University of Virginia Library

THE
SPORTS
SCENE

By Bob Cullen

AN UNSEEN THIRD PRESENCE lurks nowadays
in very corner of University Hall. It intrudes in every
conversation, and motivates much of what goes on in
the round sports building. That presence is the Purdue
football team. Visitors to the football office leave with the
feeling that if Leroy Keyes wasn't in when they were
there, he must have just left.

Since the end of Spring Practice, the image of the
Boilermakers and the problems they will present on
September 21 have increasingly dominated the thoughts of
Coach Blackburn, his staff, and his players. Concern
about the opening game usually begins about this time
each year, but this is a special opening against a special
team.

A SPECIAL TEAM because Purdue should be ranked
somewhere in the top three in the pre-season polls. The
Boilermakers are the pride of the Big Ten, an explosive
team with speed, size, and strength. In Leroy Keyes, they
have the finest all-around football player in college today.
Mike Phipps at quarterback will be an All-American candidate,
as will Percy Williams at fullback. Purdue will
deserve it's high ranking.

A SPECIAL OPENING, because this could be the start
of a new style of football at Virgina. The Cavaliers
will travel to Lafayette with the sole purpose of forcing
the pollsters to find a new team for the Top Ten on the
following Monday. And it won't take much of a point
spread to get us to lay some money on the line that the
Cavaliers can do it.

In his five years at the University Coach Blackburn has
been striving to build a program that will place Virginia
in the top echelons of collegiate football. The Purdue game
may well be the first fruits of that effort. For Virginia,
"next year" is at hand. This is a different type of Virginia
football team, one that is capable of defeating any
team on its schedule.

MORE IMPORTANT, this is a team that believes
it can win on any given Saturday, and won't settle for
anything less. This attitude is the key. In sports, the winning
team is the one that can control momentum, that
can come up with the big play when it's really needed.
Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics are like that. So are
Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. If there is
any way to win, the Packers and the Celtics will find
the way, simply because they are winners.

NOW THE VIRGINIA football team appears ready to
take their place in that group. In their last two games
of the previous fall, they scored come-from behind victories.
But the opposition in those games was hardly top flight.
Purdue is.

That's why next season's opener takes on special
importance, why there will be little groups of Virginia
players working out together all summer, why the coaches
will probably pull as many all-nighters as the students will
next week. Purdue is the chance to prove to everyone that
has come close to giving up on. Virginia football w
wrong they are. The object of the exercise at Lafayette
next September will be only one thing: winning. Coach
Blackburn has said that no one will make the trip to
Indiana who isn't confident of victory. He means it.

WE HAVE SPOKEN in this column previously of the
new spirit that we have found in Virginia athletics. The
coming season will be a crucial test of that new spirit.
Cavalier teams of the past have always found momentum
to be a rather neutral factor; sometimes they had it,
sometimes they found that their opponents had it. Purdue
will fall if Virginia seizes the momentum at the start and
maintains it. That momentum, characteristic of all winners,
is building now.