Zup's Setting Sun

> A football has a funny shape and takes funny bounces. So do football games.

> An undefeated team is not always the strongest team. It might very well be the luckiest.

> An All-American back is often made by a long run, a weak defense and a poet in the press box.

> If you neglect details, you'll have the job of convincing the world that you're a hard-luck coach.

> A coach is always responsible to an irresponsible public.

These are Zuppkeisms. Last week their inventor, 62-year-old Robert Carl Zuppke, resigned after 29 years as head football coach at the University of Illinois. Thus stepped to the sidelines one of the most durable, most competent, most likable and most colorful characters in the history of U.S. football.

Old Zup, a moonfaced, twinkly-eyed, German-born little scrapper, was only slightly less famed than Williams, Yost, Rockne. He popularized the huddle, introduced the center's short spiral snap. To maneuvers he gave fancy names, such as the flea flicker, the whirligig, the sidewinder, the whoa back, the flying trapeze.

Up to five years ago, Zup's teams had won as many games as they had lost. Seven times they won the Western Conference championship. But recent years have been lean for the Illini. Came no more Red Granges, Potsy Clarks, Ingwer-sens. For the past two seasons Illinois has failed to win a conference game.

Alumni, casting sentiment to the winds, tried to force Old Zup to resign, even offered him a $6,000-a-year pension. When he refused, they tried to have him ousted. Last summer, in a bitter showdown, Zuppke won over Athletic Director Wendell Wilson, head of the anti-Zuppke faction. Since then, it has been common campus gossip that the little Dutchman, his honor vindicated, would resign at this season's end.

Last week, while Old Zup made plans to retire to his farm--to pursue his twin hobbies of raising cattle and painting landscapes--football's Saturday-night round-table exhumed many a Zuppke yarn. Bob Zuppke never lost his "Dutch brogue," is nearly as famed a raconteur as coach. His pet butt used to be Notre Dame's Knute Rockne, of whom he once said: "Everybody vants to know vat Rock puts in his football besides vind."

Once Zuppke and Rockne were invited to the same city to make speeches at the same banquet. "I got off the train," Zup's story goes. "Nobody meets me. I go to a hotel. There is no room reserved for me. I get vun. I go upstairs. I hear a big noise. I look out the vindow. It's a parade. There is a big band, the mayor of the city, the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Kivanis. Und it's Rockne they bring along. So ve go to the dinner. Ve speak. Vot do I give them? Pheelosophy! Vot does Rockne give them? High-school chokes! Vot do I get? Netting. Vot does Rockne get? Two hundred dollars! Bah!"

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