The Graduates

Also on display was one of Wortman's athletic supporters Jeannie had embroidered with a red N.U., a No. 1 and a cluster of oranges symbolizing the victories over LSU and Alabama in the last two Orange Bowl games. Jeannie was a very talented girl, Wortman said. He planned to drop by Pershing Auditorium the next day to watch her graduate, something he himself would have to put off. He wasn't trying to bull anybody—his ambition when he came to Lincoln was to play football. "I don't consider myself dumb," he said. "I'll get my degree when the time comes." He said much of his academic life had been a series of false starts. "I had five majors. English, sociology—I couldn't pronounce the word—business and then P.E."

"That's four," said the split end.

"Math wasn't one of them," said Wortman.

One positive effect Nebraska had on his development, Wortman said, was a birth of confidence. "I'd never been on a winner in my life until I came here, then all of a sudden I was surrounded by them." He said it transformed him. In high school he had thought himself a clod, and there was always someone around willing to support that view. In those days he had dreamed of being a fullback. One of his coaches told him, "Wortman, you're a lineman, and you will always be a lineman." He said when he missed making All-League by one vote, his head coach told him it was he who didn't vote for him. "My own coach! I was just a big fat insecure kid until I came here to Nebraska."

"So what's changed, Chubby?" said the tackle.

The tackle's name was Carl Johnson. Blond, blue-eyed and massive (6'4", 255 pounds), he had come from Phoenix Junior College and played next to Wortman on the Nebraska offensive line; played well enough to be drafted in the fifth round by the New Orleans Saints. He had also completed the requirements for a degree in business. His father and mother and grandmother were in from Phoenix to see him get it. The grandmother wore an orchid corsage for the occasion.

The split end's name was Woody Cox. He was, by the standards of his roommates, lilliputian: 5'9", 167 pounds. He had been told many times, even before he got to high school, that he was too small to play football but had never been convinced. Wortman remembered playing against him in junior college, when Cox starred for New Mexico Military. "I saw him twice—running past me to touchdowns." In his last season at Nebraska, Cox caught 26 passes for 378 yards, second high on the team. Since then, free from team restrictions, he had let his curly brown hair spring out from his head like chicory. He had not been asked to play professional football, Cox said, so he was going home for the summer to sail on a friend's new $150,000 yacht. "Woody owns Grosse Pointe, Michigan," said Keith Wortman.

Cox was 10 hours short of his degree. His grades were good, and he would be back in the fall to finish up. He would, at the same time, help coach the Nebraska team as a "graduate assistant." He said it was the least he could do after learning such advanced techniques on the field: "All this knowledge...it would be a shame not to pass it on."

The three players had shared the apartment for nine months, along with an occasional freeloader such as Van Brownson, the quarterback, whenever Brownson tired of living out of his automobile, and a fairly consistent ebb and flow of coeds. ("Girls go for football players around here," Jeannie said.) The apartment's inventory of goods during that time had multiplied to include a line of empty Strawberry Hill wine bottles on the board-and-cinder-block bookcase, a superabundance of colored bath towels, a worthwhile stack of popular records (Cat Stevens, Chicago) and, on the toilet tank, a tall, yellowing pile of Playboy magazines.

Now, preparing to quit the apartment, the three roommates sat around hashing over their experiences, letting memories trigger memories. The success of Nebraska football, said one, was due not so much to dedicated players as it was to dedicated coaches. "Football's a big business here. The whole state is involved. The coaches know it, and they coach that way."