Mail Chauvinism

Three weeks of classes have gone by. Nobody's had an hourly yet. No house has put on a play yet. The football team has lost two game in a row. The Red Sox aren't playing baseball anymore. Nobody famous has died in a couple of weeks. I get my allergy shot in 12 days.

Let's face it gang, these are not very exciting times, and if you're trying to bang out a coherent weekly sports column, these times are downright boring.

Now wait a minute, I know that look in your eye. You want me to print some of the mail I've been getting here at the Sports Cube and my responses. No way, that would be cruel to all these freshmen who confide in me as if I was Ann Landers in high Cons.

These kids don't want me to mention the fact that they were looking for the box seat section at Harvard Stadium last Saturday or that they were curious as to why the Harvard Band was wearing dirty laundry on their heads at the game.

This is pretty private stuff. But while we're on the subject, we might as well look at a few:

Dear B.S.,

I'm from the Midwest and all I've heard people talk about the past few days is "tailgating" before the home football games. Now I thought I knew my football, but what does this "tailgating" mean? Vexed Vocab

Dear Vexed,

This is very simple to explain. As you probably know, Harvard Stadium was the first athletic stadium in this country to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. The ritual of tailgating began in 1903 when Harvard football fans noticed there were no seats in the stadium, only concrete steps. They started arriving at the stadium a half-hour before the kick off and stuffing pillows, blankets, quilts, etc. down the back of their pants so that their "tails" (that's what behinds were called back then) would be protected. The tradition continues to this day mainly because the seats still haven't arrived for the stadium.

Dear B.S.,

I was at the football game last weekend and it seemed to me like that sophomore quarterback Buckley was lining up too far away from the center. Why was that?   Shotgunned

Dear Shotgunned,

That was pretty perceptive of you to notice that Brain was lining up so far behind the center! This began during training camp when the Harvard centers were complaining to Coach Joe Restic that Buckley's fingernails were too long and their pants kept getting ripped when Buckley lined up directly behind the snapper.

When Restic told Buckley to cut his nails the sophomore refused and rather than cut the talented signal caller, the football genius instead decided to use Brain in a continual shotgun position and plant a small land mine between him and the center. the "multi-death" offense, as it is known, should be very useful in preventing quarterback sacks this year.

Dear B.S.,

I'm doing a piece for Expository Writing on the outstanding athletes at Harvard. I'd like to interview them all at once, but they're never all free at the same time. What do I do?   Feature Creature

Dear F.C.,

Just pop into Astro 8 today. They'll all be free. So will I.

Ohio State's. It's more interesting and fun, and when football stops being fun it becomes a chore."

As a coach, Benninger is saddled with teaching the multi-flex offense to freshmen gridders so that they will be able to make a smooth transition to the varisty ranks. Many players come from high schools that rely on a "five-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust" offense.

"The first day I got out there I didn't think anyone was listening to me," Benninger says grinning. "Kids from big-time high schools are used to just blowing off the line. Here it's a lot of trapping and pulling. You have to teach them a lot of things even though most of them know it innately."

Benninger still seeks advice from his old mentor Karras when he is not sure how to diagnose a play. "He really knows his stuff," Benninger says of Karras. "If you really listen and pay attention and try to do the things the way he teaches you, you'll turn out to be a pretty good player."

All This, And...

Besides his coaching duties, Benninger is presently holding down a third career. He's the color man for WHRB's football broadcasts.

"You have to look at everything when you're the color man," Benninger says. "In the second half of the Colgate game I was a little depressed so I wasn't talking as much as I should. But after all, that's my team out there." "You're playing quarterback all the time."