A Class In Beginning Football Was No Place For A 125-pound Neophyte

Evanston Township High School wasn't looking for 5'5", 125-pound football players in the 1950s, or so I told myself. The truth was, I wanted no part of contact, especially the college-level blocking and tackling that made the Wildkits the terrors of the Suburban League and the state of Illinois. To put it plainly, I was as short on courage as I was on inches. I knew my place all right: in the flag football league at the Evanston YMCA.

I wasn't any braver when I entered the University of Illinois in the fall of 1954. I was a phys ed major, determined to become a basketball coach despite having been cut from every team I'd tried out for at ETHS. One of my required courses that first semester was Beginning Football, which I assumed would be a class in theory. I was in for a big surprise.

The first morning the class was divided into three sections, one under varsity Backfield Coach Ralph Fletcher, one under End Coach Bob King, and my group under Line Coach Burt Ingwersen.

After taking attendance, Coach Ingwersen sent us upstairs to "draw equipment." I didn't like the sound of that, but then maybe they'd just be giving us T shirts and shorts with ILLINOIS FOOTBALL stenciled on them. When I arrived at the equipment cage, one of the two attendants slid a pair of shoulder pads across the counter toward me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"This, kid, is a pair of shoulder pads," he said. He wasn't trying for a laugh, but his response broke up everyone waiting behind me.

By now I was starting to get the picture: we weren't going to learn football in shirts and shorts or in a classroom. My fears were confirmed when the last piece of equipment came sliding across the counter: a new, black Riddell suspension helmet. A few minutes later I learned that things would be even worse than I had imagined. Each of the three sections was loaded with freshman and varsity players.

Our classes were as demanding as varsity practices. We were taught to block, then we blocked. We were taught to tackle, then we tackled. Coach Ingwersen didn't much go for anything that involved the ball. In fact, we didn't see a football the first two weeks of class. After that, we spent almost no time on passing, catching, kicking and running.

It was just my luck to end up with the line coach. My one hope was that the team players would take it easy on a little fellow. They didn't, and for eight weeks every muscle in my body throbbed. Not a day passed that I didn't consider quitting—not just Beginning Football but everything: school, fraternity, the lot.

But as the days went by, the pounding hurt less and less. I realized that when you've never been blocked or tackled, those first few hits make your body feel as though it's coming apart. After a thousand blows, however, what's one more? Or 10 more? Where could they hurt me where I didn't already hurt? I wondered if a lot of football players weren't the same: not so much fearless as numb.