He Was Getting a Little Testy, So He Took a Pass on College

If you root for the underdog, you’re rooting for Eric Swann.

Which raises the question:

Who is Eric Swann?

You could say the 20-year-old, 6-foot-4, 312-pound defensive lineman, one of 460 players taking part in the NFL scouting combine workouts at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, is an undergraduate coming out--if only he were coming out of somewhere. But after being offered a football scholarship at North Carolina State, Swann failed to score the required 700 total on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and never played a down of college football.

If effort counts for anything, the scouts watching him today should get an eyeful.

Swann took the SAT eight times.

Add Eric Swann: The Wolfpack’s loss was the Bay State Titans’ gain. Swann, who reportedly runs 40 yards in 4.75 seconds, had 11 sacks and blocked four field goals in 11 games with the minor league team in Lynn, Mass.

Dick Bell, Swann’s agent, spoke like an agent when he said: “That (minor league) level was almost as good as any level of college football, except the top levels. We had 12 players who have already been signed by the World League of American Football. We also had nine players starting who were drafted in the NFL anywhere from the third to the 11th rounds, including five starters on defense that had been drafted in the NFL.”

Trivia time: The 1971-72 Lakers hold the NBA record for consecutive victories, 33. Can you name the starters on that team?

Amoral victory: The debate over who’s No. 1 in college football could take us right up to the 1991 Kickoff game.

Don Kaul of the Des Moines Register recently mulled the Colorado vs. Georgia Tech question and picked his champion: Miami.

Wrote Kaul: “It was the Miami players who best exemplified the spirit of the game. They are unruly, vicious, semiliterate thugs who glory in injuring their opponents and are given to taunting fallen victims.”

Galloping Co-Ghost: The death of the legendary Harold (Red) Grange reminded reader Bob Magnuson of San Clemente that one of Grange’s blocking backs, Bill Anderson, settled in Southern California after his career at Illinois.

From 1924 to ‘54, Anderson coached football, basketball and baseball at Occidental College, concentrating on baseball in the 1940s and ‘50s. During most of his 31-year tenure, he was Oxy’s athletic director. The school’s baseball field is named in his honor.

Demon-stration: DePaul’s 72-63 upset of Georgetown at Landover, Md., Sunday was Blue Demon Coach Joey Meyer’s first victory over John Thompson in seven tries.

Mark Maske of the Washington Post quoted Meyer as saying: “I just told them (at halftime), ‘Well, we didn’t play well. We have a half to turn it around.’ I told them, ‘We didn’t come here to look good. We came here to win.’

“They just looked at me like, ‘What are you talking about? We know we’re going to win.’ . . . I knew it would happen sooner or later, that I’d beat John. I just thought I was going to be about 85 before I did.”

Trivia answer: Guards Gail Goodrich and Jerry West, forwards Jim McMillian and Happy Hairston and center Wilt Chamberlain.

Quotebook: Rod Brookin, a senior basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh: “I’m going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes.”