Newfound Promise in Providence

It's been an exciting year in Providence. The usually staid banking community of a few hundred thousand has been rocked by scandal after scandal.

The directors of a state-run finance company reportedly gave low-interest loans to all of their rich friends.

A prominent state judge was discovered to be deeply tied into the huge organized crime network in the Ocean State.

And finally in June, the eyes of the nation turned to a Providence courtroom, where prominent socialite Claus von Bulow stood accused of killing his wife in their Newport mansion.

In September, Laura Zaccaro, Cosima von Bulow and Amy Carter enrolled in college in Providence. If you stuck your ear to the ground, you could hear the rumblings down there.

Holy Moses

On top of all those goings-on, there's now a good football team in town. No, it's not Moses Brown, it's not even the University of Rhode Island, which has already been victimized by our budding powerhouse.

The growing gridiron gargantuan is Brown.

That's right, Brown. The fall, winter and spring camp disguised as an Ivy League college. Frisbee for credit and your tofu for free.

The place to be. No what-was-your-first-choice types here. Brownies all say that they got into Harvard and Yale, but chose instead the healthy, holistic atmosphere of peaceful Providence.

The best varsity sport for years at Brown has been water polo. Just like their fellow mellow students at the U-Cal-Irvine, for Brownies, it's water polo first, last and always.

And like the Anteaters, the Bruins have a water polo program that is good, real good. All-America goalie Lars Engstrom may just be the most celebrated athlete at Brown. He and his teammates have never lost a game on the East Coast.

The football program, meanwhile, has been struggling since the founding of the Ivy League in the 1950s. The Bruins are just 73-125 in Ivy play, only sharing one league crown, and are the second worst team in the Ancient Eight history.

Football has been rather too unmellow for the Brownies, who prefer a Saturday afternoon in a damp cave exploring all sorts of new fungi. "Oh, wow, look at the mushrooms."

Hang 10

This year, the gridiron Bruins are making major Ivy waves. They almost stunned Yale, the pre-season favorite on the opening weekend, rolled all over Cornell and Princeton and almost topped three-time defending champ Penn.

So while the Bruins, with their new Harvard-trained coach, have two losses to go with their two Ivy wins, they are showing theyare for real. The Ivy stat sheet shows that Brown boasts the second best offense and the second stingiest defense in the Ivy.

Climbing High

So Brown Coach John Rosenberg's '67 showdown with his alma mater may be a big test for the second-year mentor. The Bruins have shown that they can play with the league's three elite teams [Penn, Yale and Harvard] twice. Now they want a victory over one of the big three.

"We want to prove ourselves against the acknowledged leaders of the league," he says. "We played evenly against Penn, the score was even against Yale, even if we didn't play as well. Being able to win and not just come close would be a plateau for us."

The pressure to beat the Crimson is mounting, but Rosenberg says he isn't worried.

"One of the things that came out of my Harvard education is the ability to handle pressure. We want to be going into next year a contender. We can't just be a 'w' for anyone anymore."