He’s Trying to Put Dear, Old Rutgers Back in the Game

Given their reputation, when you look down the Raiders’ roster for the institutions of higher learning they came from, you half expect to see alma maters like the University of Just Win, Baby, the I’m Innocent I Tell You Correctional Institution, Electric Chair Tech and Up The River State College.

What you don’t expect to see is Rutgers.

Rutgers is the cradle of football. The first intercollegiate game ever was played there. But it does not come into public focus as your basic big-time football factory.

You never read “Bowl-bound Rutgers” in the sporting prints. No one is quite sure what the team mascot is or whether there is one. Rutgers is not famous for its goat or horse or leopard on a leash. They’re not the Big Red or the Golden Horde or the Purple Pythons.

You get an image of a tree-lined campus with carved mahogany doors and the faculty wearing powdered wigs and a student body that can recite the Tudor Succession from memory. You’d expect the cheers to be in Greek and the biggest statue on campus to be of Shakespeare. The school was founded before America was, in 1766, and George Washington probably slept there.

You figure the football team shows up with chauffeurs and learned the game by playing catch with their butlers.

It’s the last place in the world you’d expect the Raiders to come looking for a defensive lineman, especially since they’d have to go right by all the pool halls in Perth Amboy to get there.

It’s an image that annoys Bill Pickel to no end. Bill Pickel may be the best football player ever to come out of Rutgers, certainly the best since Paul Robeson--or Ozzie Nelson.

It irks Bill Pickel that most people think of Rutgers as some sub-Ivy League college whose annual biggie is with Hampden-Sydney or Seton Hall and whose varsity is only playing because the polo ponies are sick.

“We play Army, Alabama, Kentucky, Penn State, Syracuse, Florida,” Pickel said. “We’re not Harvard. Everybody thinks East Coast football begins and ends with Penn State and Pittsburgh. But we’re upgrading our program. We can play anybody in the country.”

You have, therefore, to resist the temptation to say to Pickel “What’s a nice Ivy League boy like you doing in a place like this?” in a tone of voice that indicates you just caught him using somebody else’s toothbrush or attending a gangland funeral.

The Raiders may be looking for football players in the played-out ore beds of the Northeast because they think nobody else is looking there. They got Howie Long from Villanova and Sean Jones from Northeastern.

Getting football players out of small, unknown colleges with names like Middle-Eastern North Carolina State Teachers is a tried and tested NFL formula. Getting them out of venerable institutions that were old when Lincoln was born is a daring tactic.

Putting a Rutgers man alongside Lyle Alzado would seem to smack of putting a nun in the Mafia.

They gave Pickel what may be the toughest job on the ballclub. Playing nose tackle has been likened by Raider official Al LoCasale to “lining up in the middle of the Hollywood Freeway.” They should call it bloody-nose tackle.

It’s a position that formerly was played by two men, to give you an idea. Football not too long ago was played on defense by a front four whose job it was to rush the passer mercilessly. They disdained the run because they figured it was a nice little diversionary tactic they could put a stop to any time they wanted. It was the pass that won championships.

This philosophy gained so much currency with the brain trusts of the NFL that they soon conceived the idea of peeling another player back from that front four to further discourage the pass.

This meant that the third man in what was left of the line had to be (1) strong, (2) durable, (3) fast, and (4) suicidal. Also willing to do the work of two men.

You would think a Rutgers man would be too smart to go in for this line of work, that Rutgers people would hire someone to do it for them, the way they would hire someone to do windows, and that Pickel would tell the Raiders politely “I think you came to the wrong place for that kind of workman. Have you tried Arizona State? I was thinking more along the lines of safety man. Some place where you don’t get dirty.”

But Pickel may be right about Rutgers. It may be getting so tough it’s on the verge of getting into the Big Eight. If it has players like Bill Pickel on its campus, it has sure outgrown Ursinus. Army isn’t even a match for it anymore.

While Rutgers is still a long way from the gridiron juggernaut Pickel makes it out to be, he himself has become a one-man gang and a strong advertisement for the old girl on the banks of the Raritan.

In the last two seasons, Pickel has registered 25 quarterback sacks and led the Raiders’ front line with 82 tackles. This year, he has 7.5 sacks and again leads the line with 48 tackles.

A sack is never entirely an individual effort, but Pickel and his fellow members of the terrible trio, Sean Jones and Greg Townsend, sacked Cleveland quarterback Bernie Kosar six times in Sunday’s game. Bernie may wonder why Rutgers isn’t on probation.

You’re supposed to die for dear, old Rutgers, not kill for it. But if you can get ready for the Raiders playing there--well, either Rutgers has changed or the Raiders have. And if the Raiders have changed, so have Doberman pinschers.

So, dear old Rutgers is not dying for anybody these days. If it’s now turning out All-Pro nose tackles, the presumption is it now wants to get back in this racket it started personally 117 years ago.

A few more like Bill Pickel and the student body can begin practicing up on cheering “We’re No. 1!” In Latin.