The Cavalier daily :: Tuesday, February 27, 1968 :: University of Virginia Library

In addition to living on the
Grounds, the team will be expected
to eat lunch and dinner
in Newcomb Hall for the duration
of the September to December
season.

In a Thursday evening team
meeting. Coach Blackburn and
his staff presented the plan to
the players and sat in on a
period of discussion. Co-captains
Gene Arnette and Rick Brand
then took over the meeting and
all the coaches left the room.

Hand Vote

A show-of-hands vote found
a majority of the team members
favoring the plan.

As projected, the housing proposal
will be binding on all football
scholarship holders. Non scholarship
members of the varsity
will be invited to join their
teammates in the dorms on a
voluntary basis.

In detail, the plan will have
ten players—one suite—living in
each of six or seven of the Alderman
Road dorms. No dorm will
have more than one suite of
players.

Provisions of the plan allow
seniors on the team to live on
the Lawn. First-year men will
continue to be housed in the
McCormick Road dorms, as will
players who are counselors.

Players who are fraternity
members will be allowed to fulfill
their obligations to live in
fraternity houses during their
fourth year. Seniors on next
fall's squad who have already
fulfilled such obligations to their
fraternities must live in the dorms
this September.

Breakfast Optional

During the season, team members
will eat all lunches and
dinners in Newcomb Hall. Breakfast
will be optional. In the last
few years the team has been
eating only dinners in the cafeteria.

Coach Blackburn cited the advice
of trainer Joe Gieck that
players' diets during the season
have been questionable at best
as the reason for the additional
meals in Newcomb Hall.

In explaining the proposal for
having the football players live
together in the dorms, Coach
Blackburn said he felt that team
cohesion and togetherness—one
of the ingredients of a winner—
should be improved.

He also noted that the team
will mingle more with the student
body and this should increase
school feeling for the team.

Coach Blackburn's proposal
brings to mind the controversy
late last April which arose when
basketball coach Bill Gibson first
introduced a plan for housing his
team — scholarship and non scholarship
players alike—in the
dorms.

The following day the football
team voted to also move into
the dorms the following September.
In the rash of discussion
that followed, an editorial in
this paper entitled "What Price
Glory?" attacked the plan, a
former chairman of the Honor
Committee expressed concern
that the Honor System might be
jeopardized by such closely-knit
athletic teams, and Dean B. F. D.
Runk called the plan "foreign
to the traditions of the University."

Plan Killed

What finally killed the plan
was the refusal of the Housing
Department to allot dorms for
athletes so late in the second semester.

This year's plan, worked out by
Coach Blackburn and his staff,
took into account problems encountered
previously. IFC President
Geoff Gordon was questioned
for possible repercussions
on University fraternities.

The Housing Department was
also consulted and a workable
procedure for placing the athletes
in the dorms was formulated.