A Lot from the Leftovers

Any game between two unbeaten college football teams figures to attract considerable attention--especially when one is first in the nation on offense, the other ranks first on defense, and the stakes are 1) a conference title and 2) a possible national championship. But the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets and the Westminster Titans will be embarrassed if more than 5,000 fans show up to watch them play Saturday. They would like to be accommodating--but Waynesburg field only has 5,000 seats.

By any reasonable standards, Waynesburg and Westminster qualify as small schools. To the N.C.A.A., however, size is a matter of athletic emphasis; it is measured by a school's schedule, by the conference it belongs to and the teams it plays. And by those criteria, San Diego State is also "small"--although it has 18,000 students, the use of a 50,000-seat stadium, and a football team that supplied five players to the pros last year. Yet S.D.S., which is riding a 23-game winning streak, finds Waynesburg and Westminster pressing it hard in the polls for the unofficial 1967 small-college championship.

Irresistible & Immovable. A Presbyterian liberal arts school in Waynesburg, Pa., a coal-mining community 25 miles north of the West Virginia border, Waynesburg College has a tiny, 65-acre campus and a total enrollment of 1,125--399 of them coeds. Also coeducational, also Presbyterian, and only slightly larger (1,366 undergraduates), Westminster is located in New Wilmington, Pa., a farm town of cobblestoned streets and a single stoplight. Neither college tries to compete with the big-time football foundries in recruiting high-school stars; neither pampers its athletes with snap courses or "laundry money." "We give no outright scholarships at all," says Westminster Coach Harold Burry, who also coaches golf and swimming, besides teaching statistics. Says Waynesburg's athletic director, Clayton Ketterling: "We just pick up what's left over when the big schools get through."

The big schools have left him a lot. This season Waynesburg boasts two first-string quarterbacks: Don Paull, a runner, and John Huntley, a passer. No one yet has found a way to stop either of them. Operating from a pro-type multiple offense, the Yellow Jackets have humiliated seven straight opponents by an average score of 60-5, running up an average of 488 yds. per game--more than any other college team in the U.S., big or small.

If Waynesburg is irresistible, Westminster is immovable: the Titans have held six opponents to an average of 98.8 yds. a game; their wild, gambling defense is calculated to confuse. "We use a split-six, a four-three, and a variation of the Notre Dame four-four," says Defensive Coach Ralph Bauch. "We stunt in the line, and we do a lot of blitzing to put pressure on the quarterback. We're set up to blitz any hole, and we sometimes shoot in a deep back as well as a linebacker."

Heart & Home. The mainstay of that determined defense is the blitzing safety man, Francis Tobias, a native of nearby Sharon, Pa., known to his teammates as "the Wrecker." He is typical of the kind of boy who plays for Westminster and Waynesburg. Where else could a 5-ft. 7-in., 150-lb. freshman star for the varsity? The opportunity to play also lured Center Douglas Behn to Westminster instead of Annapolis, "where I'd be sitting on the bench for several years." That same attraction, plus the fact that "it's close to home," persuaded Lineman Joe Righetti to opt for Waynesburg rather than accept a scholarship offer from West Virginia. Righetti, who is clearly no leftover, weighs 270, has been scouted by the pros.

"A boy who comes here," explains Westminster Coach Burry, "gets all the football he wants. And the spirit is great." That goes for the coaches as well as the players. "We don't have a boosters' club here," says Burry. "We don't want one. There is no game we have to win, and I'm not going to walk the back streets if we lose."

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