Surprising Saturday

Monday-morning quarterbacks, eager to gloat over successful predictions, equally anxious to justify errors in judgment, last week suppressed their crowings. Cause for their silence was a startling list of Saturday upsets.

Sharpest reversals came to undefeated, untied teams. A record crowd of 46,000 sat chilled in Durham as North Carolina's Tar Heels, odds-on favorites, were throttled 25-10-0 by Duke's already twice-beaten eleven. Smothered 2740-0 was Syracuse by thrice-defeated Colgate. Third leader to be toppled was Marquette, by Pop Warner's deceptive Temple team, 26-10-6.

After counting up the damage, newshawks agreed that Dartmouth, Minnesota, Princeton. Southern Methodist and Texas Christian were all strong Eastern Rose Bowl material. Dartmouth, the nation's highest scoring major team, has yet to play Princeton. For the third successive year, Princeton's juvenile journalists derisively flayed the Rose Bowl game, this time as a "commercial classic," summarily counted their team out. Minnesota would probably decline, if asked, because of Big Ten conference rulings. Left as most probable choices were Southern Methodist and Texas Christian.

With 60 seconds to play. Halfback Bill Shakespeare arched a pass down the field. An official claimed Army interference, put the ball on the 2-yd. line. From there Notre Dame made a touchdown, tying the score at 6-to-6, left 80,000 gasping spectators feeling that luck had played again with the ''Fighting Irish." Pious Catholics credited the last-minute tie to the devotion of squad members who attended Friday morning mass in New Rochelle's Holy Family Church (see cut).

Last month Purdue spanked Northwestern, 7-to-0; fortnight ago Wisconsin spanked Purdue, 8-to-0. Last week Northwestern's substitute halfback, 158-lb. Ollie Adelman, averaged over 14 yd. a try, crushed Wisconsin almost singlehanded, 32-10-13.

The game proved again the impossibility of accurate football forecasting, strengthened the reputation of Lynn Waldorf as a "November coach." In six years of coaching in Kansas and Oklahoma, his teams have lost but two November games. This year, his first at Northwestern, the Wildcats have beaten Illinois, Notre Dame and Wisconsin on successive November Saturdays.

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