John Wade Farrell
Bye, Bye, Backfield!
Spring around the Mideastern campus, especially during Easter vacation, is something the Army would invade with weasels, so on this fine Easter of 1949, as with every other year I’ve been on the Mideastern squad, we had borrowed, for two weeks, the facilities of little Grandon College in Florida, a state even the Army couldn’t spoil.
I was stretched out on my bunk in the borrowed dormitory when the other three members of the backfield came in.
“You people remembered to bring your press clippings?” I asked.
Big Charlie Western, the fullback, turned to Sancho Sanchenelli, our fleet left half and said, “Shall we bust a leg off this porky little mastermind?”
“Leave us not quarrel among ourselves,” Bus Mulligan, the burly redheaded right half said. “This, gentlemen, is a council of war.”
And so it was. You know how Mideastern did last year. We smashed the Ivy League, broke the hearts of our two Big Ten guests and piled up a lopsided score in the bowl game.
Charlie kicked the door shut and said to me, “Hal, is the new one going to give us any trouble?”
He meant our brand-new coach, a mountainous person named Bunny Hale, recently fullback for the Burros. About twenty-nine years old, one of those boys who go to so small a school that they never make a clipping until a smart pro team grabs them and turns them loose on the publicized kids from the bigger outfits. With the Burros he had made a three-year average of 5.1 yards every time they handed him the ball. Maintaining such an average against outfits like the Packers is akin to consistently throwing rocks through a concrete wall.
The old coach, Pete Linklater had, on the force of his record with us, gone on to greener pastures.
“You mean,” I said, “is he going to break up our little party?”
Because, in a sense, that is exactly what we have had ever since the ’46 season. We played together on a service team, accepted the blandishments of Mideastern, and set our offensive backfield up as a closed shop.
Pete tried to buck it other buys showed promise, but as dear friends and true, Charlie, Sancho, Bus and I arranged to flub the timing so that Pete’s hopefuls, no matter what position they played, looked very, very bad.
And it had paid off, very nicely.
“Why should he try to break it up?” Bus asked. “We’re a winning combo. This is our last season coming up. We’re the inner circle, and the defensive back-field, Lyan, Dupliss, Stelzac and Goldman, plays along. This way we’re not fighting each other.”
“And if somebody pulls an injury this season?” Sancho asked.
“Why then we do just like last season. We decided who we want off the bench to plug the hole, and we make anybody else look bad.”
Having agreed to preserve the united front, we shifted the talk to other things. We drifted down to the dining room and there, for the first time, we saw Bunny Hale in person. He was the same general size and shape as a brick phone booth, with a dull, sleepy expression. And he really shoveled away the groceries.
At the end of the meal Stim Jodrey, the sleek manager, beat on his glass with a spoon and the roar of conversation died. He said, “Fellas, without one of those big long introductions, let me just say that I want to present the head coach of the 1949 undefeated season, Mr. Melvin Hale, known nationwide as Bunny Hale, the man who carried the ball for the Burros.”
The applause was heavy enough, but not exactly uncontrolled.
Bunny Hale stood up, stared sleepily at us. “My eyes hurt,” he said. “I’ve been watching movies of you people. For a college team, you do good. Timing okay, fundamentals fair. This here is Harry Quinbee who will he line coach. I’ll coach the backfield. The line has holes this season, but I think we plug them. You have a lot of power in the backfield. You run too many off the T and not enough single and double wing. You could have added another three touchdowns to the season total last year by forgetting that T within the five-yard line and punching Western over from a single-wing, unbalanced line either way.”
I blushed. That was aimed directly at me.
Bunny continued. “The game can be fun and we’ll play it that way. It’s dirty, hard work, but we’ll try for a few laughs. We’ve got two weeks here. We’ll work every day, nine to twelve, two to six. Tomorrow be at the field house at eight thirty on the field at ten of nine. One thing is going to be clear. Mideastern is paying me to boss this outfit. That I intend to do. My judgment will stand in every case. Based on what you boys show me in these two weeks, I’ll plan our fall season and map out plays and do recruiting during the summer.” He yawned. “See you tomorrow.”
Harry Quinbee had the linemen down at one end of the field. Bunny Hale was in uniform. He looked even bigger than yesterday. He had the eighteen backfield boys at the other end of the field.
He said, “With you guys it’s timing and memory. A lineman is always having to outsmart the guy squatting face to face with him. The defensive backfield has the same sort of problem. But the offensive backfield has got to be a machine with interchangeable parts. There is going to be no prize offensive backfield any more. All offensive are going to work equally well together.”
I glanced at Bus Mulligan, saw the angry flush on his cheeks.
“All you boys,” Bunny said, “know the thirty-one series off the T. If you defensive boys are rusty, I want it practiced.”
He split us into four backfield teams and had us walk through the 31 series. I was paired with Sancho and a couple of sophomores. The series puts a load on the quarterback because each play starts with a half-spin, a fake handoff to the right half coming across, three steps back, then turn and flip to either the fullback coming down the alley in a delayed buck, or flip to the left half building up to a fade and pass or an off-tackle slant.
Walking through it we couldn’t do much. But then when he upped the speed to regular timing, I was executing the fake to Sancho just right, taking my three steps and flipping to just where either of the sophomores wasn’t. I teased them into some beautiful bobbles.
Bunny came over and said, “What goes on here, McKeaver?”
I said politely, “I guess I’m used to flipping to Charlie Western or Bus Mulligan. They always show up at just the right place. These boys are a little green, coach.”
The sophomores gave me the dead-pan look and kicked at the turf with their cleats.
Bunny said, after giving me a long look, “Then it’s up to you, McKeaver, to tell them where they have to be for the flip. They make you look bad.”
Sancho snorted. Bunny turned to him and said, “Something on your mind?”
“Not a thing, coach. Not a thing.”
He shuffled us around again, and this time I ended up in a foursome that included Bob Dupliss, left half, and Candy Stelzac, right half, from the first-string defensive backfield. The full was a junior named Donovan.
I did them like I’d been doing the sophomores and Candy said, “What the hell, Hal? What are you doing to me?”
Bunny was a hundred feet away. I said, “Doing? I thought Bus Mulligan offensive right half. What do you care if you bobble a few?”
He glared at me and he and Bob Dupliss grumbled just out of earshot. On the next try Dupliss ran too close for the fake. He hit my hands with his hip and the ball dribbled away from me.
“Keep hold of that ball!” Hale yelled.
Then he broke it up and put us- through a very rugged period of fundamentals, ending with a jog four times around the field and in to the showers.
That night in my room Charlie said, “Not once all day does he fit us together. Hell, I’d like to show him what we can do.”
“He saw you in the movies, Charlie,” Sancho said. “Relax. He knows the four of us click. He’s just teasing us along a little.”