Events & Discoveries

CALL VICTOR 6-5713

With Frank Leahy eliminated for reasons of health, the search for a big-name football coach to succeed Paul (Bear) Bryant at Texas A&M is right back where it was when Bryant, the old character builder, first announced that he was returning to his alma mater, Alabama.

Texans, who are accustomed to getting anything that money can buy, are now beginning to wonder not what is wrong with Texas (for, of course, nothing is), but what kind of perverse fate is fouling up the football situation. Prior to the unhappy findings of Leahy's physician (his condition does not affect normal activity, but is said to be unequal to the rigors of coaching), two other big names had been approached. Duffy Daugherty found he could not tear himself away from Michigan State. Red Sanders of UCLA was told what grateful Texas A&M alumni could do for a coach in the way of oil deals and stock market tips to supplement the walking-around-money salary of $15,000 a year. Sanders seemed to be tempted, but (call him a sentimentalist if you like) when he went back home to Los Angeles, he began to speak almost tearfully of his duty. While he was regaining his composure, he hadn't the strength to protest against a raise in pay, a raise in expense money, a new station wagon every year and $1,000 a year for its upkeep.

Now the stage was cleared for Frank Leahy, and he swiftly made the preceding actors in the piece look like bit players in the Late Late Show. Leahy liked what he heard, made no effort to conceal the fact that he was interested.

But first, Leahy let the air fill itself with rumors. Then there leaked out a tantalizing fragment of a phone conversation in which Mrs. Leahy was said to have told a friend: "I'm going to love living in Texas." And then:

Scene: The Leahy home in Long Beach, Indiana. Time: Christmas Eve. Soft strains of "It came upon the midnight clear" are heard in the background. The father laden with gifts hurrying down the icy path to the door and then his legs suddenly skidding out from under him, the gifts flying.

Scene: The hospital in Michigan City, Indiana. Coach Leahy abed, a leg held aloft by pulleys, a broken ankle in plaster cast. Statement in response to statement by Dr. M. T. Harrington, president of Texas A&M, to effect that Leahy will be new head coach and athletic director: "It is 99% definite. I will know as soon as I have had a physical checkup. I couldn't go back to coaching without doing that because I had some serious trouble." It was a stomach disorder that forced Coach Leahy to resign at Notre Dame in 1953.

Scene: A room in Chicago's Passavant Hospital. Coach Leahy, sitting up in chair, explains decision to get physical checkup: "While I was conferring with Texas A&M officials, one of the athletic board members, Doc Doherty, looked me right in the eye and said, 'Coach Leahy, are you certain you are physically able to handle this job?' I got to thinking..."

The suspense mounts. As laboratory tests proceed, Coach Leahy says he will name his old Notre Dame assistant, Bob McBride, as No. 2 man at Texas. Leahy to be head coach, but in three years' time hoping to turn the active coaching over to McBride, retaining the post of athletic director himself.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the sports-writers revel in the absorbing byplay up north. It comes out that Leahy's salary would be $16,000 a year as against Bryant's $15,000, but as with Bryant, Leahy's would be a salary with a fringe on top, all sorts of fringes really, a house, business deals and television shows.