A Fledgling Writer During College Daze

I sold my first bit of writing while a student at Boston University. It was a short piece about the B.U. football team which I peddled to True magazine for a hundred dollars.

That was a princely sum in 1959. One of the Kenmore Square bars we favored actually sold eight-ounce glasses of beer from the tap for ten cents. A hundred bucks would buy a thousand "dimies" and I was a very popular guy in my fraternity for the final semester of my college experience.

About that same time -- and this is what I sent to True -- the university had decided to "de-emphasize" the football program. Unfortunately, there was no parallel de-emphasis in the schedule of opponents, and week after week our guys had to face some real powerhouses, including Kansas, West Virginia, Penn State and Syracuse. Furthermore, Syracuse was the top team in the country that year, with the legendary Jim Brown as their running back.

The B.U. coach, Steve Sinko, had the habit of coming up with a slogan-of-the-week, which he scrawled across the blackboard in the locker room before practice every Monday, wistfully hoping it would inspire his minions.

For instance, Sinko’s slogan for the Penn State game that year was:

IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE DOG IN THE FIGHT,

IT'S THE SIZE OF THE FIGHT IN THE DOG.

Brave words – and appropriate, too, since BU’s mascot is the Boston Terrier – but that Saturday, they lost to the Nittany Lions, 21-12.

On the Monday before the final game of the year against mighty Syracuse, the bruised and battered BU players trooped into the locker room to discover that some unknown wag had gotten to the blackboard before the coach. There, in large block letters, were the words-of-wisdom for the players to ponder over the next five days:

FALL BACK 15 YARDS, DIG IN,

AND SAVE THE EQUIPMENT!

Final score that Saturday: Syracuse 46, Boston University 0. To quote Casey Stengel, "You could look it up."

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