Savoir-Faire

For some reason, the spectacle of Brown atop the Ivy football standings is simply not, well, kosher. And not only do the Bruins lead (pardon me, share the lead with Princeton), but they are being billed as the team to beat, the cream of the crop, the Ohio State of the Ivies.

As an old Brown enthusiast, who spent many afternoons not so long ago in Brown stadium watching the Bruins stumble, bumble, and somehow fumble more than one victory away, the sight of their current perch is about as believable as an automatic B in Nat Sci 36.

Somehow, somewhere, there must be a mistake, for Brown and winning football go together like bagels and whipped cream. Brown soccer, OK. Lacrosse and hockey, conceivable. But football, forget it.

Now let's concentrate on the last 16 years of Brown football, which just happens to coincide with the period when the Bruin gridiron program turned as sour as a program can turn. Before that eventful fall of 1959, Brown had fielded respectable pigskin outfits, and had produced more winners than losers. In fact, the Bruins had participated in the first Rose Bowl, losing 14-0 to Washington State back in 1915.

But in 1959, following a 6-3 season the year before, Brown hired a new coach by the name of John J. McLaughry. The regimes of McLaughry and of his successor, Len Jardine, spanned the next 14 autumns in Providence, and went down in Bruin history the same way that the Nixon and Harding Administrations were recorded in American annals.

For during that time, the Bruins had only one victorious season. Their overall record was an unglorious 26-95-5, with Jardine personally accounting for 44 of those defeats against nine measly wins and a tie. During the latter's reign, in fact, Brown never managed more than two triumphs in any one campaign--the Bruins' combined 1971-72 record was 1-17.

It is little wonder, then, that when John Anderson first arrived on the scene in 1973 with talk of immediately rebuilding the Bruins, most people laughed, some giggled quietly to themselves, but no one took him seriously.

Then Brown lost three and tied one of its first four games that year, and the laughing turned to howling. Unfortunately for the other Ivies, however, no one has laughed since. Anderson took his team to Princeton and Cornell for back-to-back road contests two years ago and emerged with 7-6 and 17-7 victories, the Bruins' first wins in Princeton and Ithaca since 1948 and 1956, respectively.

Brown ended that season in a flurry, nearly upsetting Harvard in the ABC-Pat McInally Classic and then destroying Columbia in its finale.

Last year brought a 5-4 mark, including two near misses (7-6 to Dartmouth and 14-9 to Penn when Adolph Bellizeare returned a punt 69 yards in the last quarter) and a four-game winning streak to carry over into this year, a streak which reached seven last Saturday against Yale.

And how does this turnabout strike all those friendly types in Providence? "The feeling around Brown is super, great, tremendous," Anderson said yesterday. "We've even got the faculty out watching practices. After all, everybody likes a winner."

"Do you think that you'll go undefeated?"

"Now I didn't say that. It's difficult to win the Ivies and go undefeated, because there are too many factors involved. For example, if we play a team with less talent, but we have midterms that week, we're at a disadvantage. At Alabama, where players take basket weaving 1,2, there are no problems.

"Also, you can't have letdowns in the Ivies. You saw what happened last week against Columbia. If we have a letdown at Dartmouth this Saturday, we'll lose."

Which brings us to the point that the last Brown team to win its first four games was the 1932 squad, the last victory over Dartmouth in 1955, and the last win in Hanover in 1928.

Oh, I get it. You say they moved out of Providence.