Endicott 8-8511

Early Monday morning, long-distance calls begin to ring Endicott 8-8511 at the University of Delaware in Newark. Down in the coaches' office in the dank cellar of the century-old athletic building, a boyish-faced man answers. On the other end of the line may be one of the most renowned coaches in college football--perhaps Northwestern's Ara Parseghian, or Louisiana State's Paul Dietzel, or Iowa's Forest Evashevski. They want advice.

Why do these shamans of big-time football turn for advice to the coach at a small Eastern college? Answer: Delaware's chess-playing, 39-year-old David Moir Nelson has one of the finest football brains in the business. And, says Dietzel, "he is not selfish in sharing his knowledge with others." In a word, "Admiral" Nelson is the coaches' coach.

Their Dish of T. Coaching at the University of Maine in 1950, Dave Nelson conceived the winged T, which stations a halfback outside an end for added power and trickery, but uses the traditional two-on-one line blocking of the single wing. Nelson perfected the system at Delaware during the past eight seasons, produced a brand of pounding possession football (his favorite slogan: "Beloved are the bastards that grind it out"), and Delaware has won 53, lost 20, tied 1.

But not until Iowa's Evashevski adopted the system in 1956 and went on to win two Big Ten championships and two Rose Bowl games in three seasons did the winged T become famous. Impressed, L.S.U.'s Dietzel last year adopted the attack, won ten straight, and the national championship.

Personal Call. Unsurprisingly, the Nelson phone rings for more than advice: many schools, including Pitt, Indiana and Baylor, have tried to draw him into major-college coaching. Michigan-born Dave Nelson learned his football with Fritz Crisler's University of Michigan powerhouses (one teammate: Forest Evashevski), but no one has been able to shake him loose from Delaware. "I like the small-college atmosphere," he says. "It's a good place to raise a family."

Nelson applauds Delaware's low-pressure approach to high-pressure football. His first-team players were all recruited from within 100 miles of Newark, practice a bare seven hours a week, think nothing of joshing with their coach, who still manages to look like an undergraduate, prefers Pepsi-Cola to hard liquor. "Football at Delaware is not an end in itself," says Nelson. "The preservation of intercollegiate football is on this level."

Last week Nelson was taking solace from his philosophy after his undefeated team, ranked first among the nation's small colleges, was outmanned and outplayed by Ohio's undefeated Bowling Green, 30-8. Nelson could not, and does not, expect to win them all. But he could be sure that, come Monday, the phone would be ringing at Endicott 8-8511, the soundest defensive call since the 6-2-2-1.

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