The Graduates

He looked at Debbi.

"I feel the same way about football." Pat Morell said. "It was the third-best thing that ever happened to me."

Bigness, rather than beauty, is the mark of the University of Nebraska campus. It sprawls without rhyme through the avenues and side streets of Lincoln, spreading fitfully under the duress of an ever-increasing demand on its enrollment, now up to 21,000. Its architecture is a rummage of style and shade, its epidermis a variety of brick and stone and, as a concession to modern tastes, glass and metal. Somehow, one is not surprised to find the Hardy Furniture warehouse in the midst of it all. An aerial view is dominated by two enormous grain silos on the north edge of town, and to the west is the Memorial Football Stadium, which has been enlarged five times since Bob Devaney arrived to be coach in 1962. By next fall it will have enough seats (75,000) to accommodate half the population of Lincoln.

To keep those seats filled, Devaney has made Nebraska a national institution—he does not discriminate against a good football player because he lives in San Diego or South Philadelphia. Once they reach Lincoln, he does not require his players to live in a football dormitory, separate from the natural stream of student life. Once they have varsity experience, they may live off campus. They filter into apartments and fraternity houses. Those who wish to remain often gravitate to George P. Abel Hall, the largest of the campus dormitories. Abel Hall is 13 stories high, with musty-smelling corridors and yellow block walls that need paint. There usually is a sign in the lobby of Abel Hall that says something like "Wanted: two roommates to share a mobile home." For John Adkins of Lynchburg, Va., Abel Hall was home for the last two years at Nebraska. "I don't like to cook," he explained when asked about his choice. What does that mean? "Move into an apartment and you wind up cooking."

The morning of graduation, Adkins was in his room, sifting through piles of clothes and supplies, filling a trunk, cleaning out. Still on the bookshelf was a copy of Faulkner's Light in August and a large bottle of Hoffman's HiProteen food supplement. Adkins had fulfilled all academic requirements for his degree in physical education, but he was not going to the graduation. He said it was partly because he owed the university $130 in parking tickets and couldn't get his diploma until he paid up, and partly because he never planned to attend in the first place.

"All they do is tell all the seniors to stand up, sit down and then go to the basement and pick up their diplomas. It's easier to have it sent to you."

John Adkins, nicknamed Spider, is 21, 6'3" tall, 221 pounds, handsome and black. His father drives a garbage truck in Lynchburg. Neither his father nor his mother ever saw John play football, except on television. He lettered every year and was a regular defensive end for Nebraska. He was not drafted by an NFL team.

"That hurt," he said. "I really wasn't planning to play pro football. I was planning to go to graduate school. But that hurt my pride." So when Montreal of the Canadian League called, Adkins signed up.

He had other plans as well. He and a buddy back home and a white teammate named Jeff Hughes hoped to someday develop an area outside the Cherry Point, N.C. Marine base for low-income housing. He said it was no pie in the sky. He was confident that sometime in the future there would be real money in the project. "If there's one thing college has given me," he said, "it's confidence. Confidence to play football, confidence to get my degree, confidence I can do anything."

He said there would be no bad memories of Nebraska. No real problems. His girl friend Cindy was white, he said, and he felt sometimes they received some unusually long looks when they went places together, but he admitted it might have been his own sensitivity that caused him to think so. Certainly there had been no overt discrimination, he said. Black players tended to go their own way, but that was not unusual, and there were white players he considered good friends. He hunted with Larry Jacobson. One thing he especially liked about Nebraska, he said, was the availability of pheasant; one of the most prized of his acquisitions, was a 12-gauge shotgun. He said if there was one thing that would bring him back for a visit it would be a pheasant hunt.