Bob Farnham: Bad News Bruin

Don't you hate the way sports announcers say "He's one of the best" all the time? Well I do, so I'll just start by saying that today Brown brings the best receiver in the Ivy League, maybe the nation, into The Stadium today to face the Crimson.

Last year Bob Farnham clutched 56 passes to lead the nation in receiving, as well as breaking a bushel of Brown pass-catching records. He was All-East, All-Ivy and All-Burn-The-Defensive-Secondary, and was the major depth charge in Brown's explosive offense of a season ago.

And it was last year that now makes Farnham Public Enemy Number One among Ivy League defenses. Opponents' secondaries have come to regard the senior end as some sort of reincarnated Homer Jones, regularly double and triple-teaming him throughout the game.

As a result Farnham has slowed down to ONLY 23 receptions, good enough to lead the Ivies in that department, amidst the CIA coverage he's been drawing. Harvard's Bill Emper, who stuck to Farnham like Dentu-Grip last year at Providence, will most likely cover him alone today, a job about as desirable as being Robert Dole's joke writer. Whether Farnham makes a buck-private out of Harvard's captain in the confrontation remains to be seen.

Despite his relatively unspectacular season thus far (he has yet to catch his first touchdown pass), Farnham needs only seven more catches to become Brown's all-time leading receiver, a mark currently held by Farnham's receiver coach, John Parry.

But the All-American candidate puts the stats and this year's "decoy" status in the right perspective. "It's really not the numbers, you can't think about them. Last year, for instance, I just kept thinking it was bound to end. I could catch 14 one Saturday and none the next. Realistically, I didn't give the slightest thought to catching 56 passes again. I could catch 60 and it wouldn't matter if we didn't win.

"Whatever I catch, I catch. But I would certainly like to have a few big days before the season is over. I think I can find a way to beat the extra coverage," Farnham noted.

Whether or not the Ivy League's answer to Lance Alworth hauls in a dozen Paul Michalko passes or not today will not be the answer to his effectiveness, for he has proven himself just as troublesome to defenses with or without the ball.

And don't think the big boys don't know about Farnham. He's already received feelers from the Denver Broncos, Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders, and nods his head readily to the thought of a possible pro football career.

So who knows? Maybe a couple of years from now Frank Gifford will be calling Bob Farnham "one of the best." I sure hope not. "One of a kind" sounds a lot better.