to actually bring along a player, or players, with regard to their development. So we spent a lot more time scrimmaging the varsity than playing in game conditions. This, of course, was its own training ground, as well as an opportunity to be acculturated into the program.
I was assigned to play wide receiver, which in yesterday’s football lexicon was either split end or flanker. It was dictated by where you lined up in relationship to the line of scrimmage. If you were on the line, you were a split end; if not, you were a flanker. I was a split end. I had never even played end, much less split end. But I played quarterback, halfback, and fullback in high school; and I thought I could virtually play anywhere on the field. Our assistant coach was Reed Johnson. He told us we were the touchdown scorers. Coach Johnson was inexperienced but seemed to have a knack for the profession, particularly when it came to motivational comments dripping with sarcasm. He started by teaching us the fundamentals: how to catch and how to run pass patterns, which then advanced into formations, plays, and the overall coordination of it. He taught us to run patterns by changing gears as we ran, an item that had escaped me during all of my prior experience at running, perhaps due to my having only one gear. We learned to run patterns so that as you came off the line of scrimmage, you would appear running full speed, but actually be running under control at a cruising speed and, at the point of making the final cut or move, bursting into the open, unimpaired by the defender. At the same time, you were timing your pattern so that the quarterback can ideally deliver the pass within three seconds.
Our quarterback was Jesse Kaye, who was from Green Bay and had played for a Catholic high school, along with another player on the team, Bobbie Canadeo, a halfback. We had three good quarterbacks—Don Sessions and Frank Rogers, in addition to Jesse. Jesse won the position on the basis of his strong arm and take-charge attitude, even though both of the other guys had a lot of ability. Frank turned out to be the best athlete on the freshman team, even though it went unrecognized until his senior season, when he had a great year. Don seemed to become disillusioned and eventually left to pursue a baseball career with Houston Colt .45s. Jesse could really fling the ball and was fun to have back there; we had a nice group with the best receiver being a guy not even on scholarship, John Stemmons. He was the tight end, and he had phenomenally soft hands. I imagined he could grasp a mosquito out of the air without killing it; his hands were so soft. At fullback was my good buddy Ramie, and he played linebacker on defense. Larry Ferarro was being converted to center/linebacker, along with Steve Sidwell. Mike Cwik was one guard/noseguard; and Trip Owen, from George Washington in Denver, was at the other. The tackles on offense and defense were two Pueblo guys, Richard Redd and Bryan Richie. At running back / halfback was Rick Booth, who was, at least that year, the best player on the team. Our flanker was Roger Morris, who on defense played defensive halfback or cornerback.
We had to be two teams deep since back then you couldn’t platoon due to the substitution rules. This meant that the second team would come in halfway through the first quarter with a rotation