On to the Ball

With its graceful stone buildings set among the rolling, wooded hillsides of Maryland's hunt country, Goucher College has long been an exclusive school for women. This summer, however, it has been the training-camp home of the National Football League's most aggressive social climbers, the Baltimore Colts. Last season the Colts were football's Cinderella, bouncing from two wins and twelve losses in 1974 to the championship of the American Football Conference's Eastern Division and a spot in the 1975 playoffs. They were beaten by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first playoff round, but this year the Colts hope to stay at the dance past midnight. With a solid defense and an offense led by Quarterback Bert Jones--considered by many to be the best young passer in the pro ranks--they might well succeed.

That the Colts were ready for the race to the Super Bowl was obvious from the first day of training, when every member of the squad reported to Goucher with a signed contract. Thus the Colts began practice with no holdouts and no distractions--the only N.F.L. team to do so in an era of free agents and player unrest. While the players went through drills under muggy Maryland skies, the emphasis was on honing a club that would be young enough--average age: 25--to contend for years.

Duck Hunting. Jones, beginning his fourth year in the pros, is now a seasoned gridiron thinker, as well as an accurate passer, who was once described as "football's Sandy Koufax." Last year he rated fourth among N.F.L. quarterbacks in total offense, leading the league in quarterback rushing with 321 yds. He completed 59% of his passes, breaking the Colts' record held by Johnny Unitas. Jones, 25, has but one eccentricity: growing a beard during the season--not to shave it off for the cameras a la Namath, but to camouflage his face for duck hunting in the Chesapeake marshes.

The Colts' offensive line is anchored by All-Pro Tackle George Kunz and Center Ken Mendenhall, and flanked by stylish Tight End Raymond Chester and ebullient Wide Receiver Glenn (Shake-'n-Bake) Doughty. Running Back Lydell Mitchell is the team's most effective runner; Roosevelt Leaks, at fullback, will attempt to fill the Colts' weakest offensive slot.

On defense, the Colts' front four is largely unknown to fans, but not to opposing quarterbacks. Pittsburgh's fearsome front four has the rep, but it was the Colts' "Sack Pack" that led the league in dumping passers last season. Defensive Tackles Joe Ehrmann and Mike Barnes and Ends John Dutton and Fred Cook have played together long enough--two years--to know one another's instincts thoroughly. The result is the kind of fluid, unified play that opposing linemen find hard to break up. The same cohesive style marks the linebackers and secondary.

The 1976 Colts resemble the 1971 Miami Dolphins and the 1968 Minnesota Vikings--all sound, young clubs with rosters of largely unheralded collegians on the brink of Super Bowl seasons. The similarities are not surprising, since the same man, Joe Thomas, built all three teams. Thomas, 55, is vice president and general manager of the Colts, a job he engineered for himself by talking Owner Robert Irsay into buying the club for him to run. A onetime assistant coach, Thomas' reputation for finding football talent was so established that he was the first person hired by the expansion Vikings and, later, the Dolphins. He is pro football's master builder, a craftsman of the draft and the trade, the man who picked Fran Tarkenton when scrambling quarterbacks were an apostasy in the N.F.L., and who traded for Paul Warfield when he was supposedly Cleveland's only untradable player. He refers to his system as the "artichoke method." Says Thomas: "You build from the inside. At the core are the tender young rookies, the ones you get in the draft. You build under the veterans, and then you keep peeling them off, like the leaves of an artichoke, until you're down to the heart."

Swept Clean. The peeling in Baltimore was painful. When Thomas came in 1972, the team was only one year past a Super Bowl title, but already aging and on the way down. One by one, veterans like Unitas, Tom Matte and John Mackey were benched, then traded. His broom swept clean: only six of the 40 veterans on the squad were with Baltimore before Thomas arrived.

Not all of Thomas' plans for rebuilding the Colts have worked out. One big catch that got away this year was Larry Csonka. He had played for Thomas at Miami, and could have been the answer to Baltimore's shortage of size and experience in the fullback position. Csonka talked with his old boss briefly when he became a free agent last March, but later signed with the New York Giants. The problem, says Thomas unhappily, was Csonka's demand for a guaranteed, no-cut contract. "I just don't give anyone that," he explains. "It's not fair to our players who have sweated for us during a season. I'd rather have a happy club than one rich guy."

The Colts belong to the A.F.C.'s Eastern Division, one of the league's strongest, since it includes Miami, Buffalo and New England. In addition, the Colts must play Cincinnati, Dallas and St. Louis, all of whom earned playoff berths last year. A lackluster exhibition season worries Thomas, since the Colts must get off to a good start if they are to survive the first five games of the season. The Colts open with a bout with the New England Patriots next week, followed in quick succession by other tough games with Dallas and Miami. But football's canniest handicappers are boldly putting their money on the Colts: Baltimore, which never saw the light of the tube last year until the playoffs, is scheduled for five nationally televised games this season. As befits Cinderella.

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