Coach Ben

All season long, the stubby little coach had worked over his beefy team with the blunt tongue he had developed as a paratrooping major in World War II. Nothing helped. Though undefeated, Syracuse squeaked through game after game, was the flop of the football year because it seemed to be living on its reputation as last year's national champion. Last week Coach Ben Schwartzwalder even threatened to demote some of his stars, including 215-lb. Fullback Art Baker, a preseason All-America candidate. Snapped Coach Ben: "If any of you boys sulk about being put on the second team and don't play well there, we'll see how you like it on the third team."

Syracuse got the message loud and clear. Against West Virginia it jelled for the first time this year, won by 45-0. Syracuse still faced some formidable rivals, notably Pitt and Army. But win, lose or draw in 1960, the thick cluster of sophomores and juniors on the 1960 squad marked the birth of a new football dynasty, a team almost certain to contend for national honors for years to come. Ben Schwartzwalder, a man with a system, is the father of that dynasty.

Schwartzwalder makes no bones about the fact that his system is based on shrewd and aggressive recruiting. He gets his best material from families with modest incomes. "You don't find many really wealthy boys playing college football today," he says. "But a really poor boy is also a poor risk. He'll always be concerned with the folks at home and constantly needing money just for bare necessities--and this can mean trouble.

"We go after the boys who can play both offense and defense. A player who can go both ways has just got to have more talent and more learning ability than the specialist. If we don't get the top backfield star of a high school, we look for the second best man with the hope he can be converted into a first-rate lineman. I especially like to get fullbacks overlooked by the 'money schools' --a high school coach will always put his biggest, strongest kid at fullback."

Slow but Sure. Above all, Schwartzwalder is looking for the kid who just plain likes to knock people down. No team in the nation plays rougher football than Syracuse. "Some teams try to figure out the easiest and fastest way to get over the goal line," says Schwartzwalder. "Well, we don't concentrate on the easiest or fastest way. We just concentrate on getting there. We believe in massing our men, and we start at tackle and make the enemy defend that spot so heavily he'll be weak elsewhere. The only way you can run effectively over that tackle is to double-team him. We usually have our tackle hit him low, and then our end hits him high."

Around this basic maneuver Schwartzwalder has built a system of plays that unfold with the relentless logic of a theorem in geometry. "We keep slamming that fullback off-tackle, and the defense has to bunch up to stop us. So the quarterback will fake the ball to the fullback and run outside himself, or pitch out to the tailback who's trailing him. Now they've got to bring up their secondary. That leaves them weak for option passes thrown by the tailback."

"A Good Hoggin'." To spice this heavy diet of conservative football, Schwartzwalder often gambles for a touchdown. "When we come out in punt formation," says he, "we are prepared to do any of five or six things other than kick, if the quarterback sees the defense is overcon-centrating on blocking the punt, or over-concentrating on falling back to get a good runback. The perfect play, you know, is going where the defense isn't. Football is a long way from being all physical."

In fact, as Schwartzwalder discovered to his sorrow this season, the main weakness of burly Syracuse is mental. "I want a team to go into a game ready to hit and be alert mentally, rather than all fired up and ready to make a lot of mistakes," he says. "It's mistakes that lose ball games." If the players are really ready for battle, they leave some steak on their plates the morning of a game. Says Coach Ben Schwartzwalder: "My dog can get a good hoggin' on gameday leftovers."

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