Broken Record

In the good old days, when Carnegie Tech made no bones about buying football talent, Halfback Wild Bill Donohoe was a pigskin hero. One unforgettable Saturday in 1926, after he and his teammates whittled Notre Dame down to size (19-0), Wild Bill was toasted far into the welkinrung night. But, alas for heroes, the same Wild Bill Donohoe, on the same campus, was now the goat.

After his playing days were over, Wild Bill had become a coach; two years ago, he came back to his alma mater. By last week he had made a perfect record--19 uninterrupted defeats. Every time the word football came up, his friends thoughtfully changed the subject.

Carnegie Tech itself had an even more impressive record: it hadn't won a game since 1942 (it suspended football in 1944 and 1945). Wild Bill's squad of hard-studying engineers didn't get out of classes until 4:30. That made it nearly 5:30 before they were in uniform and on the practice field, and by then it was getting dark. Under Tech's simon-pure program, football players didn't even get pin money from the school. Worse still, rigid entrance exams kept out boys who were fast on their feet but slow in the head. And when Wild Bill finally got his boys together for practice, some of them couldn't stay long. Norm Keats, 210-lb. first-string tackle and a dramatic student, had to leave practice half an hour early for theater rehearsals.

The first two years, Wild Bill didn't really expect to win anything, but this season, he confesses, he couldn't stop hoping. Wild Bill swears Tech should have won the Oberlin game. That was the weekend the whole squad got food poisoning and had to keep trotting off & on the field, compelled by a force stronger than a coach's will. Tech lost, 26-13.

As defeat after defeat piled up (at the hands of Washington University, Marietta, Franklin & Marshall, Case), Wild Bill's squad lost weight. From despair? No, from studying. Says Wild Bill: "When they get a rubdown from the trainer, they are propped up on both elbows reading a textbook. On trips, they study both ways on the train or bus. I'm surprised they don't carry their books to the bench and study when they're not in the game. Probably haven't thought of it yet."

Whether it was Wild Bill's fault or not (he won his share of games before he came to Tech), undergrads demanded that his head roll and that athletes once again be bought, retail or wholesale. A month ago, President Robert E. Doherty told protesting students: "Some of you may have come to the wrong school."

Last week Carnegie Tech had its final chance of the season, against little Grove City, and won, 7-0. To celebrate the upset, Tech students put on a victory parade that kept classrooms half empty all day Monday. Bill Donohoe was a hero again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.