HERE ARE THE BEST OF THE IVIES
It was the final big week of the season, and not without its surprises. But high up in the stadium at New Haven Saturday afternoon, when the scores of the nation's big games were read out over the public address system, a man growled, "Ye gods! Who cares?" For at New Haven, Harvard was playing Yale and this was The Game. Although other The Games were played across the country (see page 10), only what happened in the Yale Bowl had meaning for Yales and Harvards. Especially, as it turned out, was this The Game for Harvards.
After losing to Brown just the week before, they celebrated Saturday by demolishing Yale, which had not been scored upon until the sixth game of the season. The score was 35-6, the largest point total the Crimson had run up on the Blue in 44 years. In one 12-minute segment, with Chet Boulris banging through tackle and Charlie Ravenel confusing the Yale defenders with his rollout magic and a bunch of kids people had never heard of making like Billy Cannon's cousins, Harvard scored 27 points and put the game away.
Outside of the fact that all sons of Harvard within several light years of New Haven went into spasms, what happened there was really of no importance to the Ivy League. In any other conference, most eyes would have been directed toward Princeton. There Dartmouth, on the several talents of Bill Gundy and Jake Crouthamel, scored a touchdown in the last minute of play and beat Princeton 12-7. It was Dartmouth's fifth straight Ivy League victory, five in a row since Gundy got his health back, and could mean a second straight league championship for Dartmouth should Penn lose to Cornell on Thanksgiving Day. Penn, however, idle Saturday, has given no indication that it is going to be knocked off by anyone. It is almost certain to win the Ivy League title.
But outside the Ivy League no one really cares about this eventuality, either. The reason is that most sections of the country are not very impressed by Ivy League football or, more particularly, by Ivy League football players. Mention of Ivy League football usually suggests a certain picture to outlanders' minds that goes something like this:
Take a tackle from Michigan State—or Southern Cal or TCU or Tennessee—reduce his muscles and build up his brain. Buy him a knit tie and a button-down shirt. Transport his old man from the oil fields to a seat on the stock exchange, with a home on the Main Line. Assure the boy of a job on Madison Avenue or Wall Street when he graduates from school. Burn his paperback mystery and give him a copy of Proust. Throw him a football—he will probably drop it—and tell him to have fun. And what do you have? A Yale man. Or a Harvard or Dartmouth or Princeton or Penn man. Or that is what everyone seems to think.
To find out what the Ivy player is really like, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED has selected an all-star team consisting, approximately, of the 11 best men in the Ivy League at their positions. Approximately, because there are actually 12 of them—three halfbacks being virtually equal in ability—and approximately, because even the Ivy League coaches can't agree on who the best tackles and guards are. But it is a representative team and a good one; the missing players (like Tom Budrewicz of Brown, perhaps the toughest tackle in the conference when uninjured; Yale and Harvard's splendid quarterbacks Tom Singleton and Charlie Ravenel; Ends Jon Greenawalt of Penn and Ed Kostelnik of Princeton; Centers Frank Szvetecz of Princeton and Ron Champion of Penn) are absent from the list only because there is no more room.
One thing seems certain. There is no typical Ivy League player. The boys are rich and poor, neat and sloppy, large and small, quick and slow. Some are campus leaders and belong to half a dozen clubs; others are quiet and retiring. The boy with a career all lined up after graduation is an exception. Academically, they devote more time to football than they should; their grades suffer and they must hustle to take up the slack each spring. Some are married, some single; some work, some don't. Most are proud of the tag Ivy Leaguer; a few abhor the phrase and frequently wish they had gone some place else.
As a football conference, the Ivy League suffers by comparison chiefly from two causes: de-emphasis on victory and the resultant decision to abolish spring training, and an insistence upon a relatively high degree of academic excellence, both for admission and continued competition. While the standards are no higher than those demanded by some colleges outside the Ivy League, they are certainly higher than most—and this has materially contributed to lessening the number of outstanding football players who can get in.
There is no question but that some of the players on this all-Ivy League team could star in any league and might even make the pros. The others—remember this is the best of the crop—could hold their own anywhere. If they practiced more and had more competition for positions, they might do better than that.
But whatever the limitations, each of the 12 boys expects eventually to benefit from an Ivy League education; he has had an unusual opportunity to develop his skills and poise; regardless of whether he is a brain or just a student who struggles to get by, he has at least been challenged to think. There are few snap courses in the Ivy League.
Steve Sebo of Penn is perhaps the only coach in history to have lost a good end, a boy named Bill Kesack, for a whole year of eligibility because the boy flunked nuclear physics. "The difference between the Ivy League and other places," says Sebo, who was once an assistant at Michigan State, "is that there, when the players get on a bus, they talk football. Here when we make a trip the kids talk about how to split the atom."
THE IVY LEAGUE ALL-STARS
GORDON BATCHELLER
Princeton tackle (6 feet 1, 205 pounds)
Moody, introspective, shy, Batcheller could have stepped right off North Beach in San Francisco or out of Greenwich Village. He wears his hair long and roams the campus dressed in a black leather jacket and a pair of black leather boots. At Princeton, yet.
"The guys call me a hood," he says, "but I don't care. This is the way I like to dress. And I can't wear a tie. My neck keeps getting bigger, and none of my shirts fit." But Batcheller isn't really a hood at all, maybe not even very beat; he's just a nice boy who is different—and a whale of a tackle.
Son of a Navy captain (Annapolis, class of '34), Batcheller never played football until his junior year in high school, had no college scholarship offers and hardly hoped to progress past the junior varsity at Princeton. As a matter of fact, he didn't even expect to go to Princeton. "It was an accident," he says. "When I took my college board exams I wrote down my preferences: Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia Tech, Bates. But someone said, 'You're entitled to put down six schools. Why don't you try one in the Ivy League?' So I wrote down Princeton. It was just a name. When Princeton accepted me everyone said, 'You'd be foolish to pass up this chance.' So I came to Princeton."
More than three years later, Batcheller isn't sure whether he likes the idea or not. "I view it with mixed emotions," he says. "It's a great school, and all the opportunities are here. All the tools. But you get out of it what you put into it, and I have a feeling I've missed too many opportunities. I run into these perverted cycles. I'll stay up until 4 o'clock in the morning and then sleep till noon. Cut my classes. I guess I have a negative attitude."
Still, Batcheller has done well. Since giving up the idea of becoming an engineer in his sophomore year and switching to economics, his grades have shown a sharp rise. And on the football field, where he has advanced from the jayvees to second string to stardom in three years—while gaining more than 20 pounds—Batcheller has become a demon. He is perhaps the most improved football player in the conference. Two weeks ago in a losing game against Yale, Batcheller was named the outstanding lineman on the field.
"I'm happy about Ivy League football," he says, "because I might not have been good enough to play some place else, but I feel they have gone too far with de-emphasis. In fact, they have made football the whipping boy. What's wrong with holding spring practice? They have fall crew practice, don't they?"
CHET BOULRIS
Harvard halfback (6 feet 1, 195 pounds)
When Boulris graduated from Deerfield Academy, after being an all-state player at Springfield, Mass. Technical High School, 79 colleges offered him scholarships: all the Big Ten schools, every one of the Ivies, Notre Dame, UCLA. Today, if he were one step faster he would be a sure bet for the pros; he has size and power, can pass and punt. But Chet Boulris has never been sorry he picked Harvard. "What I missed in football," he says, "I feel I have more than made up for in other ways."
Boulris is a tough kid who made good. His father is dead, his mother and sister have only modest means and weren't in favor of Chet's going to college. At Harvard, where he receives a scholarship—Ivy League scholarships are usually based on need—Boulris was frequently in trouble throughout his first two years. He was a borderline student floundering amidst the demands of pre-med and athletics; he was a rowdy on the field, sometimes a braggart and a wise guy in class. He didn't have a chip on his shoulder, he had the entire board.
But during his junior year a marvelous transformation came over Boulris. He buckled down to his studies and began to make good grades. He has developed exceptional poise and manners. He is serious and intense, confident and assured.
Boulris wears glasses even when he plays football, because childhood scarlet fever left him with weak eyes. On kick-offs he has great difficulty picking up the ball in flight. But when he gets hold of the thing he's awfully hard to stop. Yale discovered that once again on Saturday.
BOB BOYE
Dartmouth guard (5 feet 10, 190 pounds)
Married and already a graduate student, Boye considers himself neither a football player nor an Ivy Leaguer. No one offered him a scholarship when he graduated from high school, partly because he didn't need it. His father is a partner in a Wall Street investment house and has a seat on the stock exchange.
"My physical plant is so unimpressive," says Boye, who is an exceptional student and often talks this way, "that when my father took me down to introduce me to the coaches as a freshman, they asked if I were a halfback."
As for being an Ivy Leaguer, Boye feels that the expression today means "a tweed bag, a guy who is stereotyped, and I don't want to be that." There is little danger. To Bob Boye there are things more important than clothes and clubs—or even football. At first he wasn't going to play at all this year, and he missed several weeks of practice. "But when I arrived back at school and saw the guys out for football, I just had to play. It was an aspect of my life I had to fulfill. I'd played organized football nine years, and there was a compulsion to complete it."
Boye will have a job on Wall Street, too, when he graduates, and he has no worries about his future. But then he isn't the kind to worry, anyway; Bob has enough determination and intelligence to make out all right wherever he goes.
JOHN SADUSKY
Cornell end (6 feet 2, 200 pounds)
To Sadusky, the Ivy League has been everything that he hoped—and more. Son of a small corner grocery store proprietor in Mahanoy City, Pa., he was big and aggressive enough to play football anywhere, a tremendous blocker, rough on defense. But he was also a brilliant student, and Cornell's educational opportunities attracted him.
Sadusky dresses well, is friendly and quiet, makes top grades in a demanding civil engineering curriculum (structural design, aerial and route surveying, engineering law, geology). He likes the Ivy League attitude toward football and particularly the attitude at Cornell—"always interested, occasionally excited, never apathetic."
"At Cornell," he says, "I don't have to sacrifice one thing for the other. Football comes first with me during the season, but when it's over I concentrate entirely on my studies. I'm an Ivy Leaguer who just happens to play football."
JOHN MARCHIANO
Penn guard (6 feet 2, 200 pounds)
A dark, intense boy who grew up in South Philadelphia, the son of a fireman, Marchiano always looked upon the University of Pennsylvania as a wonderful and important place. He plays football because he likes the game, and could have done the same at a number of other schools. But to him the game has been the means to an end: a Penn scholarship, a degree in civil engineering and, eventually, after service, graduate work in the aircraft structural field. He was an end in his freshman year, a center for two years, is now a tremendous pulling guard.
"A man plays football here," he says, "because he wants to play football, not because it will make him a big* man on the campus. Nobody downgrades you at Penn because you play. However, nobody makes a fuss about you, either."
JAKE CROUTHAMEL
Dartmouth halfback (5 feet 11, 191 pounds)
Jake Crouthamel, in appearance a kind of Ivy League Huck Finn, is a happy boy. He loves to play football and he is good at it—a tiger on defense, one of the best all-round halfbacks the Ivy League has had in years. The pros are after him to try out. He studies hard (diplomatic relations, great issues, American thought) and has the easy grace and assurance of a natural athlete whose physical ability is backed up by a good mind. He likes Ivy League football as a sport, because the competition is keen and the play is rough. "Maybe it doesn't measure up in ruggedness and personnel to some of the other conferences," he says, "but you always know, afterwards, that you've been in a football game." Jake Crouthamel has a beef, however.
"I have a scholarship based on need," says Jake, whose father is a foreman in a Perkasie, Pa. garment plant and has made sacrifices to send his son and a daughter to college. "Yet every year except this one it's been cut." He believes the Ivies should relax the rules, allow spring training, let the players compete in postseason games if they are given the chance. "But the Ivy League code forbids participation, and this I resent."
PAUL CHOQUETTE
Brown fullback (6 feet, 205 pounds)
Paul Choquette is a Catholic and the bruising kind of fullback who will run over you; his mother was a Gilbane from Providence and the sister of two former stars at Brown. So Paul had a hard time in choosing between Notre Dame and Brown, completely ignoring offers from LSU—which invited him down for Mardi Gras—and 30 other schools. He picked Notre Dame but injured his back before enrolling and then, afraid he would never be able to play football, decided instead to go to Brown. The decision has made Brown very happy.
Brown has been good for Choquette, too, although Paul's father, a chemical engineer out of MIT, has had to foot the bill. Only occasionally now does Choquette regret that he didn't get a crack at playing for the big team in South Bend.
Choquette does not consider himself an Ivy League type, despite his smooth clothes, his obvious poise and membership in a handful of clubs. He wants to be a lawyer and probably will; he is an outstanding student, one of five Brown undergraduates recommended for a Rhodes scholarship. The only irritant in his life is that Brown does not always show universal enthusiasm for football.
BILL GUNDY
Dartmouth quarterback (6 feet 1, 191 pounds)
A big, blond, handsome prototype of the Ivy Leaguer, Bill Gundy is an enigma. A terrific passer, he doubts that he is good enough for the pros. Warm and well-liked, he doubts that other students are impressed because he is a successful athlete. He sometimes lacks confidence in what he does and wonders if his Ivy League background will really help him find a job. But the truth is that no one worries about Bill Gundy but Bill Gundy.
Although his father is a prospering Rye, N.Y. pediatrician, Gundy works to help pay his way through school. "I can't qualify for a scholarship because of need," he says, "but I have an older brother in med school and a younger brother at Dartmouth. I feel a duty to make part of my expenses."
So Gundy peddles sandwiches during the evening which his wife makes during the day. There are also two little Gundys, which means that Bill plays football, works and raises a family; he also finds time to make a senior honor society while carrying a heavy study load (abnormal psychology, economic history, advanced psychology, great issues) and belongs to a fraternity. It is difficult to understand why Bill Gundy should be unsure of himself.
FRED DOELLING
Penn halfback (5 feet 11, 185 pounds)
Fred Doelling comes from Valparaiso, Ind., where his father is a painting contractor who never went past the 10th grade, but Doelling isn't trying to prove anything by going to school in the Ivy League. He is having a ball.
A slick dresser in narrow lapels, eyelet-collar shirts and striped ties, this handsome kid from Penn who leads the conference in rushing is taking a predentistry course but really wants to play pro ball. Although his grades are only slightly above C, he doesn't worry. "I can do B work in the spring," he says, and he probably will. He lives at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.
Doelling had never heard of Penn until one of the assistant coaches came nosing around the Gary area looking for talent and offered him a chance to go to this strange Ivy League school. Now Fred is very happy about it all.
"Football and the Ivy League have given me self-confidence I needed," he says. "I used to say 'yup' and 'nope.' Now I find I can talk to people easily."
MIKE PYLE
Yale center (6 feet 3,—215 pounds)
"I'm a football player," says Mike Pyle, "who goes to school in the Ivy League." And sometimes, Mike admits, he wishes that he didn't. Ivy League football, to him, has been a big disappointment.
Another heavily recruited high school star, Pyle came out of football-famous New Trier in Winnetka, Ill. and considered following his older brother, Palmer, to Michigan State. His father, a sales manager for Kraft Foods, hoped that he might. Mr. Pyle doesn't mind the scholarship-according-to-need principle of the Ivies—he can afford to pay Mike's way. He just likes the Big Ten. But Mike chose Yale because he believed that he wouldn't be missing too much in the way of football, and that he would have the benefit of a superior education. An honor student in high school, he still thinks the academic choice a wise one; the industrial administration curriculum he follows, a somewhat lethal combination of engineering and business, tests his mental prowess to the utmost. In fact, because of football and the heavy scholastic load, Pyle has time enough neither for what he considers proper social activities (girls) nor sleep.
"The Ivy League," he says, "should have better teams. If it would only ease up on the admission requirements, then the schools wouldn't have to turn away so many good athletes. The main difference here is the lack of depth and competition. It's hard to extend yourself when you know you're not being pushed for your job. We have a number of players who could play anywhere in the country; we just don't have enough of them. I'm disappointed with the de-emphasis at Yale. We have the facilities and a great coaching staff, but the school's policies make it difficult to attract outstanding talent.
"Ivy League athletes should have the same opportunity as anyone else to play in a postseason game. Every time I sign the Ivy League code I have an evil taste in my mouth. It's just a silly two-page document and I don't believe in it, but I have to sign it in order to play. I don't think the Ivy League has been fair to the athlete."
But Mike Pyle likes the wonderful spirit at Yale and believes that here, unlike some other Ivy League schools, it is a definite benefit to play football. "When the time comes to go out and look for a job," he says, "I think it will be an advantage to have been a Yale football player."
BOB ASACK
Columbia tackle (6 feet 3,—225 pounds)
A sophomore, and only 19 years old, Asack may be the best pro prospect in the Ivy League. He is not the fastest tackle around and he has a lot to learn, but opposing teams have discovered that this big boy from Raynham, Mass. is hard to run over; against Columbia, they usually go the other way. "Asack," says Gordon Batcheller, "was the first guy this year to knock me on my back." Asack had offers from a dozen football schools but turned them down for the Ivy League—and, one day, he may do the same to the pros. He appreciates the opportunities an Ivy League education presents to the son of a road gang boss.
"This cultural background," he says, "makes you aware of the finer things in life. I was leaning toward Harvard, but my high school grades were only fair. Now I'm glad I came to Columbia. It's a tremendously liberal school; you can wear what you want—I usually go around in T shirts when it's warm and sweaters the rest of the time—and there's more here in the way of entertainment than at most Ivy schools. Forty-second Street is only 15 minutes away. There's no pressure to win, and my scholarship doesn't depend on my performance each weekend. But the main thing is not the football or the fun or which school you go to or what you study or what you wear. The main thing is that Ivy League diploma. It's priceless."
BARNEY BERLINGER
Penn end (6 feet 3,—207 pounds)
Of the 12, the individual who comes closest to matching the popular conception of an Ivy League football player is Berlinger, big blond captain of the Penns. Son of a wealthy gear manufacturer who was a famous Penn athlete himself, Barney Jr. is a good pass receiver, a tremendous blocker and the spiritual leader of the best team Penn has had since de-emphasis set in. And he plays football because it is fun. Because of his father's wealth, Berlinger received no scholarship to come to Penn, yet he never seriously considered taking one any place else. "In my senior year at high school," he says, "I sat down with Dad and we had a long talk. He pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of Penn, and the advantages came out way ahead."
Barney dresses in solid good taste, makes more than adequate marks in his mechanical engineering course and has a job all lined up with his father's company when he graduates. Last summer the Berlingers went on safari to Africa, and Barney's teammates don't let him forget that. But he remains one of the most popular boys on the campus and is vice-president of the senior class. Berlinger is a real Ivy Leaguer. But so are all the rest.
PHOTO
HY PESKIN
TWELVE PHOTOS
COLOR OF THE WEEK: HARVARD ON THE RISE
His name is Charlie Ravenel, and they call him The Gambler. In this action from the Harvard-Yale game on Saturday the nervy little quarterback for the Crimson (24) leaps high to look for his receiver. Open-mouthed, Ravenel shows his surprise at finding his man, End Bob Boyda, being held up by Yale's Bob Blanchard (35). That Ravenel then had to eat the ball affected his composure not a whit. He dazzled 66,053 spectators in the Yale Bowl with feats of mercurial running, scored two touchdowns, passed for one conversion, ran for another and slickly started big Chet Boulris on repeated gains in Harvard's 35-6 upset victory.