Gee, It's Great To Be A Badger!

Lecturer Jay Samuel tells the class, "Most of you will be glad to know the difficult part of the course is over with." There is not a sound. Serious students do not cheer such pronouncements. Samuel then proceeds to issue a torrent of information, running a 4.4 through an intense discussion of theoretical shear stress. Class ends.

Davey heads out through the mud and the rain for his 9:55 a.m. statics class. Lecturer Jaafar K. Al-Abdulla is returning tests. "Not good, not good," he grouses. "The average was 81." Davey gets a 97 and is miffed: "Aw, I just punched the wrong button on the calculator." Al-Abdulla drones on about how inept the students are, and rolls into a discussion on determining shear diagrams. Davey scribbles.

After class Davey heads for the Stadium Barbers ($6.50 for a haircut), a quick lunch, then back to his room to fold laundry while watching an old episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show on television. At one o'clock he's back at the stadium, looking at film—mainly of Michigan State running back Lorenzo White. It is not an encouraging sight, "White will fumble," says Daly. That presupposes the slow Badgers can get a hand on him.

Then Phil Engle, the Badgers defensive line coach, issues the grades for the Minnesota game. Davey gets a respectable 87. Of 11 chances that Davey had to make the play, he succeeded nine times. He got a 97 on pursuit to the ball, a score he downplays, saying, "You don't have to have any athletic ability to do that. Just run wherever the ball is." On to practice. It's raining. "Seems like it always rains on Mondays after a loss," grumps Davey. It's a light workout, followed by weightlifting, dinner, back to drafting lab, back to the dorm and some economics homework, and to bed at 12:45 a.m. His back still hurts.

Tuesday

Davey rolls stiffly out of his top bunk in Room 201. It's 8 a.m. He pulls on jeans, brushes his teeth, puts his baseball cap on backward and takes his first steps into the cold en route to Economics 104. There, assistant professor Ian Gale says he likes the phrase "compensating differential" even though the textbook calls it "equalizing wage differential." Muses Davey, "This course isn't real interesting because it's pretty elementary. But it's kind of nice to have a break from engineering."

Now he heads for engineering drawing. For the moment, his mind switches to football. Two weeks before, Davey had intercepted an Ohio State pass at the Buckeyes' 44-yard line to preserve a 26-24 victory for the Badgers. Did he feel like a star? "A little bit," he laughs. Now, however, Lorenzo White is on his mind. "I don't know if I can contain him or not," says Davey. "I hope so."

Assistant professor Ernest F. Manner is waiting. In ill humor. Manner says he hates deadlines, then promptly announces all those fastener problems are due day after tomorrow. And so, by the way, is another assignment. In the classroom there is an undercurrent of panic. Davey, hovering over his work at the drawing table, doesn't react. White is completely out of mind. Says Manner, "I want to see some smoke coming out of those pencils." Davey's pencil is smoking.

As usual lunch is at The Shed, a campus cafeteria, and then it's on to the stadium to look at film. Engle marvels at Davey's brains: "If Don isn't understanding, it's not being said real well." The projector whirs.

"O.K.," says Engle. "Just remember if you settle down, White will screw you into the ground. Got it, Don?"