With my passion for small-college football I thought it would be a good idea to go up and cover a traditional game that personified the best of small college football. I chose the game between two old Little Three rivals, Wesleyan and Williams. I got more than I bargained for because the game was only one aspect of the afternoon. As explained in the column, black-white conflict over the suspension of some black students raged on the Wesleyan campus. We didn't realize until the game was over that there had been a bomb threat against the press box. Nevertheless it was a lovely afternoon that symbolized what college football should be all about. It was one of my favorite pieces. November 11: The Afternoon of a Football Game The record of what happened Saturday on the Wesleyan U. campus appeared in most Sunday sports pages in the college football scores as: Wesleyan 18, Williams 17. Perhaps it is worth looking beyond the single line.
Wesleyan, founded in 1831, is a privately-endowed school of 1,400 men, 100 women transfers and 300 graduate students. The first women's freshman class will enter next fall. Wesleyan is one of the small prestige New England schools, among the most liberal and innovative of American liberal arts collegs. Its significance athletically is that it is one of the Little Three along with Amherst and Williams. The rivalry among these schools goes back to the 1880s; the richness of its traditions matches the Big Three of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Wesleyan is usually the weakest of the Little Three. This year, however, Wesleyan beat Amherst and strung together six victories, so it went into the Williams game Saturday with a chance for its first undefeated season since its trio of undefeated seasons in 1946-47-48. More important, a victory over Williams would insure the Little Three championship. The significance of football at schools like Wesleyan is that the players, unrecruited, are very much a part of the student body; their makeup reflects the student body. On the Wesleyan team there are extremes of beatnik-pseudo-hppies and what the campus vernacular calls jocks, the full-blooded athletic types. Last year one star, end Stu Blackburn, took part in a Vietnam War protest and a campus sit-in at the president's office. At the same time Blackburn was engaged in the sit-in, his pal, Steve Pfeiffer, the quarterback, was collecting signatures for a petition urging the the protestors be removed from the president's office. Coach Don Russell said, "Despite this, they remained friends and they left here as friends. Blackburn is coach at a private school in Maine, Pfeiffer is a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. I think there is a willingness on all sides here to respect the other fellow's views. We have differences, but some of our personality clashes on the team are as likely to be between two jocks or between two hippies, or whatever. An ominous backdrop for Wesleyan as it went out to win the coveted Little Three title was a campus dispute which threatened to spill over onto the football scene. There had been an incident in which some black students beat up a white student because he had written what they regarded as an anti-black tirade in the school newspaper. The blacks were immediately expelled by the dean; this produced protests on campus by militants who objected that the blacks had not been tried properly by a student disciplinary board. The protestors hinted they might disrupt every campus event unless the black students were reinstated. This led to an injunction agaiinst the black student organizations to prevent anybody from disrupting the football game. Four blacks among the five on the freshman team did not play the freshman game. The captain of the varsity team was among those heading the drive supporting the dean, and the coach's concern was that the issue was so heated it might disrupt the team's preparation for the game. The coach said, "I thought about taking the team off campus. I finally decided that the best thing to do was to ask that they cut off argument on the issue by 8PM Friday night so we could concentrate on getting ourselves up for a ball game." Wesleyan is a picturesque campus in the little town of Middletown in central Connecticut between New Haven and Hartford. The football field is laid out between temporary stands (seating 4,500) on a greensward in the middle of the campus. It is ringed by century-old red brick buildings and big old maples and elms fronting the architecture of new buildings in the background. Behind one end zone is a terrace on which non-paying spectators can spread out on blankets. At least 10 dogs of varying size frolicked on the terrace during the game. The game, which figured to be a toss-up, developed into a crisp, wide-open tingler. Wesleyan banked on its passing. Williams featured a sensational small-college runner in Jack Maitland, a 200-pounder who added 193 yards to his all-time New England college rushing record of 2,757 yards. Wesleyan quarterback Pete Panciera, a skinny, round-shouldered boy who has the slouchy movmenets of Joe Namath, couldn't run, he set up badly and he often threw foolishily-but he threw line drives harder and better than Fran Tarkenton, and the Wesleyan ends made some remarkable catches. Williams scored in the second period on an 80-yard march with Maitland big-shouldering 58 yards in 10 carries. On the next Williams sequence Maitland powered 40 yards for a touchdown and a 14-0 lead. Wesleyan then began its fraught-with-frustration chase. It didn't lose its poise despite numerous bad breaks, including a lost fumble on the Williams two-yard line. Wesleyan rallied to 14-6 at the half with a 20-yard Panciera pass. At the intermission the Williams band stragged onto the field, all wearing different outlandish hats, serenading the crowd. Wesleyan's musical aggregatation was a swing band featuring ana old upright wooden piano in the front row of the stands. The Wesleyan cheerleaders, all long and wooly-haired males, shouted the usual cheers, plus the chant, "Chastize them, chastize them, make them relinquish the ball." A representative of the black students asked for and received permission to address the crowd. His appeal for the blacks was listened to by most of the students; others and many of the tweed-attired alumni tried to shout him down. The man in charge of the P.A. mike interceded. He said, "When Nixon and Humphrey were here last year, the kids were branded punks and rabble because they hissed and didn't give those men a hearing. Well, now this man has something to say and you should pay him the courtesy of listening." The black student finished his appeal as the players returned to the field. (At the end of the game the press box would be emptied because of a bomb threat, but nothing developed). In the second half the Wesleyans repeatedly moved the ball without a score. Two interceptions and a fumble stopped them. At one point Williams intercepted a pass, Wesleyan intercepted a pass a few plays later and on the very next play Williams intercepted right back. Wesleyan finally went 80 yards to score and trail, 14-12, early in the last period. Williams surged back and added a field goal to lead, 17-12. Now, Williams intercepted once more, but then Panciera moved Wesleyan 80 yards to a touchdown that put it ahead, 18-17. Williams staged a final palpitating drive, falling short with a couple of long passes. The final play was Williams' attempted field goal from the 30-yard line that was partially blocked.Wesleyan walked off the field still undefeated (with a final game against Trinity) , the champion of the Little Three. The football players paraded the coach off the field, the swing band played, the students-long-haired and short-ran from the stands and terraces to hug the playrs. The dogs ran all over the place. It added up to Wesleyan 18, Williams 17.
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Double No Hit Vandy Is Seaver's Moon Man 
