Saturday's Heroes

From West Point to William and Mary, college football had been thrown for a loss even before the season got under way. Last week, while football fans were flocking by the thousands to watch the slightly tarnished Saturday heroes in action, an ex-University of Michigan guard named Allen Jackson brought the ballcarrier down again with a flying tackle. Writing in the current Atlantic Monthly, he gives a firsthand account of his experiences in football's big leagues.

History & Football. Even as a freshman scrub, writes Jackson, "I was engaged in actual practice on the field for about 20 hours a week during the spring semester, and during the fall my working week was boosted to 28 hours. Of course, this . . . does not include such things as evening movies of the next week's opponent, study time wasted because of fatigue, extra time demanded by game trips to other schools, and time spent in whirlpools and under heat lamps in the training room . . ." After four years, Jackson figured out that he had spent about 810 hours in the six history courses he took. His hours on the gridiron: 1,350.

"The student who plays football is expected to sacrifice his studies for the sake of the game, and he is very darkly frowned upon if he misses practice for the sake of his studies. When after one Saturday game I limped off the field with a twisted ankle, I knew that I would be expected to spend a good deal of time in the training room taking treatment for the injury. But since Sunday was the only time that I was able to study for a coming examination, I stayed away . . . As a result, the ankle stiffened and I was made to feel guilty for the rest of the week . . .

"Blanket of Blue." "At Michigan . . . fair play and sportsmanship are fine, but to win is of utmost importance . . . Michigan's maize and blue players are not encouraged to 'gang tackle'; they are simply ordered to cover the opposing ballcarrier with a 'blanket of blue.' " The slogan of the coaches, says Jackson, is still: "When Michigan loses, someone has to pay."

Jackson also throws a body block at "another bromide"--the myth of "team spirit . . . On the practice field the ends, backs and linemen all spend much of their time in separate corners of the field, performing their various specialties with monotonous repetition . . . Any sport which requires a week's practice of specialties for each sixty-minute game has become too mechanized to allow the spontaneous sort of team spirit which would seem to be the special value of college football."

Players & Apes. But the villains of the big time are not only the coaches. There are also the rabid alumni--"the men who are influential in promoting among young boys a distorted idea of what it really means to play big football . . . and who think that other people's judgments of men are as superficial as their own when they say that football players will have no trouble finding jobs, because everyone is glad to hire a football player.

"Concerning the finding of jobs, it would be my guess that largely because of very widespread recruiting practices, the term football player has become synonymous with ape, and because of this, it is often better for the job applicant to save mention of his gridiron record until after he has become acquainted with a prospective employer . . ."

Another disgruntled ex-footballer attacked the game in a more novel way last week. Claiming that he had lost his $26 weekly "salary" (a campus job plus room and board) after an injury suffered in spring practice, Ernest Nemeth, 24, a former Denver University guard, went to court to demand compensation. Said his attorney with deadpan conviction: "I definitely feel the boy comes within the meaning of an employee under the workman's compensation laws."

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