Torchy Torrance & His Position

Seattle's No. 1 booster and Washington football's leading sugar daddy appeared on TV and radio last Sunday night to describe himself to the city he loves. He also told of the Greater Washington Advertising Fund, which he uses to pay football players, and how it works. Some excerpts:

"I do not select the players. That's entirely in the department of the coaching staff and the athletic department. After recommendations are given to the coach...our job is to go and try to get them. That's my job at the University of Washington, and it's a self-appointed job in some respects and an inherited job in other respects. My first indication, or my first assignment, was way back in 1921, and I have been working off and on to help the university ever since....

"I am not completely in control of anything...but I do most of the work. I spend, I would imagine, two or three months out of the 12 on this activity. Sometimes it takes all day, sometimes it takes two or three hours.... I have never spent less than $1,500 of my own money each year in this particular program. Do you want me to sit here and agree with you that we should let just anybody, the average student, take over the football and athletic situation at the university? Don't you appreciate that we all want to be superior in everything we do? We want to be the ultimate the top. We want to be the winner....

"Are the University of Washington officials aware of our recruiting activity? Why, of course.... They've heard rumors, and they know that there must be some help from some place, as does every conference, school and every other university primarily in the country of any consequence....

"I am terribly proud of the years I have spent in helping the university...."